Today was an interesting day… full of challenges and this is now my 2nd post in 1 day.  That is a record for me!  We rescheduled Astar’s training for this afternoon and meanwhile, I had challenge after challenge.  Some I was able to tackle and some still have the jury out on them.

So then came Astar — we ARE making progress and Jen assures me that we’re doing great.  I don’t feel so great.  She must have sensed that I might have felt a little discouraged today because she told me several times “don’t be discouraged… we are making progress…”

We attempted putting the halter on and you could see the panic set in.  We almost had it, but I got all tangled up in the strings of the halter, fumbled around and never made it over his nose.  He decided it wasn’t for him.  Since he decided he was going to be upset about it, we made him work by applying more pressure.  By that I mean, we made him trot around in circles [for those of you who do not know, the round pen is the circle I speak of] – if he is going to not be with us then he’s going to work.  The idea is that the pleasant, nice, calm place to be us with us and the place he has to work is when he’s not with us…. the idea is to teach him we’re cool to hang out with.   You get the idea.

Well, he had made up his mind that he was upset for most of the time so he worked.  He also decided that his left side was not where he wanted us — that’s his left confident side.   Finally after about an hour or so (I don’t really know b/c I don’t have a watch) he finally changed his mind and decided to no longer be upset.   We never got the halter on which kind of discouraged me, but Jen reminded me that everything we’re doing is still progress and that we’re teaching him every step of the way that being with people is a good thing.   We ended with hanging out by the rail eating cookies – after he relaxed and made the decision to be with us.

That’s pretty much where we left it… on a good note.

My homework is to work on building his confidence on his left side and keep working with getting the halter on his face.  I know we’re going to get there.  I just have to be patient.

Thank you Jen for continuing to encourage me — you are wonderful!