This weekend, on Saturday October 27th, we have a rehearsal with an audience for the ASK Fundraiser. So far over thirty people have reserved seats. The Sunday show is sold out.
So, as you can imagine, we’re practicing! The miniature horse, Romeo, came here yesterday. He entered the arena and we turned him loose. As usual, he played at liberty for the entire visit. That horse is FUN! Before we knew it, ninety minutes had passed. The little one yawned a few times and we realized it was time to ship him home so he could rest.
We practiced the hoop routine. Romeo walks through three hoops, starting with a large one and progressing to a small one. We experimented with ribbons dangling from a bamboo pole. Romeo watched me moving them around and didn’t mind. As the minutes passed I brought the ribbons closer, then further from him. Romeo’s owner walked through them many times. Romeo saw all of this and when we called to him and asked him to walk through the gazillion dangling ribbons he had gathered enough evidence to realize the ribbons were OK. He walked through them.
Romeo really likes the teeter-totter and keeps going back to it in between other games. I set up a line of brightly coloured rubber buckets and he followed our directions and slalomed through them.
I brought out the blue plastic tarp and placed the small orange rubber cones on it. He started to understand that the cones concealed treats. Whenever we wanted him to try something we placed a cone on it and he was there in a flash.
I decided to see if this little one could walk under the tarp. I attached one side of the tarp to the wall and held the other side. Romeo’s owner walked under it several times, then Romeo did it, too.
He was up on the low pedestals, curious about the barrier separating him from the chairs for the audience and was introduced to our horse-jump rope. Romeo will be visiting next week for a final practice. I’m hoping I’ll remember to set up our long jump rope, tying one end to the arena wall and having a person at the other end swinging it for us. I also need to remember to bring out the big ball. I totally forgot about it!
