Monday July 14th 2008
Well, starting tomorrow school holidays are officially over! That means early mornings and rushed showers for Melissa! I’m starting to get a bit concerned about getting a job, and having to start in the early afternoon, therefore meaning that I won’t be able to feed Actress or do an evening session with her – so that’s kinda annoying, but on one of my online applications I added “I would preferably like to start my shifts around 4:30-5:00 as I have duties at home” or something along those lines. I doubt any one will employ someone as fussy as me!
Anyway, I’ll update you on the last two days because they’ve been somewhat productive. Firstly, yesterday morning Actress neighed to me! She’s never neighed at me before and I took it as a big step forward in our relationship. It sounded like “Oh there you are! How are you? It’s good to see you again” So I felt very special and made lots of baby noises towards her (you know like “owwh yooh such a goowd wittle babyeeee, yesh yooh are! Yesh yooh are!” haha)
Then in yesterdays evening session I bought out two white poles and stuck them in the ground. Yay obstacles! Well, Actress firstly was not leading fluently so that meant trying to achieve a large, figure eight wasn’t exactly going to work. She had a sniff at the poles and reluctantly walked in between them when I waved the feed bucket around trying to coax her through. We managed to go around one of the poles, but I wouldn’t say it was the exercise I was hoping to achieve, but it showed her something new.
This morning I wanted to attempt the poles again, but…she wasn’t as compliant. Really I can’t remember this morning very well, but it was some extra exposure for her. This afternoon I wanted to get her used to me standing beside her, because she’s used to seeing me front on. I started with the usual trying to pet her on the head and if she moved backwards I’d yield her hindquarters. Surprisingly, Actress wasn’t her usual wonderful self, or perhaps I was being more critical and yielding her when one foot moved back, but hey, you need to be! Then when she was quite happy with me standing there patting her, and keeping in mind the think principal the whole time, I tried just moving the angle my body was at when I was patting her so I was standing beside her head. A couple of times she moved back, but in the end she didn’t move so that was wonderful. I gave her plenty of thinking time and not wanting to push it I finished after the second or third time of her being ok as I moved my feet and let her finish her feed.
Really going well. I love her to bits too!
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