Hooray it wasn't raining when I got home from work! And look, he doesn't look quite as skinny :)
I still find it funny that I can catch him no problem if he's in his shelter, but if he's out in his pen, I can't get close enough to touch him, and he just wants to go inside his shelter.
Blanket came off much better today, so that was nice. Just kept my hand on his chest under the blanket until he stopped moving, and then he stood still to let me unbuckle the blanket.
Plan today was to go for a walk outside his pen. So we just did a quick refresher of moving from pressure, tap on the hip does work better than just steady pressure, he was back to moving from barely a tap. To get him to move his shoulders though, a bit of a poke with my stick got him to move, but he wasn't thrilled with it, he kept turning his head towards the stick like he wanted it to stop doing that and then he'd step away with his shoulders, a wave or maybe a tap of the stick on his rump, and he was moving, yay. He may be starting to get the idea of lunging. He moves away from a sort of poke of my stick on his shoulder, but he doesn't care for it. Will have to see if I can get him to move from a tap on the shoulder.
Now if we could just get plain ole leading down.
No real problem having to walk through the moat outside the gate, once we made it through the gate. He just wanted to stop and play in the water with his muzzle. The best luck I had with leading was if I looped my rope around his rump and used some pressure there and he walked forward with energy. I also tried tapping him with the stick while facing forward, that just made him tense and jumpy. So leading is still a work in progress.
My brother stopped by to say hi and to take a look at the moat. We were just finishing up, so we walked over to say hi and Cody streeeetched his neck out to sniff my brother's hand, I wish I'd gotten a picture!
A slight issue with getting his blanket back close enough to him to put it on, but once I flipped the rope over his back a couple times, I just tossed the blanket up and he behaved about letting me do up the buckles :)
It's so hard to not do too much in one session! I often find I've spent an hour out there with him when all I meant to spend was maybe 20 min and then go back. I'll have to actually take a watch out with me next time, lol.
At the end, it was so nice. He was all buckled back into his blanket and I was just standing there petting his face. I rubbed all over, had my arms wrapped around his face, I rubbed his gums and his nostrils and he just stood there.
Cough is still there, but I think he was feeling better today, definitely more spunky! Now if the cough would just go away :(
4 comments:
Now, I haven't trained many horses to lead (only 2 yearling mustangs), but I stayed in the round pen when I was teach to follow the leadrope. I would stand at their shoulder and walk off in any direction I felt like. When I hit the end of the rope and they hadn't followed yet, I just leaned into it giving steady pressure on their head. Sometimes, they would try to throw their head up or just stand and hang on it, but eventually, they would take 1 step forward and then I'd release all pressure. Then we'd start again. They were following me pretty well very quickly. When they got good at it I threw in some very quick changes of direction (180s) and have to keep up with me otherwise they'd feel the tug of the halter. Eventually I progressed to doing a wrap around the hindquarters with the leadrope and asked them to follow their nose and do a circle as I pulled on the leadrope. They caught on pretty well. They lead up really well. That's just how I did it. I'm sure there's lots of other ways.
Maybe we should work on turning more, he'll go in small circles, but leading in straight lines, or say, out the gate, it's like a one step at a time process. We're getting there, it's just slow, lol. But thanks so much for your suggestions!
Wow again I am impressed!!
He does not have a halter on and you can still catch him and buckle it on??
He does look good sorry about the cough sure hope it goes away.
Keep up the good work.
Did Jonny get the rest of the siding up??
Hope he gets it all done but do need him back...sorry.
Take care,
Dad
It was too wet and soggy for Jonny to get the siding up. Hopefully he was able to get his brakes taken care of though. Things will all get finished at some point :)
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