Feral Juniper Comes Around

After Juniper got loose, she got loose again and my son tried to catch her and it didn't go well. She has a stranger danger issue we obviously need to work on, but his attempt to catch her instead of calling me set us way back and she decided she was a feral donkey and halters were dumb. It was taking me an hour to catch her every night in a kinda medium corral. I vaccinated her and that helped cement her idea that the whole human/halter thing is no bueno.

Happy Itchy Juniper

I finally decided to put her in a tiny gentling pen and start from scratch. Worse off than we'd ever been, she acted like everything was scary, but she was also being a brat.

Happy Airplane Ears

We started making progress when I decided to quit trying to be friendly and start giving her some structure - asking her to move until she offered to face up and stand to be haltered. She figured that out fast.

Then I left for 5 days to take care of my mom after her shoulder surgery (she's doing great) and came back to a lonely beastie who was more willing to cooperate.

Now she's my buddy again, in the bigger area but not out to pasture with Duncan yet. I've got to re-introduce her to grass slowly and I think it's helpful to have her needing a friend right now.

I think I saw the baby moving tonight. Not 100% sure because she's pretty wiggly herself, but I think it was baby. Pretty cool.

Duncan thinks I'm awesome because he's itchy and shedding. I think he'd follow me inside if he could. He doesn't fit in with the mustang even though they're pastured together and they get along okay. He'd rather be part of my herd, poor fella. I might camp out with him some night. I think it'd be fun.

In other news: my head hurts, my boss is a stress case and that trickles down big time, we're short handed at work for a couple months, my kid got punched in the face at school today, and did I mention my head hurts? I can't afford the treatment they recommend. :/  I can't really think of anything to get excited about lately... The days just come and go.