A Father Son Visit

Had a little scare this morning...

At breakfast, John tells us that Amigo and Hammer's adopters are coming to visit today around 11 AM and see how the training is going for their horses. Everyone is excited since the horses are doing great and we think the adopters are going to be very pleased with the horses' progress. Around 10:30, we decided to take the three saddle horses (Amigo, Hammer, and Louis) out for a walk on the road before the guests arrive. As soon as Sasha went to halter Amigo, she noticed that he was all sweaty. When we walked out to the yard, Amigo was acting a little funny holding his tail slightly up and walking strangely. Although he hadn't been rolling on the ground, he was definitely uncomfortable -- so he got a dose of Banamine (basically horse aspirin) to relieve his symptoms and we put everyone else away. We spent some time trying to listen for gut sounds and take his pulse. His temperature was a little elevated but the Banamine helped with that, and we stood watch for a good 30-45 min and he started having gut sounds, his heart rate slowed back down to a more acceptable rate, and his temperature was down to the normal range as well. Heather and Sasha put together an herbal concoction that was supposed to help with his digestion and we gave him some probiotics as well.

Around 11:30 the adopters arrived -- luckily the Amigo scare was pretty much over and we were just waiting for him to pass manure. The adopters are a father son duo who own a ranch a little ways north in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. They are pretty special adopters in that they were willing to drive all the way to Mustang Camp in order to see their horses being trained and actually take part and learn how to work with their horses as well.

We took Hammer out into the large pen and I did a demo of "riding" with an arm over his back doing "walk on", "whoa", and "back" -- as well as the direct and indirect reining that we've been working on so hard. Hammer performed like a star! We let both the adopters greet Hammer and ask him to do "easy"s. It was very clear that both father and son were really happy that the horses were responsive to their requests and they were very interested in positive reinforcement training for their horses. Amigo also got to come out (having passed some manure!!!) and Sasha got up on his back and did a quick demo of riding him, going from cone to cone. About half an hour into our demo/training session, it was pretty clear that Hammer might not be the right match for the 60+ year old man. Heather got out Jericho, the horse she has been working with and riding around for a few weeks already. The adopters fell in love and we tried to convince them that Jericho might be a better match since he was less scared-y and already much further along in his saddle training. We think they will most likely take Amigo and Jericho - it's going to be a great match.

Heather and I worked with Hammer together later in the afternoon. I hadn't been working on ground driving with him, so it'd been about 2 weeks since he had done that. It was great to see how calm he was about the whole thing. We were slapping around the saddle pad on his back and he was standing there doing "easy"s like nothing was happening :) We were also able to saddle him and tighten his girth without much fuss at all. When we started ground driving, it was like Hammer hadn't had a break at all. We went cone to cone and soon I was able to stand back at his shoulder so that he would be in charge of where he was going and not relying on following me around as much as Heather was directing him with driving reins from the back.

Took Lefty for another walk around the yard today. We practiced having me walk on his right side as well (which is the scary weird side for him) -- we did this in the pen, just in case... then I walked out with him on the normal side (me standing on his left) and we went around the yard targeting all the scary things, ESPECIALLY the flatbed truck. I had him target the flatbed and then put his reward on the truck so he could eat off the flatbed. We'll definitely keep working on him so that we can get his trailer loading training back on track.

Roany came back today from Farmington after having been gelded on Monday. Poor guy has no more balls, but he's home! I guess we'll be back to making friends tomorrow.

No pictures today because I left my camera inside in the big Amigo frenzy this morning. Luckily all is well and the rest of the day ended up being pretty uneventful - phew!