I wanted to tell you how our horse version of baseball is developing.
I started with teaching Zelador and Zeloso to follow a set path and come back. Did this once and had some success. The other day I introduced a piece of plywood (about two feet by four feet. It had been created to place paper on so that the horses could paint a picture) as a marker for the horse to walk to and put his front feet on. This went well. (Only did it with Zelador.) Yesterday I set up a baseball diamond in less than half of the arena. The two low pedestals became first and third bases. I had a second piece of plywood and placed it at second base and the other plywood became home plate. Zelador was very interested in all my moving about setting things up.
I hadn’t journeyed to any store so I didn’t have a bat/ball available. I decided to not confuse him by using existing apparatus because he’s played with them in other games.
I settled for teaching him to “run” the bases. Well, he loved this new game!
I stood in the middle, placed him on home plate and said, “Go to first base” as I pointed to the pedestal on the north side of the arena. He promptly walked there and stepped up on it. Then I pointed to the plywood across from home plate and said, “Go to second base”. He stepped off first and trotted to second. I thought he might go past it, but, no. He stopped with his front feet on the plywood and looked at me, waiting… I pointed to the southern pedestal and said, “Go to third base.” He trotted to it and stood on it, waiting. I pointed to his starting point and said, “Go to home plate.” Zoom, he was at home plate standing, waiting, with both front feet on it. That’s when he was praised and got a treat.
We played this game four times. I’m very conscious of the problems associated with doing something too many times (boredom creeps up and many times he’ll become “creative”). However, he looked like he could play baseball all day!
Now I need to get some free moments to go bat and ball shopping!
