Seperation thresholds

I did some work on seperating Garbo from Maraschino this afternoon. I found the Herd Bound article on the Savvy website and it said to just take them away a little way and bring them straight back - repeating or and over going a little further each time. So I took Garbo outside the gate (that leads to the trailer) and just let him nibble there for a bit - then took him a few steps away and came back again to Maraschino waiting at the fence - I picked some grass for him along the way. When I got to the fence I gave him the grass (or dandelions, yarrow flowers or what ever I could find)...

Doing this each time and adding a couple of extra steps in each time, and remaining very slow and casual no matter if he called ot or not, and still giving him the treats no matter what - turned into a game of where's my grass instead of where's Garbo.

After 20 minutes we got about 100m away (and completely out of sight). I heard Maraschino call out twice in all and even when I got back he was still looking for the grass and treats. The very last time he had gone into his stall when I got back and Garbo called out to him and he did a little call back but he was a bit introverted - either that or thinking. I showed him the ggrass I had for him and he looked, waited and then came over and ate it. So all in all a good result. I shall do it again tomorrow.

I played with Garbo with the barrels and spools and tyre. I can get his left leg and his right leg (one at a time) on the tyre - it's so high though he can hardly get it off again. I don't think he will be able to just step up there. He will need to jump... hmmmm

Garbo just wanted to chew and lick everything today - had no energy what so ever. It's all the grass I think! In the end I just sat on the barrel and he stuck his head in my lap for a pat for ages, very smoochy. Perhaps we were still making up from yesterday.

Next I played with Maraschino and our friendly game is getting better - slowly. We did some great figure 8's and started him on driving from Zone 3... he was a bit unsure about the carrot stick at first. I made him all sleepy after about 10 minutes so I just sat down on the barrel and he hung his head near me for about 10 minutes more before he licked and chewed, and then yawned.