Can I get that canter again, please?

Got my saddle back today so went to try it out and it seemed to be working well. Kieran was certainly cooperative, though we still had some of the "swing the butt away from the mounting block" thing. So, he got one "grace" step away, and the next time he moved as I settled the mounting block back into place? I smacked him on the butt with my crop and sent him off at a trot then asked him to whoa when he came back around to the block. He did it one more time, I sent him off again, and this time when he whoa'd, he actually stood there the whole time for me to climb up the block, get in the saddle, and get situated.

So here's hoping next time I won't have to do it at all. Cross your fingers!

Anyway, for our ride, we did some warmup walking and trotting and I kept to doing a lot of the work closer in to the middle of the ring and letting him walk/rest on the rail. Once he was warmed up, we did quite a bit of cantering and he gave me a lot of really nice transitions and one really really nice, forward, but a bit more collected and balanced than usual, canter. Now if I could just figure out how to ask him to do it that way more often! ;)

After that, we dialed it back a bit and I got off and rolled out the soccer ball. He stood to let me back on (lest I chase him around again!) but I could tell he was like, "but you got off! that means you're done!" which was part of why I got off to do something, then got back on. ;)

Anyway, we chased the ball around a bit and he's getting really good at trotting after it and he's figuring out I want him to push it away from the wall when it gets stuck.

Once we were done with that, I hopped off and pulled off his tack so he could walk around (and roll if he wanted to) while I cleaned up the arena.

All in all, he was a really really good boy. And oh! Here's part of the email I got from Christina yesterday regarding him:

Just wanted to let you know that [Student] rode Kieran in her lesson tonight. [...] He really was a good boy and helped her confidence increase ten fold.

I just wanted to say thank you for letting your awesome horse give lessons! He has helped [Student]'s self esteem more than you realize :)

What a nice warm fuzzy. :D