Bad Horse, Nikki!

I lunged Nikki yesterday afternoon.  He was spooky, as usual.  I'm getting a little frustrated because I'd think that by now, Nikki would have had time to give everything in the arena a good look and we could be done with the spookiness.  One time, he practically jumped on top of me.  I have no idea what was so scary. 

So, everything was going o.k. until I asked him to lunge to the left.  That resulted in him immediately turning his butt towards me and kicking at me.  I'd yell at him, he ran straight away from me, I eventually had to let go of the lunge line, he charged around the arena and would eventually stop.  I'd go get the lunge line and the entire process would repeat. 

Finally, it was time for me to go in because my Mom was leaving.  I left Nikki in the arena and told him I'd be back. 

A couple of hours later, Brian came home and told me he'd already seen what my horse did.  I asked what he was talking about.  "You haven't seen the gate?" he asked.  "No." I said.  He pulled me outside.  Seems that Nikki was mad about being left in the arena and took his frustrations out on the gate.  The top rail was bent nearly parallel to the ground and the rest of the gate had some good twists and bends in it.  It took some amount of force to do that.  Bad horse, Nikki!

I got the kids to bed and went back out.  We repeated the steps exactly as we had earlier.  Nikki lunged to the right perfectly.  Ask him to turn around and go left and I immediately had hooves flying at my face.  I gave up after about three times.  Nikki's kicking was getting more forceful and he stopped taking those polite steps away from me before he kicked.  The possibility of my getting hurt was becoming more likely so I was forced to give in, which I wasn't happy about. 

I'm kind of at a loss for what to do.  I called Jan 'though I didn't really want to.  I figured my options are to try again, try to get his head around quicker so he can't turn his butt at me and kick.  Or, I could just lunge him to the right today, lunge him tomorrow with a saddle on, and then start riding him and get back to lunging to the left later.  I just don't know.

At least he's kept his shoes on.