*Snowman

Hello all,
I was away for the weekend and then I was just getting back to work and mangled my finger on the fence - have horses long enough, it happens..... enough about that!

Yesterday though, I needed to get hair samples from a few horses to send with their registration papers - yes, I am late sending them in - it is tough to keep up with everything!  It seemed like a good thing to get done when I wasn't working horses...

So I did photos and hair samples on four horses, the last one was my rising two year old colt *Snowman's Magic - normally he is a good boy - pretty easy to handle and mannerly - in fact here are a couple of photos of him with Anastasia a week or so ago:

But for some reason, yesterday, *Snowy decided I was scary and, no, he would not be caught.  This meant that I did get to do some ground work with a horse yesterday - here he is steadfastly walking away lol:

Sometimes a horse will observe something going on and make their own assumptions about it and once that happens it can change their perception about people and/or other things. * Snowy must have seen my "little altercation" the day before with the other horse and it changed his opinion about whether I was scary or not.  I find this really fascinating!  Anyhow, what it meant was that I had to get him into a pen and then do some approach and retreat with him and finally I discovered that he was afraid of my gloves, so we worked through that and then I was doing some "friendly" with him and oh boy was the end of that rope scary LOL.  So we worked through that, regained some confidence with each other, I pulled the mane hairs that I needed and called it a day. 

I was planning on doing more ground work with him anyway - I was waiting for the snow to melt a bit more though.  He is rising two and he will be going to breed demos and exhibitions and he will also be used with a few mares this spring, so I needed to get him more training anyway.  So I will start a bit sooner and do just a little bit every day or two.  Once the ring is clear though, more serious stuff will follow!
Shelly in Summerland, BC Canada
http://www.curlystandardplace.com