Exciting Longeing Update

Picture taken February 2011.

Chrome did awesome!!! We had the brilliant idea of going out to the barn since he was out there anyway instead of doing everything while standing out in the rain. It worked great because there are old cattle feeders in the big barn and I was able to put everything on it instead of trying to stuff it in my pockets or hang on to it. Everything stayed drier too.

Chrome did so much better on the longe line. I think partly it was because the area was flatter. He kept a nice, slow trot (and still mud and water was splashing everywhere!). I never realized how much suspension the boy has when he wants to lol. The most exciting part of today is that he started offering to lower his head while trotting on the longe!!! I wish I could have had my clicker, but with the rain it’s too hard to handle everything. I was wearing a full rain suit (which the horses are doing great with) and it makes moving around awkward.

So when he would lower his head I would say whoa (drawn out, not said in a clipped tone) and he would immediately stop, then I would walk to him and feed him a treat! Sometimes when I would say whoa he would try to walk toward me, but if I put my arms in the air and said whoa he would stop. Then when I got to him I would have him back up and shoulder yield over until he was back on the circle before I fed a treat. If I’m consistent I think he’ll figure it out.

Getting back to the middle of the circle is the part I was having problems with. If I turned my back to him he would try to follow, but walking backwards was a little iffy in the mud and rain suit. And when I would get almost back to the middle he would start trotting on the circle before I ever said anything which I thought was pretty cool lol.

What I ended up doing is when I ask him to whoa I would drop the rope and whip and walk to him, so when I would go back to the middle I picked up the rope and asked him to trot on (with no whip and he did it hehe), letting the rope feed out until he was on a big circle and I would just move the circle over until I could pick up the whip again. It worked great! I’m glad we’re finally figuring things out together. This has been an experience!!

As far as his incision it looks good. I couldn’t get all of the scabs off this time, but I don’t know for sure if I really needed to. It was draining a little before I started, by the end it wasn’t really draining much, which I’m hoping means there wasn’t anything left to drain?? The swelling is way down and the filling in his sheath seems to be going down some too. I think he’s finally healing up. Keeping my fingers crossed the swelling doesn’t come back.

I promise I'm working on Faran's post. Editing video just takes time lol.