Settling In

 Tropical Storm Sally is moving away from us, so our skies are overcast, but not rainy.  We'll see if the weather holds.   I took advantage of the drier weather to do a good training session with Jeremiah this morning.  

The last few days, I have done short sessions with Jeremiah because he was still getting used to the move into the barn.  Yesterday, he rolled and napped in the shavings inside his stall.  He is also going in and out freely to eat his hay and get out of the rain.  

Whenever you train, you need a goal.  Sometimes, especially for us novice trainers, those goals change as the session goes on.  With more rainy days in the future, I wanted him to be comfortable with the inside of the barn (which is very different from anything a wild burro has seen), so my rough outline of goals were to walk him through the door from his stall to the barn, work with his feet a little, and attempt to fly spray his legs (he has little rough areas where the flies are getting him).  

JJ was amazing!  We walked back and forth next to the other stalls and he stopped to look at several things inside the barn.  He picked up both front feet for me (I did not hold onto them, yet), and he let me fly spray his legs (prime fly feeding zone on donkeys).  He likes being touched on his shoulders and neck the most, but he also let me hug him.  He was nervous about many of the new experiences, especially the fly spray, but he trusted me.  As a reward, I took him out for a little hand grazing and shared a carrot with him.  

To appropriately reflect the burros roots as the companions of prospectors, their formal names are Jeremiah Jack (JJ) and Martin McBray (Marty).  They sound like a couple of old prospectors themselves!

Marty's training is going a bit faster already.  Our son already pet him on both shoulders this morning.