Sunday, March7, Day Two

Well, we now have a roundpen--yay! Thanks Elizabeth for letting us borrow your roundpen! Today we did some more work on giving to halter pressure in preparation for leading him out of his pen and down to the roundpen. He did great with that and picked up on the idea very quickly. He is now completely approachable and you can pretty much pet him all over. He still shies away sometimes when you reach towards his eyes, but he doesn't leave you, he just moves his head. So we're doing lots of desensitizing with that.

We made it down to the roundpen without much fuss, although I will admit that I made a bit of a funnel effect with my truck blocking one potential escape route, my gator blocking another, and Bob behind us to give him some pressure from behind if need be. So we did some roundpenning and I'm pretty sure that he hasn't gone faster than a slow walk for the three years he's been in BLM holding facilities. He eventually got some energy in his feet, but he is hardly what I would call "flighy"! He didn't fully join up with me, but he did end facing up to me, so that's something. We did some desensitizing with the stick and with the plastic bag and we worked on leading in the bigger space of the roundpen. With how good he's been, I think the BLM may have mistakenly given me somebody's ol' broke kids pony. Okay, so he's not quite a kids pony yet, but boy is he quiet! All in all, a lot of progress for day two.