Sweetwater Day 17

I didn't start out with the idea of tying her up but that is what we ended up with.   

 My plan was to just work her from up on the fence, making her go back and forth until she would stop and stand next to me.  Her idea was to stand as far away from me as possible.   So that lead to a tug of war and me wrapping the rope around the post for leverage.  There was a lot of drama at times but the post, rope and halter all held.

 She learned to keep the slack in the rope but did a lot of pacing.

 She would stop with me on the fence with her head next to me but I could never work back toward her back without her starting to pace again.  And when I stuck my foot out to touch her with it, it was like starting at square one again.

 That all took 2 1/2 hours.

 In the evening a veterinarian pathologist that competes in 100 mile endurance rides all over the county and breeds and sells endurance horses internationally, stopped by to see Sweetwater.  

 He worked with her for an hour and got to touch her face.  His advice was to send her back.  He came to the same conclusions that J and I have; she doesn't like people, she doesn't like rubbing as a reward, the more you push her the more agitated and aggressive she gets, she is more interested in inanimate objects than she is in people.

Can you tell he has Arabians?  He also say I was doing good at getting weight off of her (he didn't see the before pictures).  I said, getting weight off? I'm trying to get her to gain weight.  He said don't get her too fat.