If you haven’t been following along, catch up on Odin’s story on the Colorado Horse Rescue website (here) and on our blog posts from February 6 (here) and February 12 (here).
This little dude continues to impress! In between deep freezes, we got back out to Colorado Horse Rescue for a visit with Odin.
The first thing we noticed is that he is getting much more comfortable with being able to see other horses but not get to them. He is still rooming with Dart as well as a mare to keep them both in line. He leaves the pen willingly and calmly, and no longer paces – in fact when we arrived, he was napping in the sun with Dart standing guard.
This visit, we spent most of our time just watching Sarah work with Odin in the round pen. Though he is still working on basic groundwork, he has improved in leaps and bounds in the last month! He is now able to pick up his feet with no fuss, even while untied in the round pen! One of the basic tenets that he has mastered is the rule, “when the human’s feet move, my feet move… when the human’s feet stop, mine stop.” He is also much improved in moving away from pressure without getting overwhelmed.
Odin has had nothing but positive experiences since landing at Colorado Horse Rescue, and as a result, he now leads around the property like a champ, calmly goes through his training session, and faces ATVs, dogs, and horses getting loaded onto a trailer 10 feet away with aplomb. See below for a short groundwork progress video, and stay tuned for next week, when we get to see Odin with an (unoccupied) saddle on his back!