November 18, 2009

Today I went out to spend time with Astar and the WANTING to be with me [the connection] took less than 10 minutes!  In fact, he was eating with his friends at the hay roll, notice me and actually decided he wanted to come hang out… he stopped eating and turned around to come get me =)  That was HUGE progress!

Jen has recommended that we try to get Astar into the round corral so that we can work with him in a smaller space than the huge field we currently have him in.

Currently, the round corral is in the back of the middle field where Irish and Munchkin reside.  So we’ve decided that it is going to be easier & better for everyone (the horses) to move the round corral than change up the dynamics of the horses.  With 5 acres, there’s only so many ways you can move them around and the 2 we currently have in the back are the only ones that are also ok for letting in the yard (which we do to allow them to get to some shade).  To be honest, I’ve been wanting to move it anyway to a better location, so this is just a really great excuse to finally get it done.

So we haven’t quite got him in the round corral as suggested by our new trainer… yet… but we will.  In the meantime, I’m going to mess with him as much as possible at dinner and breakfast…. last night, when I fed, I held the bucket while he ate and I messed with him…. he didn’t even fuss at me, which was improvement in itself.  I’ve also versed my husband on needing to work with his zone 1… with our busy schedule we both have to do the feeding.  I have 2 nights a week that I don’t get home until 9, and I want Astar to be worked with as much as we can.

I’ll keep everyone posted on our progress — I am planning on rejuvenating my blog and journalling our progress.

I got a notice yesterday that my training equipment that I had ordered had been shipped so I should have everything by Monday.

I had a lot of fun on our first training day and really feel that Jen is the right choice for him (and me).  She connected with him – she got him — she accepted him where he’s at – she was able to identify how to move forward – and recognized that he does have some stuff that forces us to go slower than we would with most horses and at the same time recognizing that he WILL get past this.    I’m so excited to have found our new trainer – Jen!