Sunday was a interesting day in the sense that while the morning was a bit rough, thankfully the afternoon was filled with friends and visiting, I even had three helpers for barn chores, and when you see and hear the awe and delight in the kids when they get to hold and pet a wee lamb or get to dump the feed for the sqealing piglets (along with hear.. they have got SO big since I saw them last time) it just has to raise your spirits.

Of course they all wanted to pet and see Pippin, I was very pleased that he allowed them to come up and catch him, and get his pats, we are coming along nicely in that.  On the other hand, he went crazy when I took Brandy off farm to go so some work on Farmer T’s place, he spent his time have a Pippin Fit, I wonder if I can get to the point of being able to “pony” him along on rides at times.

We wanted to move some snow and so the girls headed over to help me hitch up Brandy and haul the ditch digger over, I think everyone had more fun getting “sled” rides in the digger then we were at getting the job I wanted done.. we did get a five pass’s of the digger done and that is alot of snow moved but I would have still liked to have got a few more done but we lost the light.

Still we figured out something that was quite amazing to me.. I had slipped a bit on ice and my left knee was a bit sore and as the load gets more heavy, Brandy moves faster, not a good thing with a sore knee, so I was able to get someone else to hold her lead (because truly you don’t want to be on the current drive line behind with the digger, (I will need to pick up a long! line of working farm drive lines at some point) and so I had a helper out front, but I was doing the voice commands from behind and the side..

Wow, what a humbling thing that happened, Brandy pretty much worked by voice command for me.. while they had the line it was 99 percent loose lead and she was starting, pulled, and stopping on voice command alone.. I have to admit that I didn’t figure this out, I was to busy working her to even see what was happening, but the person on the lead was the one that finally looked at me and went WOW.. I’m doing nothing, its all you on voice control only..

My response back is wow, I didn’t think she was there, its time to start training Gee and Haw, because that is the area’s that she did have to have help on with the person on the lead.

So far she has

Ch-ch-Ch, (the horse click sound) is used to prepare her to get ready for work

Walk on- Pretty clear, walk forward

Pull- She has moved forward, and her load has hit her, and she has stopped to see if something is wrong or if I want her to keep going.. Pull and off she goes.

Easy- I appear to be using this as a way to tell her to talk small control steps in her turns

Whoa-Stop NOW

Stand-Stand where you are

Hup-She is already moving but I want her to pick up the pace.

So really all that is missing is Gee, and Haw and we pretty much have it..

The same girls came over for us to unharness her, groom her down and give her a good feed of her cubes, and today I wil move her around and give her a groom out and make sure that the work yesterday was good, she like us had a few slips on the ice, and I want to make sure she is 100% today.