The place with the dry water assured me that they had re-filled the water complex, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to get Frankie through some new water before our event.

Luckily, as they said, it was filled.

Surprisingly, Frankie walked right in. Good boy. He trotted and cantered right in too!

He jumped out both at a bank and a very small vertical. We tried jumping in, at the trot and he put on the brakes. Dirty even. BAD FRANKIE! But, he did then jump over the small vertical into the water at the trot and canter.

Dropping into the water was another story. Frankie said NO WAY! Codi came with me and she got in (with sneakers!) and tried to lead him down. NOPE! So, I hopped off and got into the water. It was the cutest thing I have ever seen; all four feet were touching as he tried to figure out how he was going to get down the bank.

This was definitely not a safe thing to do. I had just put the reins over his head and stood in the water, not in front of him, but he was looking like he was going to land on me. But, he slowly, shaking scared to death, put his front feet down into the water. Then one by one, his hind feet.

We did this about 2-3 times at all three of the drops.

Then I got back on. At the walk we did the drops into the water again. It was slow going, but he did it. He began to not want to do it so I upped the pace and that seemed to help.

We had a distraction of another horse that arrived to school the water. This horse hated the water more than Frankie. They asked us to try to have their horse follow Frankie in. That horse said NO! Codi ended up helping by coaxing the horse with a bucket of grain.

I was a little worried that Frankie might feed off this. But he does absolutely despise other horses, so I don’t think he would copy another horses behavior.

After a short wait, we tried again. First attempt dropping back into the water Frankie said NO. Second try he went in. After a few tries in and out of the water with the final one having zero hesitation I called it a day.

Good boy Frankie. Maybe we are at least 30% more prepared than last time!