Groundhog's Day?

My ride went almost exactly like Kate's did yesterday. He started off sort of like "enh, whatever" when I asked him to listen. I established that no, he really is going to listen to me. He decides to humor me and listens for several 20m circles before "Oh! Look! That bench just tried to eat me!" (He conveniently ignores that the bench has been in that spot since Wed and he's walked past it 10 times at least already this ride without batting an eye at it). So we start doing 10m circles in front of it at the trot. I think he's spooking to get me out of an effective riding position. It's much harder to stay up, flat in front, connected through the butt, hands up and even when he's scooting sideways. He'd go back to being good within like 5 strides but he'd 'spook' in front of that stupid bench every time past it. Worked on it for 15 min or so before doing a serpentine to another part of the ring. Start getting some good work done there (after a brief "OMG! Jump block!" moment) and then the friend (trainer?) of "the big horse" shows up for his lunch-time messing with. There was an entire series of squeals and so Pro of course is delighted to use this as an excuse to re-forget everything. Got him back to where we were pre-squealing and called it a ride. If I had to rank him from 1-10 for beginning/middle/end I think he'd get a 5/2/5.5. At least we made a 5% improvement in 45 min?