Nervous About Being In The Ring

Brought Rio into the barn this afternoon around 2pm. He was not a huge fan of standing in the grooming stalls and was doing a lot of nervous pooping. So I decided instead of tacking him up and riding him, that we'd take a stroll around the ring. We walked around in both directions, in figure eights, across the diagonals, and big circles at the end of the ring. We sniffed the walls, the jumps, poles, and fake plants. Rio still did a lot of nervous pooping in the ring, which made cleaning up after him a real delight. After about 35mins of walking around I decided to let him sniff around the barn. We made a couple of laps and then went back into the grooming stall. He settled down considerably and seemed a lot less nervous (until I snuck out to the truck to get something...then he nervous pooped while I was gone). He didn't seem super excited about the goop I put on his tendons, but he survived. After about an hour and 45min of dinking around, I put him back out in pasture when we were done.