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In Loving Memory...
~ Gogo Fatale ~


6/2/01 - 10/11/11
~ Forever the Marest of Them All ~
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Thursday, February 24, 2011

Breakthrough!



Don't laugh at the clip job.... he's not done yet. Note the hairy hind legs.... oh well, we'll get there.

Marti and I had a real and true breakthrough today! He let me catch him fairly easily out in the field twice - once to remove his blanket, and once to take him to the roundpen - and I let him loose in the roundpen to see what we could accomplish. He moved out well, trotting and cantering on command as well as halting on command, and then at some point he finally just turned in and marched right to me after I had given him the command for whoa and he had stopped. He came RIGHT to me and initiated a grooming session... so awesome!! I scratched him all over, and he scratched me right back. When I walked away, he followed, and asked for more scratches. Do you guys know how amazing it feels to have a horse who just a few days ago was bolting away from you and twitching every time you touched him actually ask to be touched? It's wild. He has no idea how big he is, and he was practically trying to crawl in to lap, but I'll take that for now because at least it means he wants to be there. There will be PLENTY of time to get him out of my bubble... all I want right now is for him to be involved with my space. I clearly don't want him to squish me, but I don't really forsee this being too much of a problem once I built a relationship with him. He is seriously submissive.

When I turned him back out into the field, he stayed there and nuzzled me again even after I had taken his halter off. A few days ago, taking off his halter was an invitation for a manic gallop in the other direction. He actually stayed! Or well, until Gogo came over... then it was all over. I took her out of the pasture so she could get a green grass snack (you have no idea how much the grass is growing here, it's wild!), and leaned on the gate while she munched away. Marti came right over to me and nuzzled my back, tried to eat my hair, and in general stayed with me nosing me all over while I let Gogo eat. SO AWESOME.

I'll keep it brief, as I am trying to get into Ft. Worth to see the Future Hubs before it gets seriously late, but I can only hope that tomorrow is as awesome as today was!

9 comments:

Alighieri said...

Awesome! He sounds like a big love. Now I am seriously missing some Dante scritches.

Oh, hope you are enjoying these weeks of LOVELY weather! Seriously, if it were like this all year round I would love it!

Sarah said...

Hubs? I'm intrigued... :)

Kathryn said...

It sounds alot like when we started our Mustang colt. At 2 years he wasn't halter broke and had been barely touched except for vaccinations and wormer at the BLM. Working with him was awesome and he totally loves people now and looks to them for safety when he's scared.

Raven said...

Yeah totally cool feeling.
And I'm with Sarah. Highly curious.

Lisa said...

How awesome! You sound like you are on a high from your break through! Glad to see things are going well. :)

Kate said...

that is AWESOME!

Unknown said...

NICE!! That's exactly what you want from a round-penning session - great work!

Unknown said...

I'm so glad to hear you tried the free lunging in the round pen. It definitely helps establish who is "boss", in a way that submissive horses like Marti can understand and take without freaking - and it works just as well on dominate horses in vice versa.

Amber is similar, in a weird way. She is definitely a dominate type mare, but she has, from her previous owners I am sure, become well aware of the fact that humans are always the boss. She gets stressed and totally blanks out when you over correct her and get too assertive. Never make a big deal out of anything, make correction short and too the point, and she's just wonderful.

Hurricanes12 said...

yay, veery happy for you guys!