It was funny on Sunday to ride and have Cameron be just as soft and responsive as I could have wished after a week off. As I commented when we were done, apparently the aliens took the pod creature away and gave me my horse back #grins# I suppose I forget sometimes how far he's come.
When I first got Cameron, he had been out to pasture for two years, for sale, while his owner went to college. He's a worrier by nature, and needs a calm rider to give him direction, but from what I gathered his owner had been timid and in need of a horse that could give her reassurance. This is never a good combination, because panic feeds on panic and you end up with a horse and a rider who constantly make each other neurotic. So although I saw that in there somewhere was a happy, obedient pony, in the beginning I was often troubled by Cameron reacting to nearly all new situations by becoming a bundle of taut nerves, unfettered instincts, and explosive energy. I took to calling this part of him "Jo-Jo the Idiot Boy, " and we used these times to work towards "Cameron moments, " when he would relax and listen, take my word that whatever we were doing wasn't going to hurt him, and basically act like a good horse should. As Clinton Anderson once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) the horse has two halves of his brain, the thinking half and the instinctual half. Because he only has so much room in his head, you can train him and work with him until the thinking portion dwarfs the instinctual portion- but no matter how hard you try you can't get rid of the instinctual portion entirely. So while Cam has calmed down considerably from those earlier days, he will likely always have those moments where he panics and turns into Jo-Jo. But they're coming few and far between these days, which is probably more than I could have asked for, and I need to keep that in mind.