At Advanced Level, the obstacle reads " The horse must place one front foot up onto a solid block (any height) without the handler lifting the foot. He must not step up just rest the foot on the block for a count of five."
Well, of course, I didn't read the Starter Level course (getting lax!) and so it didn't occur to me to teach this obstacle to Fat Pony by lifting his leg onto the object and then rewarding him! In fact, that would be a very good way forward and a very good analogy would be to think of the farrier's stand. Or, in my farrier's case, the farrier's knee! Thinking of the farrier's stand then also gives you a purpose for the leg lift obstacle. In the case of the farrier's knee, I'm sure he's doubly grateful for a horse that lifts its front leg politely, places it gently where asked and then holds it still until released!.....
But, no, this didn't occur to me to start off with and I went gung ho for teaching by modelling. Meaning that I perform the action, wait for the horse to copy me and then reward. Now, there's nothing wrong with teaching by modelling either. Once your horse is quite tuned in to you s/he will naturally start to mirror you and then teaching in this way is great fun and quite cool :-) With Fat Pony it would have worked very well, except for the other mistake that I made, using a log that would roll! The log just happened to be what was lying around and it was a reasonable size, but also quite round. Fat Pony got the leg lift pretty much straight away, but then the log rolled, my timing was off with the reward, Fat Pony thought the task was to roll the log and, hey presto, I've taught him to paw the log :-o Taught very effectively too, I might add!
Back to the drawing board....