It's too hot!

It was just too hot to work last night. We weighed the options of swimming, just riding, giving the horses baths, or working on trailer loading. We decided the trailer loading was our most needed lesson. Kiko was a champ, Kalani was a champ, Cody ... not so much. I got his front feet in no problem nearly every time. I got his whole body in once. After that he wanted nothing to do with it. I did some lunging and tried again. He still refused. Tricia did some lunging because he kept plowing people over, then she tried loading him. Finally after a long time of waiting and asking and waiting and asking, I got to the side of him and tapped him in the butt with a carrot stick (natural horsemanship tool like a whip but not). If he moved forward, I'd stop tapping. If he backed out, I'd tap. Nothing even close to painful, just annoying ... tap, tap, tap. Sure he was probably bored by now and just gave in. But he stayed calm and jumped right up into the trailer. We tested the process several times and each time he got in easier. So the tapping has won. We're going to try again next week instead of waiting so long between lessons.

We have a plan for the week after next, Tricia will bring Olly down and we'll load up two of our horses (probably Cody and Kiko) and make a dry run down at the state trail. Maybe we'll try Kalani the week after. I'm not sure what Cody's deal is with the trailer loading. Especially since he'll load once like a champ but then freak out in subsequent loading tries. He definitely needs a confident leader and it takes a lot of patience to gain his trust. I thought just maybe the trailer loading issue would go away now that his back seems to be feeling better, but I guess those were a little to high of hopes. Oh well, we'll work our way through it.

Next trailer lesson: getting Axel to back out, yikes!