Day Twelve - Wednesday

I had another good day with Merry! When I got home I went out and cleaned 1/2 of the stalls, and then pulled her out during my "break". I tied the longeline onto the lead rope again and just worked on leading her up and down the aisleway again since it was so cold and windy outside. She's getting a lot better with watching my body language and stopping when I say whoa. The only thing that bothers me is that she just looks so hateful the entire time with those ears pinned back!

After a short session I put her back into her stall (she walked in no problem!) and then pulled Itty out for his first showmanship lesson. One of my 4-H kids is going to show him at the State Fair, and Itty has never done showmanship that I know of so I've decided to start working with him now so he'll be perfect by June! I was incredibly pleased with his progress in just one night. My aisleway is too narrow to practice pivots so I just focused on setting the back feet. The first few times he danced back and forth a lot, just not understanding what I wanted, but by the end he was getting it on pretty much the 3rd or 4th try! I then tried to clip him for my show this weekend but quickly realized that my clipper blades just weren't going to work.

Put Itty up and jumped in the car to go to CVS to buy another pair. I don't know if everyone knows this, but I've had great luck just getting the CVS cheap-o's and tossing them when the blades go dull. Much cheaper than horse clippers, and they're the exact same thing! Un-lucky for me though, they were out of the cheaper ones, so I had to pay $34.99 for a pair of Wahls. Nice clippers though that should last a good bit of time!

Went back outside, finished stalls, and pulled Merry out again. This time I worked on her letting me approach her from both sides and just petting her and praising her a lot when her ears were forward. I then pulled out my roughout training saddle and she stood still for the most part while I saddled her up! It did take a few trys to get the girth hooked, as she wanted to move off when I reached under her, but the actual cinching didn't bother her a bit. Her odd one habit she has is to pick her left foot up in the air and just hold it there... I really need to get a picture of that! I do have pictures of her standing here looking cute saddled, although I have to apologize for the photo quality!

After I unsaddled I went to put Merry back into her stall, which she was having no part of this time. She reared straight up one time and I really think would have flipped over if she hadn't hit one of the other horses stalls. This scared her though and I think she thought that I had somehow been the one to make her almost lose her balance. This moment was the first time she tried to pull out of my hands tonight, but lucky for me I had my trusty longeline on so she couldn't get away! I calmed her down by talking to her and then she decided to just walk in her stall again like she did earlier.

I think there is hope for her, but progress is definitely slow!

Heidi :)