An Explanation

A while back I posted photos of Turbo in “party mode”. Due to recent interest, here is an explanation.

Turbo can get pretty freaked out sometimes, so I like to de-sensitize him. For some reason, I was at a party supply store so I bough some fluffy leis and a shimmery table decoration. I wrapped one lie around each front foot because he’s not to crazy about stuff on his feet and this was a nice CONTROLLED situation were he could safely freak out. Then I hung the table decoration from a tree to his shed/shelter so if he walked under it it would brush his back. He wasn’t too keen on going under that weird, scary, blowey-thingy that was going to eat him, but after sniffing it and some coaxing, he was pretty good. Even though he wasn’t  too scared, I feel much better knowing he know how to handle it. I also draped it over his back and had him walk around so he could feel it and hear the noise of it dragging the ground. One thing I had to watch out for, Turbo is a goat. Literally, he will (and can) eat anything that he can get his mouth around, so I had to keep him from eating his cute lie-socks and I had to make sure to pick up all the little stringy thingys that fell off. If he really swallows one of those, it could possibly go through his intestines and cause a problem that was easily prevented. Any other ideas for de-sensitizing him?

Farm Day

Turbo and I have bee,n invited back to The World Hunger Relief’s Farm Day! They have two  farm days a year, one in April, which we gave cart rides at, and the upcoming one in October. 

http://worldhungerrelief.org/

 

A while back, part of Turbo’s harness broke, and I was unable to drive him. Last week, I took the harness to a young man in a local Christan community and he sewed back the leather while I watched. I suspect he did a better job than when the harness was brand new. We wanted to have it fixed as soon as possible so I would have plenty of time to work out some little kinks with Turbo, such as stopping and staying still, and turning. He is fine at turning right or left, but when I ask him to do multiple circles he throws a little fit. He will toss his head and back up ( and usually stumble). It’s quite unnerving for a little kid who has never been in a cart. So that’s why I’m training him at home, instead of having to deal with it on Farm Day.