This Spring I started thinking about adding a younger pony to my herd. I found a nearly perfect little appaloosa yearling I really wanted. But distance, weather and his current owners desire to free up the lambing barn caused it not to come together. So I was shopping for the right pony, despite Darrin's head shaking. One cold morning Carol called and said "I found a pony for you. He is free to the right home and close enough I can help you get him home. You should call and we can go see him." Being the fools we are of course we rushed right in or in this case right out the door to see the pony. You can see in the picture of the pony how pleased with herself my dear friend Carol is. Before long the new pony was standing in my corral eating my hay and I was looking for an Apple name for him. All of my ponies have apple names....cute huh? Anyway he became "Spy" or more correctly Northern Spy...its an apple, look it up.

Spy's story wasn't very long. He was bought by this woman at auction as a stallion to breed her mini mare. When she sold the mare, Spy was gelded. She said her grand-daughter rode him and spent time with him but it should have tipped me off that she also said he is NOT a kids horse. Also the woman said she was going to be gone a lot this summer and the pony could not be on pasture due to near founder. This was the reason for the "free to good home" status. All that was fine with me. I can monitor the pasture and no kids on the scene here. So I adjusted my dreams of a appaloosa spotted pony and went pinto again. To his credit however he does have some nice round appy style spots on his hip....just three, but I am counting them. Which brings me to the topic of this post...trust.

It didn't take me long to figure out Spy had been cowboyed a bit in his life. I am suspecting that the grand-daughter, if she did ride him, didn't have much fun. The first time I put my niece, Aubree, up on him he got a little hoppy. His back humped up and he really wanted to put his head down and do a try out for the Miles City Bucking Horse Auction. Aubree is not a classic trained rider but that ranch kid is darn sticky when it comes to staying on a horse. Between my efforts to keep his head up and him moving forward and Aubree's ability to stay in the middle of him it only took a few of days before we could longe him in a nice easy circle with Aubree aboard. We didn't hurt or scare him in this process we just let him figure out it was easier to stay relaxed and make Spy think it was all his idea. When a horse, or any animal for that matter, is "shown who is boss", spanked or one of the other neanderthal techniques it violates trust. This violation starts to erode the whole relationship. Do you trust people who hurt you? Do you really like them? In my opinion it really is unfair to punish someone for not knowing what you want. I am not saying I never correct my animals, I do. If they know the rules or the task and they chose not to do it a correction makes sense. This does not violate trust because it is simply a consequence of a bad choice. Further corrections or consequences should not be confused with punishment or worse torture. To be effective the animal can't be afraid to make a mistake. This is what Spy is in the process of figuring out. In time he will learn that a tap on the butt isn't going to turn into a huge fight for survival. His trust is being built brick by brick into something solid. Those little experiences like asking him to walk across concrete or across a wooden bridge will help him learn that I will not ask him to do something hurtful even if it is a little scary at first.
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By the way. After I wrote this I had the chance to go to the movie, BUCK. I highly recommend it to all animal lovers. I found so many links to what I was just writing about. I can't wait to see it again.

When I got my very first greyhound almost a million years ago. I knew exactly what I wanted...a small brindle female. What I ended up with was a PERFECT big fawn boy. Sometimes what you think you want isn't at all the dog who needs you or the dog who fits your needs. I don't mean to sound glib when I say when an adopter tells me they want a certain color or gender I rarely listen. My quest is to find the dog that really matches them. If they then veto the perfect match....well then that's their problem. I mean honestly if you have a super busy noisy home and the dog you pick the dog who is the color and gender you want BUT that dog is shy and is easily spooked well sorry its not a match made in heaven. When things fall apart in a home it never is because the greyhound is fawn and not brindle. It is because the personalities didn't mesh. You can learn to love a dog of the wrong color if it is perfect in other ways. Its hard to fall in love if you are trying to sleep and your high energy greyhound is bouncing off the walls or destroying the couch...again. What brought this to mind was Bek is working with a first time greyhound home. Their requirement list was pretty short....but it included the phrase "no brindle". Well long story short the dog who caught their eye and is headed to their home right now is Irish Song a sweet and lovely brindle girl. Congrats to them and to Song the most recent wrong colored adoption.

Spent a few minutes giving Sandy a much needed bath. She loves to get into the wading pools and lay down. But what ends up happening it seems to put them in to overdrive with hair growth which means they shed more. But it is worth the extra baths. She so loves to lay out there.

At the dog show we bought a couple bottles of mink oil shampoo to try on the greyhounds with bad coats. I can't wait to use it on Helen. But for Sandy this morning I used our old stand by greyhound soap. For those of you who don't know we make our own shampoo for the rescue dogs. We mix up equal parts of Murphy's Wood Oil Soap and Lemon Joy Dish Soap. If left on for about 10 minutes it has proven to be a great flea killer too. It doesn't protect them long term, we use Frontline for that, but it does kill the live little biting hitchhikers. If you plan right you can reuse your Lemon Joy bottle as a mixing and shampoo bottle.

Also a heads up. The Greyhound Picnic is coming. We planned it the same day as part of the Irish Scottish Festival in Hamilton. Our hope is that people can do both. It looks like the greyhounds have been invited to walk in the festival parade. Stay tuned for details. Also be sure to pre order your plaid greyhound collars from Collar Crazy!! If you pre order and Prepay we can get them here before the parade. I will get back to you with prices and where to send the money on that one.