I went an bought a narrow gullet for the all-purpose saddle and its made it fit perfectly. Who would have thought that Teddy, a 15.3 hh stock horse would require a narrow gullet? His stock horse line must have a lot of thoroughbred in it. In the past I would tell people that he has a high withers and they would say, "No he doesn't"; well this proves it.
So with a great fitting saddle and no riser I went out in the paddock with him today for our 2nd trial with the pee wee. He was doing great until I made him continually come to a complete stop and wait before going again - this started some head tossing. At first a little but I was determined to call the shots and he jigs about at times when asked to halt so the objective of the exercise was to do a drill at longer and longer intervals. We had already done a number of other exercises so this was to finish up. By the time we had done the exercise a heap of times and he had gone from being asked to halt at the count of 15 and then increasing two counts each request until we reached 40, e.g. count at a walk to 15 then halt, count at a walk to 17 then halt etc. By the time we got to 40 he was doing the halt perfectly, complete and not moving forward until asked, but he was tossing his head a lot again.
Even though the halt was asked very gently, literally only done with my two ring fingers on either rein, I guess the bit was making itself known and he was choosing not to accept it.
I'll have a think about how I am going to tackle this in the next step.
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