Chinook and Brandy have been living together for several weeks now, and he has basically no attachment to Sage at all. Sage is pretty much dried up, and eventually I will put them all back together--probably when it starts to really get rainy here.
Sage has been feeling extra frisky, and I suppose you can imagine what happens if you take a three-year-old wild horse out on a walk on the first chilly evening after summer (and right before her expected dinner time). We made it up the road without too much fuss and I was having a good time controlling her with lots of stopping, backing up, and turning. But Sage can be quite the spitfire, so I was expecting a rearing/bucking explosion. Which didn't happen...until I got her back into our pasture and was walking her back up to the barn. She squealed, she bucked, she reared, she trotted in circles. But I didn't let go, and she didn't win. Or at least I don't think she thinks she did...It's hard to tell with her. We did some arena ground-work after that and of course she was well behaved. But I knew she was still feeling frisky because I could lunge her (with some effort) without a plastic bag on the end of the line. This may be a continuing saga that involves getting a professional trainer to put some time on her...
Then I took Chinook up to the house for his first walk all by himself, and he was a star. Since he was weaned, he has been pushy: walking through you, pushing you away when you try to feed, and just generally thinking you're a pathway to something. Now that he is on his own, I have been able to teach him some manners, and he is much better. He has always lead very well on the halter, but now he's even easier to handle. I also teach all my horses to back up before I hand them their grain pans, which was something that with my hard-headed colt took a lot of yelling and slapping my hands on his face to keep him from running me over. This morning, I walked up to him with his grain and he backed up before I even asked. What a star!
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