I am exhausted from my day at the barn!! Me, Robin, and Sandy spent most of the day feeding horses, giving them grain, mucking stalls, filling water buckets, and turning out horses. Whew! My feet are killing me!
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| Catch me of you can! |
After all that hard work, I asked Robin to catch Shyloh. I thought just a peppermint would work, but Robin brought a granola bar out, too. Shyloh must have known that, because she would not come to her for the peppermint. Robin ended up catching her with with the granola bar and walked her around the paddock, then let her go. I am asking others to catch Shy now so she can learn that other people can be trusted, as well. My own personal catch and release program. A few hours later, I asked Sandy to catch Shy. Shy gave her a little bit more grief, but Sandy was able to catch her, too!
A little later, I went back in and got Shyloh. She came right up to me (yay!), so I think her trust in me is growing. I worked with her on ground tying and some more desensitizing. I think the trust plays a part in the ground tying, because the ultimate goal is me being able to circle around her, without her moving. As of now, I can back away while looking at her, walk away without looking at her, and move side to side in front of her. If I try to circle, Shy follows. So we will continue to work on this and trust.
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| Hula hoop desensitizing |
Our barn is home to the horses of a local equestrian team. They have an event tomorrow, so those horses were loaded up and taken to the fairgrounds. That meant that there was a free pasture! I put Shy out there to graze for a bit and wowzaa!
She had all the geldings in the adjacent pastures up in a tizzy! Red was running around like crazy. For a short time they stopped to sniff and graze near the fence with each other. Dante would not stop strutting his stuff up and down the fence line. Ryleigh could not stop staring at her beautiful butt. When he did break his gaze, it was to try and run Dante off! But the best was Bob, her first love. They leaned over the fence at each other and gave each other "kisses." They groomed necks. I would give anything for a picture of that, but I was afraid to move and have them stop and run off. It was a remarkable sight!
Shy seemed unfazed by all this male attention. She just grazed, like this was a common occurrence in her world. But I did notice that she was pickier with her grass and did not shove mouthfuls in at a time. . .could she be a self-conscious eater? She would take a few blades here, a few blades there, like a little lady. Shy must be hot stuff in the horse world, haha!
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| Meet Bob! |
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| Shy and Red |
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| I like big butts and I cannot lie - says Ryleigh |
After I put her back in her paddock, I hid pieces of apple, carrot, peppermint, and SweetTarts all around for her to find. And I forgot to mention yesterday, that Shy was being a beast! She bit my feet, though my boots. . . twice! Once while I was standing on the mounting block, and another time on the ground! How does that even happen? Oh, yeah, me letting her sniff then her deciding to take a bite. Then, Terry brought Addie, her dog to the barn. Shy loves dogs! She was trying to get Addie's tail and she tried to groom Addie's back!
I will be relaxing the rest of day!
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| Looking for treats in the shelter |
Four Books. So, hard! I love reading!
Book 1 - Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. It counts as one book because a) it was actually written as one book, but broken into three because it was so long, and b) I own a copy that is a single book.
Book 2 - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I had a hard time getting into this book, but after I read it, I was like wow.
Book 3 - The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. Not a single book, but a very interesting series.
Book 4 - Harry Potter by JK Rowling. Again, not a single book, but so enchanting and fun to read.
