 Remember to give him time to think. Excellent. Pretty soon, that ear is going to come to me. There it is. And when that ear comes towards me, he's thinking about me. And I can step in and drive him to get his attention. And that ear will start to come back. And if I step in and sort of drive forward, and that ear comes to me, and then I move away, I'm opening up a big space for him to come through. And now we're back to drawing again. So when I step out of the middle of the round pen, that indicates the horse changed something. We're asking for something. But when I'm in the middle, and if I'm relaxed, he's doing great. And that indicates to the horse, just keep doing what you're doing. Notice he's focusing his vision here. This looks really good. He might find that mounting block again. That'd be all right. I can see his mind drift between the mounting block and me. There I sort of stepped around and encouraged him to look at the mounting block. That's very good. Remember to give him time to think. Excellent. So as you can see, I'm getting to the hindquarters as I step around. As I approach, he's cautious. So you notice I just turn. I sort of have my side to him. So as I approach, I'm giving him my side. That looks pretty nice right there. So just trying to make it a little less threatening by not facing and squaring right up to the horse. Good. It's nice. Then I might reach up. Good. He's looking exactly where I'm thinking about him looking. What we could do is put this halter on here. As I put the halter on, I could put a little downward pressure and say, could you tip your head down a little bit? Good. Could you tip your head over here? Let's just move your feet. Let's get a little space. Good. I have a little room. Good. See if I could bend him around a little more. See, he's used to getting straight and stiff every time somebody gets on him, bridles him. When he gets nervous, he gets straight. He just hasn't learned how to soften, bend, and look. Look around. Because if he can turn and bend and look, he'll relax. He has to relax his muscles to do that. So that's pretty nice. I'll just step around, arc away, and see if I can bring him with me. All right, now many of you have thoroughbreds that are a wee bit flinchy. Let's talk about that. Notice I've got my brushes out here, my saddles out here. I really encourage you to change up where you saddle your horse. Sometimes the stall, that's fine. Sometimes the arena, OK. Maybe you tie once in a while if your horse is ready for it. But change up where you saddle. You don't always need to have that horse tied up. You might miss a good opportunity. So you can see I've got brushes, and I have the leader over my arm. Now when they're tied, they don't have a lot of say in the matter, and they're sort of, that is just going to encourage him to stay straight. But a horse like this, what I really want him to do, you can see flinches a little as I brush. I'd really like him to sort of look at me. So in just a second here, I'll turn. But there, I have him drawing around it. I'm brushing my way towards the rear. Now I'll step away and bring him with me. Now we'll work both sides. I'm still aware of the horse. This is good. I don't just walk over there. I sort of approach and let him just maybe smell and just get ready for it. Notice the tightness in his neck. I don't know if you can see that or not. But I'll brush a little. I'm always able to tip his nose to me, like right here. Think about drawing around. And I don't stay in an area that long. So I might just brush a flinchy horse a little bit. And then I go right back to moving their feet, especially stepping around and having him draw and look. That's good. That's good. Pretty soon, that head's going to come down. And I might brush his forehead a little bit. So you can notice that sometimes he wants to block me out with his head. So I'll just put my hand up, help encourage what I want to have happen. And now what about the both brushes? What about the curry? So what I might do is brush a little with the soft brush, curry, soft brush, walk away. I'll give you a better view. Good. Now his head's up. I'd like him to get to where he feels comfortable, gets straight, and that head starts to come down. And I think it will. Seeing a little flinchy there, you can see that reaction. So I might brush a little with the soft brush, curry, soft brush. You can notice he flinched so much his knee kind of gave out a little bit. Now I've seen horses that are a lot flinchier than this horse. But at his age, he's still there. That's a good mental shift there. You can see that head come down. Now I'm really focusing on not just getting the dirt off, but getting him to where he stays soft in his muscles and in his mind relaxed. All you can see is getting a little flinchy here. I might switch back to my hard brush. Always able to bring his nose around to me. Now if you feel like you're not ready to have two brushes, just use one then. And just get it to where you've got that rope over your elbow. You can just drop your hand right into your hand. It's there. But I'm still able to bring his nose to me at any point. It's very important. Very important. Good. I'm going to try to help encourage him to stay straight. Don't block me out. Let me brush this side. I'm not staying on one side that long before I move my feet and move away. Good. Good. He's getting ready. You can tell. He knows that I'm about to step back, move that hind quarters. All right. Mounting block. Well, I purposely had that mounting block in this ring in the round pen so he'd see it. So it became a nice place for him to be. It's all tied together for me. It's mounting and brushing and bridling and saddling. To me, it's all connected. It's all related. So here we are. So what if he were out there just working here? I'm just circling. Now we have other videos on circling and groundwork. The idea here is just to show you, and maybe he's not even online. Maybe he's going around the round pen. But then you'll invite him to you. In this case, I have a brush right here, so that's pretty handy. So if I step right up here on the mounting block with the brush, he gets pretty interested. So now I'm up here. Maybe now I see if I could brush that forward. Let's see if I could step up just a little further. See, he didn't have this on the track. Your horses that don't stand for you, you probably didn't give them a chance to really become not just comfortable, but to get your horse to where they really like it here. Now I could tell going over his back, he was a little uptight, so I just moved forward. Let's get a little more, get this a little better. I'm able to reach over the top. He's looking at me. That looks really nice right there. Such a simple thing. And it's something you can't do. See if we can get him to relax here. It's something you can't do in the cross ties. And then when you come up to the mounting block to get on, it's such a foreign place, or it's a place that they know darn well the human's going to get on, they're going to work. So make it a nice place here and breathe out there. Step up a little more. You don't even have to be that far along. And you don't even have to. You might step up on the mounting block a time or two, brush, step down. You might not even ride your horse that day, but you still might get up on that block so that he sees you up higher. We can get that done. One more tip on a flinchy horse is brush them on the move. Ask them to move their feet and brush on the move. Now for some horses, he doesn't understand. He thinks, I need to stop. Because normally when people brush me, I don't move. But I'm saying to move your feet, so this is interesting. If they're moving, many horses feel a lot less threatened by the brush. And also think about this, their feet are in motion. So they have to walk and move, and their muscles have to drive forward a little bit. So you might find it's much easier to brush a horse, and then we let them settle to a halt one more time. So brush them on the move. I'm asking. My posture's tall. I'm sort of leading ahead. I might even bump them in the side with my brush, where your leg would be. And then I might brush on the move a little bit, and then I relax my posture and come to the halt. You see that? How he's settled down.