Fortune favours the brave!

Well Faith has well and truly said ‘Pah!’ to the ‘drain of doom’. It frightens her no longer!

After the grooming and feet rituals were concluded, Faith showed me that she was in an exploratory mood this evening. Of course the area that gets most of her attention is the area where hubby keeps all his cr@p, oh sorry, I mean ‘tools’. Now I have tried to cordon this off as best I can with some jumps, but Faith seems to have this incredibly telescopic neck which allows her to reach in and sniff and snuffle things I thought were out of her reach.

Actually, she knocked a couple of things over this evening, and although this resulted in a couple of ‘Eeeek!’ moments, I can see that she is clearly less reactive about stuff, and her sense of curiosity is really coming to the surface. This is what I have been waiting for, as to start with her reactions were so quick, as to make clicker training a really daunting task. As she gets more used to stuff, and less reactive, I am becoming more confident that we will reach a point where I have a fighting chance of using the clicker with an acceptable degree of accuracy. Until then, I am happy to just carry on as we are.

Another exciting development is that she is really starting to respond to my body language, and will come to me when I invite her too. She also keeps an eye on where I am, and I feel that she is looking to me for reassurance, in the same sort of way that my little boy likes to be a bit more independent, but still likes to know where I am.

I have to say that she is looking fantastic. I have however purchased a Youngstock supplement from NAF just to make sure she is getting all her vits and mins for growth. Currently she is pretty much on the same diet as my more mature fatties, and although she is clearly a good doer, I want to make sure that her growth is supported, without her getting fat and silly. This is new territory for me, and there is a big gap in my knowledge as far as youngstock feeding goes. All the books say x amount of protein etc. and seem to suggest that I should be shoving buckets of food down her neck. But the horse I have in front of me is not telling me that at all, and her breeder has advised me not to shove lots of specialist food down her, as getting too fat will put a strain on her young joints, and too much protein etc. will make her silly. So I am going to go with my instinct on this one and avoid starchy, high protein diets. However, anyone with experience in this area and advice to give would be most welcome to comment.