Building trust and leadership...

I decided to stay on the dairy today and build on the trust and leadership that Seal and I have established. We took a walk to the barn to see what new things we could find. I suffer from what I like to refer to as the "Hmmmm I wonder" syndrome. This sometimes puts my girls and I in some interesting situations! As we were walking by the milk barn, I thought "Hmmm I wonder", and I looked at the steps and thought "yeah we can do this". Paul came out of the barn, I handed him the camera and asked him to take pictures. After a little encoragement from me, Seal walked right up the steps like she has been doing it forever! As you can see, this is a very narrow set of steps, there is a huge milk tank in the room at the top of the steps and there are cows coming out of the milk barn about 20 feet away.


I felt that her being on the landing was not as safe as the steps so when she got to the third step, I asked her to stop. As I stood there with her, I knew that she would go all the way to the landing, but in looking at this picture, I do believe that at the moment I stopped her, she was getting ready to go straight to the top!

After the steps, we were walking by the barn, which as you can see is fairly cluttered. There is a clear walking area, but the clutter is on both sides and it is like walking into a dark cave. After the steps, I knew that asking her to step up would not be a problem, but I was not so sure about the dark and clutter. I always expect to get what I ask for and won't quit until I do, all the while rewarding the try. So I handed Paul the camera and I asked Seal to walk up. She tried to walk all the way in and because I did not trust the floor, I stopped her with just her front feet up. It was a great feeling knowing that she trusts me and believes enough in my leadership, that she would follow me not only into a dark hole, but one with stuff all over and wooden floors. (This only took 2 requests on my part).

When we came out of the barn, I saw my dog Levi. I decided it would be a real test of trust and leadership on both my part and Seal's. Of the five horses we have, she is the worst when it comes to dogs. She hates them with a passion. Some of you may see this differently than I did, but I was taught that no matter what the situation, the horse is to respect and follow the humans decision as long as the horse is not in danger. Levi loves the horses, I have pictures of him licking Ringo's nose. The reason I chose Levi is that he is small enough and totally managable in case things went south. Although Levi is not sitting on Seal by himself, (I chose to keep my hands on Levi to keep dog, horse, and human safe), He has all of his weight on her and she is relaxed and listening to me praise her.

After I put Levi down, Seal and I continued on our walk. I discovered a few "uhoh" spots that we worked through, she didn't want to walk along the fence where the calves were. I applied a little approach and retreat to her and she came through with flying colors! I found an old tire and we worked on getting her to walk through it. We succeded with the front foot each time and the back foot most of the time! We will have to revist the tire again in the near future. While turning around the tire, there was a fairly long piece of wire that was a pretty heavy gage. I did not see it until I kicked it. I have to laugh at my little girl, for all of the things that we did today, my kicking the wire was the biggest reaction of the day. She flared, froze, snorted, bobbed her head, stepped back, and then walked up to my side peeking around me while snorting some more. (I of course was repeatedly kicking it), as she settled down and walked towards it, I told her what a good girl she was, picked it up and slowly started rubbing her with it. We finished with me being able to rub the wire down her neck and all the way over her rump. It was another GREAT day!!