Trot On

I'm not doing a great deal with Titch at the moment, except all the things I normally do with him.

I have my daughter home from uni at the moment and she loves coming out for walks with Titch and I, so I made good use of her the other day.  She walked behind Titch while I was leading him up a hill and I asked him to trot and clucked, whereupon she shooed him mildly from behind and he did indeed trot.  We did it again and then I tried it when she was walking in front of us, saying trot and clucking with my tongue and sure enough he trotted.  I tried it several more times and he has never not responded by trotting, so I now feel we are another step closer to being able to take him to a local show next year.

He has been out for a walk with me and 5 teenagers laughing, shouting and being, well, teenagers, and coped fine with it.  I would now like to set up a situation where a stranger wearing a hat walks up to him as if they were a judge, while he remains standing still.  I cannot believe how fast he learns, even without food rewards.  He does love a good scratch as a reward and pulls the most comical faces of ecstasy!

Yesterday we went out for our longest walk so far - 50 minutes.

Titch spent the next hour like this...

He is learning to stay a few yards away and wait while I put his feed bucket down.  I have always done this with our dogs and it seems a good idea so that he respects my space and doesn't rush at me.

He is excellent when we meet horses coming the other way and is quite happy to let them walk away without him. This will be useful for when he goes hunting and maybe has to leave early, or for showing when the other horses leave the line to do their individual show.