Need a break?

Have a Kit-Kat......
No really, I think I need a break.
I think I need a break from unpredictable horses.
My horses are not naughty and they don't scare me, they're just unpredictable youngsters.
Today, my patience was wearing thin, I hate myself for it, but there it is.

The ground was frozen this morning so I took Remy for a hack. I expected him to be forward and confident, I suppose that was my first mistake - beware of expectations.
He stopped at our neighbours scary garden and my first thought wasn't 'ok, no problem', it was, 'christ almighty, not again, how many times do we have to go past here before he's ok with it!'
I resigned myself to being in the saddle for a very long time.
I thought about it there and then as I waited for him to decide if it was ok to go, or not.
It wasn't that it was a bad day or that I wasn't in the mood, I wasn't getting annoyed. I was just resigned to the fact that I had to be patient and the more we did this, the better it would be, it's young horse territory, I know that. I just didn't want to be doing it.
I want him to know that he has my support, I don't want to 'make' him go, I want him to trust me and go because he believes he'll be safe if he does what I ask. So, it takes a long time, and today it did take a long time.
He's not naughty, he just stops and looks. I realise this is not such a bad thing, but it can get quite wearing. He has all his mums endearing qualities, but he also has this quiet passive resistance, so much like Anky, I recognised it immediately.
If I ask too firmly with my legs, he goes backwards. I use reinback quite a lot in our schooling and I seem to have created a going backwards monster. Twice today, faced with things he wasn't sure of, I backed him past them with no problems. What does that mean then, that he can't see the scary things and that he trusts me to handle it? I don't know!
Most of the time today though, with positive reinforcement (lots of 'good boys' and treats) he went forwards past scary things, it took time, but we got there.
We went around the circular ride. I let him stop to chill and eat some grass here and there and as we turned towards home he  became very forward and energetic. He remained forward coming home, and I managed to get good balance and softness in the hand. So much better than the slow, step by step, 'like pulling teeth' forward we got on our way out.

We were out about an hour and a half and for all intents and purposes, it was a successful ride, he was calm and pretty relaxed as we arrived home and we'd achieved our goal.
I didn't enjoy it one bit!

A short session on the yard with Bonbon that I did enjoy, moving quarters and shoulders and a short flexion session.

It's snowing here now - I knew we hadn't got away with it - roll on spring!