The grand finale, almost a year after the grand beginning......should be easy now. Here we are, almost a whole year from the grand beginning. Felix can walk, back up, tie up without breaking twine or yanking fence-posts out (most of the time), pick up his feet, accept a cover and generally behave like a real horse (most of the time). Something grand is needed to finish on, something to round off a year and mark the transition into the next stage. So, the decision was made to show Felix in-hand. This is mostly just to show off now the hard yards are over. Except I was completely wrong about the ‘hard-yards’, and having now been introduced to the problems of training Felix to bridle and bit, am determined to show him if only to validate the time and effort. To shorten the overall length of this, the grand finale, instead of describing the initial problems encountered in trying to train Felix to show in-hand, I have instead list them. They are as follows: One, I did not have an in-hand bridle. This was quickly solved with a trip to The Saddlery Warehouse and good wallet-walloping. But, Two, I have discovered a certain weakness in myself for shiny things, which means: Three, a very shiny in-hand bridle was purchased. It has gold sparkly bits on it. Four, Felix dislikes gold sparkly bits. Five, Felix objected to having a gold sparkly bit put in his mouth. Six, Felix violently objected to having the gold sparkly bridle anywhere on his manly little head. Seven, Felix has grown taller. Continued “The hard yards we had done were really just the start of the next round of the battle to educate Felix.”