Day Four--we have a name and a saddle

We have a name! Cash. Everybody likes cash, everybody wants cash, cash is good pretty much everywhere, and Johnny Cash was a pretty talented guy who overcame a lot in his life. And it sounds pretty catchy--Cash. Hopefully, Cash will help me win some cash at the competition in June!

I would call Cash about 75% halter broke at this point. He still gets confused sometimes and needs pressure from behind to move forward with energy when being led, but is mostly great with leading. He still needs to learn to give better to halter pressure from directly in front of him, but he's getting it. He backs up really nicely in the halter and wants to be soft in his face, so I think he'll turn out to be a heck of a soft horse in the bridle.

So, today, on day four, we did a lot more desensitizing and continued with lots of "longeing for respect" and getting him to move his front end and hindquarters. He's getting pretty good at that. We also did some more loose roundpenning and he joined up great today--totally followed me around. That's such a cool feeling! When I first put him in the roundpen loose today, I walked out to take care of a few things, and within about five seconds he took a saddle pad that was on the fence into his mouth and started flipping it up and down. Not scared of it so much, I guess!

Our big accomplishment of the day was wearing the saddle. He did fantastic with it and didn't buck at all. Just did a bit of a butt-tucked-under trot and canter as the saddle strings flapped on his hiney. Also did some flexing and some Jeffries method laying on top of his back sort of stuff--we'll do a bit more of that tomorrow and maybe ride tomorrow or the next day. I can't wait.

He's such a quiet horse. If you go by the "whorl" theory, he's born to be a quiet horse since his whorl is about half way down his nose. In fact, it's the lowest whorl I think I've ever seen on a horse. More pictures coming soon--I will definitely have someone to take pictures of our first ride.