My Plan is Working...

I moved Edgar & Red to their summer vacation home (parents property!) for a couple reasons. 1) My sacrifice gravel areas REALLY needed the relief, w/o as much rain to wash the gravel out, the smell was gettin pretty bad 2) The boys I'm sure love having grass to eat and being out free to roam vs cooped up in a paddock with hay & 3) I thought it would be good for Dexter to be left home alone without them, so he could learn to count on me as his support.

In the beginning when I moved the horses away, Dexter would sometimes whinny when he heard me in the driveway or yard, and he always came trotting up to see if his buddies were back. As soon as he would realize it was just me, he would turn around and leave almost as quick as he came in! I was a little dissappointed that he still was not really connecting to me. After about 4 days, he just quit coming up and worrying about being alone. Then this past weekend we took out the temporary fencing inside the main pasture and moved Dexter out of the sacrifice area, so he only has pasture now and the center barn isle. Not sure what it was about all that, but he got all worked up, he was playing and running all over the pasture as we made these changes, he was feelin frisky! Ever since then, he comes up to me every time I go out, he's in my pocket and wants to know what's up.. :)

He actually will go out of his way to make sure he practically rubs up to me, expecting me to pet and scratch him (which I do!) Sometimes he'll walk past me just far enough that his butt is almost in my face and then will back up to me a little just to get a good scratchin.. He follows me around the barn, will follow me if I walk out in the pasture and yesterday as he was turned in the yard to eat grass, he and I were playing a game of chase!

I think he sometimes looks at me as his pasturemate and a couple times has tried to play bite me, but I am nipping that real quick and the second he thinks about biting, he gets smacked!!! But after he bolts away, he always comes right back and stands quietly and realizes his mistake.

He still needs more and more desensitizing but we've really come a very long ways. I need to get updated pics of him soon so I can get him registered and will post them on here as he lost all the silver color from his winter coat and has shed out to be a very dark roan.