Herd Boss and Barrels

12/14/2009

Well it’s official. Whisper is in charge. I watched him run Doc off two hay piles yesterday. Spice is actually missing a patch of skin and hair as the result of a mutual kicking bout. I think Spice miscalculated the length of Whisper’s leg. She’s a bit more bad tempered about moving off but move she does. So far he seems to be a benevolent dictator. Above, he surveys his new realm while below, Doc consoles himself at the hay pile.

Back to training. I was getting bored (presumably Whisper was also) with the same old groundwork so decided to mix it up a bit. To the tarp was added the blue barrels. Interesting sidenote. Almost from the first Whisper has demonstrated that he will groundtie pretty dependably. Recently I have been just dropping his lead to setup the arena for the days lesson. Even when I spread out the tarp and positioned the barrels he stood and watched. Curiousity is starting to overcome fear.

The tarp was old hat. He marched over it like a trooper. Being rubbed with it isn’t his favorite thing but he sighed and stood quietly for the most part. The barrels. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t him greeting the barrels like they were old friends. There are two barrels positioned far enough from the arena wall for him to move between the barrels and the wall. The barrels themselves are positioned so that he can walk between them. First we went between barrels and wall. He slowed a little to sniff the wall on his amble through. He didn’t even do that going back the other way. He actually wanted to go between the barrels and did it beautifully. Hmmmm…somehow I don’t see Whisper as a barrel horse. The only hitch came when I laid the barrels end to end on their sides. As long as there was a gap between them he walked thru. But when I shoved them together so that he would have to jump them he stopped in consternation. He smelled them. He started to pick up a foreleg to step over and put it back down. He backed up and looked at me. We tried going the other direction at a trot with the same results. They couldn’t have been too big for him. Spice can clear them from a standstill. It appears Whisper doesn’t have a clue about jumping. We’re bagging that for now. When the time comes we’ll get out the cavalettis and teach him. All in all it was a very enlightening session.