I agree with others, he’s super cute, and you are going to have a lot of fun with him. Congrats on your work so far. I do see a lot of excellent suggestions above. The one thing I’ll add, after training several ottbs, is when you are flatting and trotting around, try slowing your posting down. Think, your horse’s stride has to adjust to your post, not your posting has to adjust to your horse’s stride. You’re the boss. 
It may help calm his trot down a bit. He’s adorable, though! Good luck.
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@beowulf Thank you for all the great advice. I am definitely going to put more emphasis on his canter work and incorporate more canter poles. He does get rushy and will sometimes jump canter poles, so I think getting the single pole and halt exercise down will be helpful. His energy level the past few days has been…impressive, even for him, so we have been getting lots of cantering in, hopefully his brain is capable of trying some ground poles tonight (I suspect that with the warmer weather his mustang buddy is less willing to play with him so he just has extra pent up energy).
It could be helpful doing ground poles on a circle.
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Perfect timing because I just got in from dragging and setting ground poles on a circle(s)! I put out a few options ranging from the size of the whole arena and down from there.
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I have to say, totally aside from all the goals you have and the great advice you’re getting, I just love this thread because it is so very clear how much you love this horse and have fully embraced his quirks.
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@QuestionMark He has so much personality it is hard not to love him. It is nice to own him when I am at a point in my riding career where I have no pressure to meet certain goals and get to just enjoy the process.
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I think this picture accurately sums up how our canter pole adventure began yesterday 
:
For the first 5 minutes he also felt the need to swap off over every other pole (at least they were clean changes??) eventually the novelty wore off and he did canter over them like a fairly normal horse. We are going to focus on poles for the foreseeable future until he can canter over them calmly before revisiting jumps.
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You can put some poles like pick-up stix on the ground - mish mass crossing over each other real messy and repeat repeat repeat rinse walk through them until he stops and learns to think!
obviously not this tight!
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In addition to the halting exercises people mentioned, I would put in work on counter-canter on the flat. I know it’s often not done in a lot of hunter/jumper barns, but it’s an incredibly useful tool. Strength in the counter-canter improves straightness, balance, and suppleness.
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Very normal for a green horse. Love the photo
A good way to get them to relax about it is to move a pole to the quarterline. Get a nice canter at A or C, circle 20m, then go down the long side to a canter pole. Halt 3-4 strides after pole, walk for a bit, rinse/repeat. Keeps them below threshold. Some horses have a hard time cantering poles on a circle in the beginning. Keep his head and shoulder straight once you pass A/C to canter down the centerline. The straightness will help him more than overbending.
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I love how soft your hands are. He found the right person.
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One set up I like to use is to make a box in the centre. I use the 9’ spacing so it gives me options to walk, trot and canter over plus some random single poles. It gives me something to focus on so you can circle through and around etc.
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@mmeqcenter Great idea, I think that will be really helpful for him because I am sure part, if not all, of the reason he gets rushy is that he feels out of balance.
@Larbear I will definitely try that out! It’s nice when you can get multiple exercises out of one set of poles.
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Ha ha yeh I’m kinda lazy but I’m also on my own a lot so I don’t have someone on the ground to move poles around. If I can do multiple things from one set up, it’s a bonus! 
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One question I should have asked… does he have a good quality canter and can you see a distance (definitely not meant as insulting)? If one gets long or tight to poles, horses will often swap. So a circle may be too hard for him at this point.
@NaturallyHappy Canter is a work in progress but getting better every day as he gets back in shape.
In terms of seeing distances - when I stopped riding I was doing NCAA so 3’6 however - that was 10 years ago and after that I moved out west, worked on a ranch and did zero English riding or jumping until my current horse came around (well- I jumped one time and have this very unsafe picture to prove it :
So at one point in my life I had a decent eye, but trying to redevelop that on a wiggly green horse can definitely be a challenge.
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That pony has great style😀! I do an exercise in which I count backwards to a crack in the sidewalk, etc. to work on my eye when not riding… 6,5,4,3,2,1 over…. And adjust if need be as soon as I see where I am. 6,5,4,4,3,2,1. Or, 6,5,1 over…I reliably see at least 9 steps out. It really helps to get a green horse to a reliable distance early on. Long distances will lite them up.
So I have been doing a little experimenting with my hackamore set up again. The first time I tried it last year it was a disaster but I didn’t use a martingale. Now, while I don’t want to rely on martingales - he has a tendency to get “up” in the front end when he is fresh, buddy sour, etc. and I have found that pulling against the standing martingale puts a stop to that pretty quickly.
This time I tried the mechanical hackamore with a second noseband to attach the martingale to. Flatwork was definitely a bit rougher in the hackamore, however - he felt much better doing poles and jumping in it. He definitely leans and gets a bit heavy, but I felt like I could actually adjust him coming up to a jump without an overreaction.
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Then, for fun - I decided to try my mustangs side pull. Probably will not repeat that experiment because I lacked brakes and power steering so
I had to be heavier with my hands than I prefer but again, so much more settled to the jumps.
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So now I am debating where to go from here with his bitting - if I continue down the hackamore route, I was told the Stubben hack would be less likely to pull the bridle into his eyes (still need to figure out the martingale though). But I am also willing to try different bits - it is just slightly painful to spend $$$ on bits to try once 
. I was considering a Mullen happy mouth Pelham or a rubber straight Pelham - but now thinking maybe to go back to something super basic like a happy mouth snaffle and go from there.
Here you go. Mary’s has a bit rental program. You pay $10 to rent each but, but only pay for the ones you keep. That’s how I found a bit for the charro horse I ride. They are very knowledgeable and called me when they had to substitute a different brand of bit. I ended up asking her advice and the bit she suggested is the one I kept.
I feel like his canter is much more open in the first video, so I’d keep riding in that. Before you go spending $$$$ on a hackamore, ride in it for a while. I find that sometimes there’s a honeymoon phase with them.
You can convert any basic bridle into a hackamore by removing the noseband and, if you want to get really creative, take an old figure eight strap or flash strap and loop it down through one cheek piece, up and around to the other, as a makeshift jowl strap to keep the cheek straps from pulling into the eyes.
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