Nooooo! I can't step in muuuuudddd!

It has been a while because various family members have been away this week. But this afternoon we got in another training session.

LOL, when we went to find and feed Wart, we saw Banjo at the gate. Ellie opened the gate and I started to drive in and there over the crest of the hill came a cantering and whinnying Wart! I think he was pleased to see us. :)

I measured him for a rug, using a dressmaking tape, and the funny boy went, oooh what is THAT thing on me???!!?? We think that now he's in the big paddock, he's turning into a brumby.

It was very windy which meant that chaff kept blowing out of the feed bin. But I do think he got most of it. However we made sure we wet down the feeds for Orion and Darcie. Chaff is too expensive to have it spread onto the ground via the wind.

I groomed Darcie and did her feet. She was very good with her feet today. They need trimming, so I'll do that next time. We measured both Darcie and Orion for rugs, and I measured various bits of Darcie's head to have a rope halter made. I was surprised that Wart's size was so close to Orion's size in rugs, as I would have expected him to be smaller than he was. I guess the fat bulks him up a bit.

For Darcie's training, we started with face rubbing. She's been moving her head so I've been making sure that I rub the bits she likes less until she holds it still. Then we started with changing eyes again, but this actually turned into "you CAN go across the muddy bit". We did that until she went over the muddy bit without stopping before it, and without trying to avoid it and get too close to me, and without rushing it. Crossing the muddy bit became a bit of a sticky point (pardon the pun) and was the most challenging part of the training session. I had to basically push her through her resistance. It took a while but we got there. I would not say it was perfect but it was enough and we didn't have all day.

Then we did more "run up and rub", which we had started the previous training session, and she was great. She remembered it from last time and didn't take one single step back, or even throw her head up. She just stood there. She was also good for "skip up and rub" but was a bit weirded out by "kind of jump/hop/wobble up like some semi animated scarecrow and rub", although it didn't take too many repetitions for her to stop moving.

After that we moved to sending exercise and we got some nice calm sending in, through quite a small gap.

Then some more run up and rub, but starting to angle out the side, until I could run from 90deg from her and rub her on the side. She flinched the first time at the full 90deg but didn't move, and that was about it. The hardest thing in that was for her to understand to stand still and not keep moving her hindquarters away and keep her head to me in this exercise. One time I had to keep moving around her and wiggling the rope until she stood still, but she seems to have understood pretty well. Next time will show how well she learned it.

When I got to rubbing her body from a 90deg run up, that seemed to be a good place to practice flexing her head and neck to that side. She wasn't as light as the previous time we did it. Same when I did run up and rub, then head flexing, on the other side. But it has been a week. So I would not expect perfection.

Then we finished up with some more head rubbing, and then some grazing on lead, before they went back into the paddock to be released and have a carrot. Darcie is getting better about holding her head still when the halter is being taken off, which is good.