Rye isn't frightened of much so when he is on the long reins he likes to go and investigate everything. He can be really strong and when he makes up his mind to go somewhere, he just goes. At the beginning of today's session it was difficult to get any sense at all as he rushed off here and there to look at everything and to visit the other horses. No point in engaging with his 'no' like this and allowing him to practice it; time to restore some order instead. I used the long fence-line as a buffer. If he rushed forward to leave I simply turned him towards it so that he had to halt. Once that was established I used the outside of the round pen in a similar way but had lots of obstacles for him to engage with at various intervals as we went. This at last, engaged his attention, and enabled me to start communicating with him through the reins. By the end of the session I was able to deviate from my route and work through some obstacles in the middle of the field before returning to the sanctuary of the round pen rails.
