Wild Woman Cracks the Whip

Well, perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration. I was the wild woman and the whip was a hand towel, and I was only so bold and brave because I was carrying my red plastic wiffle ball bat. So what led up to me being so armed and dangerous? Piper, of course!

Piper came to us not really understanding a lot about a person's personal space. She would stand too close and move with not much regard to where a person was and thought nothing of pinning back her ears telling us to stay out of her space or that she didn’t like what we were doing. Most of that has already resolved. However, she was still a bit too eager at mealtime. Recently when I go down to feed her, as I open the door to the feed room, she is right at my back. On Saturday evening, she decided I should hurry along to she pushed her head at me, hitting me at the back of my head.

Okay, that was too dangerous. Sunday morning I showed up armed. I walked into the pasture swinging my white hand towel in her direction and threatening her and she looked at me as if to say, "Who is this crazy woman who showed up in my pasture?" Once in the feed room, I also had the wiffle ball bat and came towards her with that. (For all animal lovers - and we are animal lovers - I was not intending to hit her with any of this.) It took very little time for her to decide to simply walk to her stall and wait there until her food showed up. We are now several feedings later and she is staying out of my space at feeding time and typically once she sees what's going on, she will wait near or in her stall. Don't you love it when they learn something?