Day Two

Day Two - March 14, 2007

If we had more time, I would not choose to do things this way. I would work much slower and get them acclimated to us before I began hazing them. Because we only have six weeks with them, and because we need to begin working on our individual babies as soon as possible, I am okay with hazing them into the smaller pens. For this reason, I remained quiet most of yesterday. Rather than get caught up in the mechanics of the plan, I tried to focus on the horses more, even when everyone else was debating about where the panels should go and how we should go about the situation. It would be better if we could have all of that worked out before we entered the pen, but with so many girls that is a problem. The name of the game, at least for now, is teamwork. I was extremely encouraged by the fact that the light-colored yearling, rather than being scared at the idea of the herd being separated, kept moving towards us as we set up the stock panels around the little one.

I feel no fear around them. Maybe that’ll come back to haunt me later, but they’re more afraid of us than we are of them. If I act confident around them, but not in a predator-like sense, perhaps they’ll feed off of that and relax. Dealing with them is more about anticipating their every movement before they even execute it, and for that reason, I choose to have my attention almost always on them rather than, for example, setting up the stock panels.