We just had a lovely long weekend at Wendy's family's ranch, but before I write about that, I had some thoughts yesterday I really wanted to get down on paper.
First, sometimes the simplest instructions are the best. Maverick became lame this weekend again, so we decided to take him to Katy Equine to get checked out by their lameness expert. Both Wendy and I wanted to get a more definitive answer about his hoof issue so we can stop worrying about it.
Since I was going to go with Wendy to drop Maverick off, Randy was left with the task of taking Walker and Bingo back to Huntington Stables. Randy asked me how to unload Walker and Bingo. I told him Walker would be easy, and the most important thing would be to stay out of his way; as soon as the butt bar came down, he would likely start calmly backing right out, but if he didn’t, a slight pull on a few tail hairs would do it.
With Bingo, the most important thing would be to let him take his time, allow him to think his way through the process, again pulling just a few strands of his tail hair to ask him to back out of the trailer. Bingo's job is a bit more demanding as he gets loaded first, so he is deeper in my trailer than Walker is. He has to decide it's OK to back out rather than try to turn around to get out.
Randy was sweet enough to keep me posted as to his progress along the way back, as he knows I have a tendency to worry over things. When he got to Huntington, both Walker and Bingo backed out without any trouble at all, and Randy was amazed at how the two horses did exactly what I told him they would do.
Which is to say, Wendy and I have both taken the time it takes to train our horses and ourselves so it takes less time. Today with Randy, who knows very little about horses besides what he has heard me say over the years, he was able to complete what can be a very complicated task with two very different horses and have complete success. Thank you Parelli Natural Horsemanship.
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