the big day

Well, the "haul 'em to the trainer" day came and went, and sadly Koda...is still at our place. Those of you that have been reading along, know Koda had a trailer set-back...poor guy. We have been periodically working on getting him back to where he was for longer than I care to remember. With hauling day quickly approaching, it was time to start working on loading again. Sigh. I've gotten him to load, relax, and back out when asked a jillion times since his mishap, but he just can't overcome his fear of the door and bolts backwards. Koda only behaves this way in the trailer, he otherwise stands very nicely and so we repeat, and repeat, and practice patience. We've tried just about everything. It's extremely frustrating. Sooo many emotions.

We felt a little better when Patty assured us that Koda's trailering conundrum would go away, through the mental maturing they experience while training. It's a relief to know he won't be scarred for life. She also gave us a couple new idea's to try with our trailer. If they don't work, we have yet to try borrowing a stock trailer. I'm hopeful we won't have to...

It was a hard decision, but we took Nemo up to Iron Horse without him. He was happy to hop on the trailer after watching his buddy get all the loading attention this past week. We were so impressed with how well Nemo did at Patty's. He calmly unloaded, walked through a smaller barn door, stood in the aisle to get his boots off, and walked right into his stall without so much as a second thought. Nemo has never been in a stall, or similar situation which earned him several "what a good boy" comments from Patty. She also said he looked great weight-wise, which we took as huge complements. The stalls around him were full, once again everyone was quiet and happy - the girls next to him were reeeally happy to see him. He seemed partial to the good looking one on his right lol. Nemo starts his training today. He is more than ready.