Crosswired Horse

I rode Duke again today. I rode him last Friday but was not happy with the results. I had introduced him to the saber which he apparently didn't like. He sniffed at it suspiciously the first time I strapped it to his saddle and he was probably irritated by the clanking sound it made when he trotted. When I extended the saber forward as I would in a charge, he tried to run away from it. Today went much better but probably because I didn't bring the saber. We worked on some dressage stuff that he was doing fairly well at even though he isn't really accustomed to direct reining. He bends nicely enough in a circle but is heavy in the mouth and isn't collected. However, he had good impulsion and transitioned reasonably well. Afterwards we worked on the jogging track for a while. He was trotting normally and I was able to post with him which helped. He seemed to do better on a right diagonal than the left one for some reason. He tried to go into a "pace" a couple of times but I brought him out of it and he trotted normally. He is also getting stronger which makes galloping more fun but he still has a strange tendency to run toward a tree on one of the curves in the track. As we approach the curve at the gallop I will apply a little pressure to the right rein to get him to move around the track but instead he runs directly at the tree. The harder I pull on the rein the more he runs at the tree. It is like having the rudder pedals on your airplane cross wired so that when you push on the right pedal the plane yaws to the left. I'm starting to get paranoid about the tree. Accept for the tree problem everything went well and he was pleased with himself when were were done. While Duke is a very safe horse he is not the easiest horse to ride. It will be interesting to see how he fares with the cavalry stuff later.