Touch A Prince Over Crossrails and Riding the Back 40

Touch A Prince continues to work well in the arena, and even acts like an old pro to let me open and close the arena gate while I'm mounted.  For this third ride at Bit of Honey I skipped the lunging because he just doesn't need it.  He's got the idea of how the routine works, and each time tacking him up he is a little less cinchy.  Once he was dressed and wearing the saddle and hackamore we headed to the arena, where I set some small jumps and climbed on.  He stands quietly for mounting and dismounting on the left and the right sides, though the first time I got on from the right he did give me a funny look.  He decided it was just another one of these weird human things, and mostly ignored me climbing on from the "wrong" side.  Dismounting is similar, he just figures it's something weird I do to get off on the right.  He just patiently looks at me hoping that standing quietly will earn him another cookie.

We did our usual warm up of walking and trotting, and I asked for a little canter.  He picked it up right away, but had the wrong lead.  I asked a couple more times, and he continued to pick up the wrong one.  I could tell he was confused, because previously I asked for the right lead first and today I was asking for the left lead first.  I let him stay on the right lead, while traveling to the left, and then I cut through the middle of the arena and asked him for a simple lead change in the center.  He very quickly figured out what I wanted, and immediately picked up the left lead.  After that he began to suspect that I was going to be more fun that I initially let on.

We cantered over ground poles in a little course, and then I brought him back to the trot to try the cross rail.  He wasn't impressed with the cross rail and just took a slightly larger step to get over it, hitting it with his hoof as he went.  Often I find this to be the case with a horse who is confident and gets bored easily.  He needs to be challenged.  If it's not difficult, technical, or complicated, he will be careless.  So I left it as a cross rail, but had him canter over.  The first time over at the canter he was pretty lackadaisical about it, so the second time I took it at a sharper angle and asked him for a flying lead change in the air over the jump.  Suddenly he was interested!  He got the lead change just fine (thanks to track training where horses have to be able to do that for racing), and landed in a much more forward and balanced canter.  We did it a couple more times changing directions over the little jump, and then quit while he was still eager to do more.

To cool out I took Touch A Prince out to the back forty and we walked around the jumps out in the cross country course.  He had never seen stuff like this before, and I have some ominous looking logs in the back.  The dogs did their job going up to the logs first and showing him that they are nothing to be scared of, and he marched along very politely at the walk, just taking in all the scenery.  He met the neighbor's horses, who of course rushed the fence to see the new guy, and he just nickered hello when he realized they were horses and not llamas.  Touch A Prince is sure proving to be smart, level headed, and interested in a job.

Video from our ride out to the back forty can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dAK_XRcOgM