Major update

It's been a fast and furious month and a half since my last update. We've been back home to visit a few times and while that has slowed progress with Banjo some, we are nearly to the end of the foal training method.

One of the biggest pieces of news in the past month is that one of the barns at the boarding facility burned down late one night. It was the barn in the background of the pics in the previous post. It couldn't have been closer. One horse was lost in the blaze as she refused to leave her stall. The barn manager was able to move my mare and filly out of their stall to one further away from the blaze, fire trucks and chaos. The pen they normally stay in was just the width of a one lane gravel road away from the burning barn. The barn manager was able to lead my mare out by her fly mask and the filly came right along behind. She expressed her gratitude for my having such well behaved horses who seemed to know that she was there to help them. I am so thankful for the method and for the time spent working with my mare and filly up to this point. They used the thinking side of their brains in such a terrifying ordeal. I can't imagine the heat and smoke from the barn just a few yards away. I am extremely thankful to Tracy for moving them to safety and extremely thankful to Clinton Anderson for his method that has helped to develop such respectful and trusting partners, even in a one month old filly.

So for Banjo, she has been introduced to everything in the foal training series and we are spending a few last days refining a few things. She backs, leads, will stand at the tie ring, lets me slap the ground with high energy around her without moving, has had her feet trimmed, been wormed, etc all without much fuss. We will spend these last two sessions refining the last few things she has learned and then she gets to just be a horse for awhile. I am so pleased with her progress and I have probably learned as much as she has. I have found that I have gotten the best results when I am patient and use lighter pressure than I realize is necessary sometimes. She learns so fast and wants to be good. In reflection, the days we have had trouble is usually do to too much pressure/intensity on my part or rushing things. When I realized we were about to the end, I pushed too much one night and had a whole pile of trouble. It felt like one of our worst training sessions. The next night I went out with the attitude that I would use less pressure (I have a tendency to nag a bit and then get frustrated and go a little overboard). She is pretty sensitive and responds best to a slight increase of pressure. It was like night and day and felt so much better to get the results I had hoped for.