My dear friend Joanna sent a Thank You card for her son's Jacob's birthday back in November (I am late in posting). This is the thank you note and Olivia is actually reading a handwritten card for the first time!
Joanna as well sent a Christmas card including two pictures from her kids and my silly kids were running around with them all day and taped the pictures over their beds!
Yesterday was the day to drive around the neighborhood to take a look at some fancy Christmas Lights!
This is the house at Tincup Circle, where we were last year, too. What should I say? It got bigger and better! They have now displays in every window and two trains going on the front porch!
Fuer alle, die es nicht wissen...Budweiser ist ein amerikanisches Bier. Die Brauerei haelt sich diverse Clydesdale (Kaltblueter) fuer ihre Wagen. Damit machen sie jedes Jahr eine neue Werbung.
Diese Werbung ist fuer dieses Jahr:
Here's a little something of Olivia reading random books from the library. I can't upload any more videos right now since they are too long and don't upload on here. Therefore you need to go just with this one :-)
Desensitizing with handystick and string
Vanna should not move, she should relax with whatever I 'throw' at her. This makes a safer horse that uses his 'thinking' side of the brain, and not the 'reacting' (flight) one.
Vanna does not love this exercise (ears back) but she does not move, either. She's not really relaxed but she stands still for at least 15 seconds, so I reward her with rubbing her with the stick.
Same exercise on the other side of the horse. Whatever the horse is used to see out of the left eye, it could be a totally spooky object seen out of the right eye so all the desensitizing exercises need to be done on both sides of the horse (and last, on the front).
Backing up Method #1
Vanna should back up with me tapping the air with the stick. She backs up but is kind of lazy about it. She should back up much faster. But with me holding the camera, stick and string and try to talk and try to count, I really could not do more! LOL
Yielding hind quarters
Vanna should turn her hind away from me when I tap the air with the stick or eventually just point with my finger/look at it as I go towards it. She should step with her left hind in front of her right (crossing over). You start with one step initially but since Vanna is pretty good at it, she gave me already two or three.
Her inside front leg should at best not move, just stay on the ground and move in a circle. First, Vanna was waling around with her front a lot but the better she got with yielding her hind quarters the better she gets in just pivoting around with the front.
I am actually not trying to teach her how to count, the counting 1-4 does help in keeping a steady rhythm in tapping the air with the stick.
Backing up Method #2
You wiggle the rope and wave the stick underneath it from right to left to right and walk towards her. Since I had the camera I could not wave the stick. And I still don't get it why there are 4 different methods in backing up the horse. I even did not find an answer to this watching Clinton Anderson's DVDs.
Yielding the fore quarters
This should be one of the most difficult exercises. It takes a while until the horse understands what you try to teach him since the horse will back up, go forward or ignores you completely. Vanna does all three. So finally after watching Clinton's video again, I could manage to get one right step from Vanna. But most of the time she's still pivoting on her front leg (same as yielding the hind quarters) but in this exercise Vanna actually should pivot on her inside hind leg, not swinging her butt around and just bend her neck away. So this is something we need to work on! But we got a step and this is a beginning!
Popcorn is doing great. He got neutered with 5 months old in October and was a bit whiny in the evening when we got him home but just playful and his old self the next morning. He never licked or bit his incision so all was good.
I tried to trim his nails with a dremel (I use it for the boxers) but Popcorn was still to freaked out by the sound of it so I just cut his nails. But yesterday I tried to trim his nails again and he was fine with it! He did not love it and was kind of avoiding me in sitting up and pushing his weight against me, looking into the other direction but let me do my thing! He got a big belly rub afterwards!
This night he threw up or pooped in his cage so he needed to get a bath before 6 a.m. already and he was fine getting a bath, too! The last time he got a bath (in the summer) in the sink down in the utility room he was quite squirmy and tried to jump out of the sink but today he even sat down in the kid's bath tub and just let me do my thing. He was soo good! And now he's all shiny and good smelly and the fur is so soft and fluffy...got to love it! What a good 6 months old boy! Oh, and he's potty trained since 4 months old so all is good....
Von dort aus sind die Kinder dann Trick or Treaten gegangen und kamen ungelogen mit 2 kg Suessigkeiten wieder nach Hause....die Suessigkeiten halten sich sicherlich bis naechstes Jahr!
