Liz Martin and her mother, Carrie, have their horses here. Carrie hasn’t had an opportunity to see much liberty work so today Carrie and Liz watched while I worked with Spring Song, Kye, Zeloso and Zelador. She got to see and hopefully absorb, lots of stuff.
Zelador did something neat. On one previous occasion I played this game. What I do is carry a toy behind my back, blocking Zelador’s view of it. Today the toy was Mickey Mouse. I walk around and drop off the toy behind something. I continue walking and approach Zelador and say, “Find the Mickey Mouse.”
He promptly left the pedestal and went directly to the toy. At that point I asked him to pick it up and bring it to the pedestal. When he got to the pedestal he gave Mickey Mouse a huge toss through the air!
Then I did something I’ve never done before. I fetched the yellow rubber bucket, placing it in one hand with the toy in the other. I walked around with the items and selected a place which did not give Zelador a clear view of what I was doing. I put the toy on the ground and covered it with the bucket. I walked around a bit after this, then called to Zelador to, “Find Mickey Mouse.” He went directly to the yellow bucket, moved it away from the toy with a sideways push with his nose and retrieved Mickey Mouse to the pedestal.
The next game included an additional bucket (an orange one). I put Mickey Mouse under the orange one. The two buckets were positioned identically on the ground. I asked him to find Mickey Mouse. He went to the buckets and removed the orange one from the toy, picked up Mickey Mouse and carried it to the pedestal. I really didn’t know what he’d do. He’s used to carrying things so he just might have played a bit with the other bucket and/or played with the new one.
A lady, Vicki Sword, was in charge of the 2014 Hills of the Headwaters Stable Tour (she’s in charge of this year’s tour and was the contact person for the Painted Fibreglass Horses). She came to our farm last year during the tour and talked with me afterwards. She loved what the horses were doing. She did a write-up and said, “The arena has many toys. Everywhere you look, there’s a possibility for fun.”
I like that sentence. Having all the toys at hand makes it so easy to dream up fun things to try.
I’m looking forward to playing this game with the other horses.
