Zaino completes his first test !

What a relief ! I woke up this morning with the biggest bruise you have seen on my leg, waist and arm and cannot move my shoulder up. However I was determined to ride Zaino, he warmed up apprehensive so I pushed him into canter and basically made him go forward around the warm up in medium canter daring him to spook, it worked ! He was a lot calmer afterwards, we entered the ‘Spooky arena’ in trot and yes just my luck someone had placed two barrels on the side of the arena that were not there yesterday, he spun around, I coaxed him back towards the barrels and went forward but only in walk but hey! Anything as long as forward was fine with me. We completed a circuit of the arena I was really chuffed. I put him into canter and we were off down the centre line. We did the test with only one massive spook which was medium trot going towards the spooky corner and a man moved we spun around facing the wrong way! But I stayed calm and just continued. We fluffed one change and cantered instead of trot in one place, but overall I was almost in tears we had done it ! It is also the first time Zaino had done this AM test and only the second time he has done AM in his life. Will have score later.