Argent Update!

Well, it was time to put Argent in his harness and see how we fared with that.  I had grand plans of going down the road....we made it to the end of the driveway.

He was great for the harnessing process.  My  little picture taker got every moment of it on film.  Don't worry, I won't be  posting every second of it here, as I'm pretty sure the server would crash.

My son proudly told me...I've taken 254 pictures already!  Oh for joy, that means I'll be wading through them for hours to choose the best ones....but at least we have pictures!

I'll let Argent tell the rest of the story:)

Argent here, the Great Dales Pony, visiting Windy Hill and the Woman.  She's okay, she brings me food, that part I like.  Let me tell you how it really went yesterday..

First of all, she came in my home dragging this big unwieldy bag, of course I had to investigate being the oh-so-curious horse that I am...

Whacha got there woman?

I immediately recognized the smell, it's the harness.  This is the crazy thing that humans put on me so I will pull the cart.  I look GREAT pulling a cart.  But what fun is it to just pull a cart without some trickery?  I love to play tricks on the humans.

Hemes first

The Hemes is the easy part, and since the woman has been working with me on putting my head down all the time, I went ahead and put my nose into it since I figured that is what she wanted, then I put my head down and it slid off. hahahaha.  Oddly, she behaved as if she didn't want that.  She put it back on me.

I better get carrots for this

I was kind enough to put my nose in it again, she was on to my trickery by this time, so she moved on to the next part of my fancy duds.  I stood very quietly while she did this, as it was blatantly obvious that she was confused; the poor thing.  

The next part is the bridle, the bridle is my least favorite part, but since the woman was moving slowly and being kind I was very nice about it.  All of my glorious hair gets in the way and she has to fuss with my ears a lot, I was very good about that.  I know she secretly wants to give me a bridle  path so that my bridles will fit properly in their place when she puts them on.  

I'll even keep my head down for this

The woman checked and double checked everything to see if it was on right and comfortable, I'm pretty sure I took a small nap while she fussed around with all of that.   Even the boy got tired at some point and sat down to take the photos.

checking and double checking

After all of that standing around, when it was time for me to actually walk, I wondered if she was serious or if she was just testing me.  She had to tell me 3 times to go ahead and walk.  I did and I was very lazy about it.  I think the woman liked that though because she said "Good boy " a lot.  

walking in the round pen.

Well, walking in the round pen is easy stuff, so the woman decided she wanted to take me out into the open. Snicker.  When we first went out there I pretended I was frightened of everything.  The blue flower that was blowing in the breeze, the long blade of grass, the dark colored dirt.  I even snorted once!  I also discovered that if I turn around really quick it confused the woman and was able to walk whatever direction I wanted to.  I walked back towards the round pen.  However, the woman did catch on to my little trick of turning fast ~ she was mumbling something about "quick Arabian turns" and "compensating" ...I don't know, but I couldn't do it anymore once she figured that game out.  She completely ignored me when I told her there were scary things ahead and pranced, she just kept on going along.  So, I had to stop that too.  Then I tried going in reverse!  Well, when she figured that one out, she just asked me to keep going in reverse.  That was no fun!  I tried it a few more times and then gave up on that one too.  I did try the quick turns a few more times, but she got really good at anticipating my next move, so I couldn't do that either.  I threw my head up in protest several times when I thought she was really using too much pressure on the bit to tell me when to stop.  I know she was trying to be gentle, but this is a big bit and a little goes a long way.  I did stop tossing my head when she was softer with her hands.  (sheesh)  The things I have to teach people.  When I had stopped using  all of my tricks in the yard, we went down the driveway.

in the yard.

Down the driveway and back up.

See how relaxed I am going down the driveway?  That took some time and I played a lot of tricks on the woman first, but if you look closely, you can see that she is driving me with her palms open, this means there is not a lot of pressure on my mouth and I like that.  I also liked that she was very confident about nothing trying to eat me.  Even though I was pretending that I was scared, she sensed that I needed a leader and thank goodness she chose to show me that she is going to be the leader when we are together. 

Now down the driveway

turning around to go back down the driveway

Once the woman figured out that I would walk with my head down and my body relaxed if she would anticipate my every move before I did it, I went ahead and relaxed and let her do the steering.  I was sort of looking forward to going down the road too, because I thought I might be able to try some more games with her.  But evidently she decided that we had played enough games that day and when I was moving quietly and obediently she unharnessed me and put me in the larger corral with some grass in it as a reward.  I loved my reward as you can clearly see!

playing in the bigger field! 

I can't wait until we do this again, I  haven't decided if I want to play new games or if I should just let her be the leader.  I'm not entirely certain I trust her completely yet.