Sunday, June 14, 2009

I've had an awful day so I'm going to keep this short so I can go to bed.

This morning I trailer loaded Scout. He was a very good boy.

Then we went to see the movie "Up" and it turned out to be quite a tear-jerker. I was surprised. I liked it but I probably won't watch it again.

Zaz really is a good looking horse. He looks even prettier in person



Today Zaz met the hose. It took a while to get him wet but eventually he realized I wasn't trying to kill him and he stood for it. I finally got to see what his striping looks like when he's wet.

I wonder if he got rained on by some acid rain or something? Some of these stripes clearly follow the areas where rain or sweat would run. Also, the underside of his body is darker. Maybe he just bleaches out easily when wet or sweaty? I'll never know if he was born with this or not, but it doesn't really matter. Here are the pictures:

Very clear striping on this shoulder:


Two wide flank stripes & lower part of belly is ldarker:

Not sure if this area got completely soaked, but I think it did:

The lower side of the neck is dark.

Thin bars above the elbow and you can see the darker front portion of the neck.

A wide flank stripe:

A thick trail of light brown where a horse usually has sweat running when they've worked hard, with smaller stripes in front of it.



He's ear shy. Really bad. And top-of-the -head-shy. Mostly on his right side. We worked FOREVER and got nowhere so finally I went back to something he does well and ended on a friendly note. I did attach this bow to his halter, hoping it would flop around and desensitize him. He looks like a spanish dancer. It didn't help. He's not afraid of or bothered by the bow at all.


Good night! May tomorrow be a better day!

3 comments:

Jessie said...

Sorry you had a bad day... Sounds like Zaz is coming along nicely though.

I saw the movie "Up" last weekend, you are right about the tear jerker part... and right in the beginning too. My boyfriend said he's never seen a movie start out so sad.

Hoping tomorrow's a better day for you!

Anonymous said...

Sorry you had a bad day - but at least the horse part sounded OK.

That ear/head shy thing is one of the hardest - my old horse Noble came to me with a big issue with head shyness and I couldn't get anywhere near his ears - and almost 12 years later he still doesn't like it - I can touch his ears now (very briefly) but he's still very worried about it. I just try to work on practical things then - haltering, bridling, grooming, and leave it at that.

Linda said...

It sounds like you had a pretty good day-----with the horses, that is! I'm working on head shy with the pony--so I'll be watching you for ideas. I'm putting the lead rope up and over her head a lot--swinging it way above her head, etc. I'm not really doing much with touch at this point--more trying to get her used to the fact that things go over her head and don't have to hurt or trap her. She's made significant progress so far. You're doing great--hope this leads to him finding a good home because he is a pretty boy and seems quite nice.