The Hokey Pokey

It was a beautiful day today. Not too hot and the sky was gorgeous!

This morning we took Amigo out for a short adventure into nature. He has some anxiety leaving his pen, so he was pretty amped up when we left the property. Pat, Sasha, and I took him down the road and off to some grasses so he could graze, but it was soon apparent that he was too high-strung to eat and figure out that it was fun being outdoors. We ended up bringing him back into the yard and Sasha worked with him on leading him around the building. He needed some guidance and she had to prompt him to focus on her (both eyes facing her with his head lowered) a couple times until he calmed down.

Lefty:

Lefty enjoying some weeds in the yard.

Today I took Lefty out of his pen and into the yard. I'm going to be working with him on getting used to outdoors, so we started off by taking a couple trips around the yard and finding yummy weeds he could eat. He liked this game quite a bit :)
The only scary part was when John came out from the building and caught both Lefty and I completely off guard. Luckily Lefty didn't try to bolt -- he just whirled around a little bit and when I asked for an "Easy" to calm both our adrenaline levels, he obliged immediately and we took a second (or more like 30) to collect ourselves... It was great that he still did really well afterwards though. We went around the building one more time and walked calmly down into the other side of the yard too. My little super star!

Hammer:
Hammer's been doing great. I've gotten him consistently performing appropriately for direct and indirect rein pressure, and today we took a walk down the alley and around the yard with my arm over his back working on "walk on", "whoa", and "back". I also started working on belly taps, where he has to move his back feet away from me in response to taps on his belly. He kind of gets the idea but tends to back up instead of moving laterally. It's a work in progress :) Heather, Hammer's original trainer, just got back today from a trip to Texas. We may be working with Hammer together from now on, or I definitely have enough animals on my plate!

Twiggy says "put that weird contraption down and give me more hay!"

Donkeys:
Had a session with the donkeys almost by accident today. We were working with Spot and the donkeys came up. They're doing pretty well and even Whoopi, the scardey donkey, ate a little bit from my hand. Of course Gertie, Oprah, and Twiggy were being pushy and grabbing every last bit of hay we offered :) I even had Gertie starting to target her nose to my fingers and learning the bridge word "Dee" and getting fed a handful of hay. We probably did about 15-20 reps while I was standing there trying to get Whoopi to eat from my hand.

Spot:
My newest project is teaching Spot the zebra to station on a mat. He was a little nervous about the mat at first so we asked him to target it with his nose. Then, Pat did a little experiment to see if he could catch on to social learning. Pat went into the pen and stepped on the mat, and I would bridge and "feed" her. Spot knows to do the Hokey Pokey (see video), so he started offering to step his foot out and we just rewarded for successively closer steps to the mat until he was stepping onto the mat and we could feed him continuously for being on the mat. We will keep working on this until we can move the mat from place to place and have him come up to it and stay "stationed" on the mat.

Dougie:

Dougie's foot.

Dougie did fantastic today. It has all of us a little baffled -- he had a couple days where he just seemed like a different horse. The day before yesterday, he was threatening to kick us and would not let us touch him let alone catch him and clip on his lead rope... Today though, I was able to walk in, have him target his jaw to my hand, and clipped his rope within the first minute of being in the stall. He was also much better with Pat handling him. She was able to lift up  his infected foot, but she couldn't get it to an angle where she could see it very well. I happened to have my camera in my pocket so we asked Sasha to take a photo while Pat held the foot up. This is what it looks like...a bit strange - but nothing obviously lodged in there (e.g. a nail, rock, etc.). He's just finished Day 9 of antibiotics, so one more day and we're home free! He definitely feels a lot better and spent some time this afternoon running around in the yard with the other boys. They are so beautiful!