Growing pains....

~Jan. 26~

I went down to fill the tank again and decided to play with Gingy as well. He was so funny while I was attending to the tank because he kept following me around. His draw has obviously improved, because last week he just went back to sleep when I didn't come halter him LOL.

When I was done with the tank we kinda just hung out for awhile at liberty. I would give him a little scratch and he'd explore my face with his nose from time to time. He has this thing about being touched on the head or the nose and he detests being backed up by means of his nose! Some people have said that this could be a domiance thing and I would tend to agree because of the way Gingo acts. I did some friendly with his head and nose anyway and he was definitely more dominant than scared about it. I think that, because he tended to not move his feet away from me, instead he would dodge my fingers with his head and then try to butt me with his nose.....

He was so funny! Every now and again, he would leave me and go to the corral gate, give me a pleading look and come back. I took it mean, that he wanted to go out of the corral LOL. Later I haltered him and started attempting to do that.

I say attempting because I was trying a new creative way for him to go through the gate and he was trying to just go through the gate! What I wanted was pretty complicated, but that wasn't really the problem. He wasn't exactly trusting my intentions, that was the problem. I wanted him to face away from the gate and then back through it, but he kept moving out of that position to try and walk headfirst through the gate. He seemed to say, "you simply can't tell me not to face the gate when you obviously opened it so I could go through it!". After awhile he didn't try to go through the gate anymore, he reverted to offering different things(like touch it and sideways).

He did eventually understand and do it the way I had planned, but not before I lost my temper :( I shouted at him and back him rather furiously, then I suddenly realized what I was doing! That the was very thing I have been striving not to do for as long as I've own Gingy! I imediately went to him and repented. When I came to him after my outburst his eyes softened and he nudged me. After that it was as if he didn't even remember the incident, but for me it has been a different story. I think this is probably part of growing and the fact that remorse quickly took over when I let some of my anger loose is a sign of growth. It still stung me that I hadn't seen it coming and stopped. All is well now I guess in way Gingy and I are experiencing growing pains in our relationship.