Sunday, March 4, 2018

Days 2: Who's the boss?

It's Mr. Tank to you.

Sorry that picture just makes him look so full of himself. Not to say that he isn't.

Weather gods were shining favorably this weekend, so I took full advantage of that. It was nice to have a horse to go see. I am actually figuring out how to get down to the barn and back without getting lost.

Yea! Progress!

Tank is a work in progress and I am still evaluating him. His whole known history is only 6 months. I wonder often what happened to him from the time he was captured to until he found himself with a one way ticket to Mexico.

Over the weekend I did a lot of stuff wrong, and a few things right, Saturday was mostly wrong. Saturday, catching was a problem and then I had groomed him just outside of the paddock. I have no place to tie him up except in his paddock, with two horses lose in there I didn't want to do that. He stood really well while I was on his left side, but right was difficult.

He was trying to walk through me and I was doing my best to put him in his place. Eventually he had a temper tantrum. Tank stepped away from me and started pawing. He lifted his leg way up. He pawed the air two or three times, when he realized that he was not hitting the gate. So he moved to make sure he got a few good swats in on the gate. Is he a brat or what!

Getting him to back was next to impossible, he just was not going to give to pressure for anything!

By that time I figured what did I have to lose. I wormed him. OMG ... he didn't care about that. Stood there and ate it all. Didn't even try to spit it out!

I did take him for a walk around the farm, which is part of our routine. Just trying to getting him use to the sights and sounds. He hates going in the barn, but we went in anyway. He is pretty good once we get in there but he is nervous.

As we were leaving the barn, I was working on him not rushing past me. We would back, but he was not going to. At the door he really wanted to rush past me, I tried to block him. Choice to back up to rush through the garbage can. He chose to take out the garbage can. I was a little perturbed.

I ordered a rope halter and I changed my attitude my attitude for Sunday.



5 comments:

  1. It takes a lot of time and patience before they understand what we want. And time to get comfortable in a new situation but he’ll get there. Good work!

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    Replies
    1. It does GHM. I know that I was pushing him too much. He was definitely telling me that he was not ready for what I was asking.

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  2. Just stick with it. I am surprised the place you got him from did not have him already to go with all of his ground work, and coming to you. Someone had sent us this link so we checked it out. Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for stopping by! :) He does well on the ground normally. I asked too much of him and in a way that he didn't like. Blame was all on me. On Sunday I did a better job of asking and he did a better job of responding.

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  3. Hope all goes well with you and thank you for saving another legend.

    ReplyDelete

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