My USB modem went out last week so the blog hasn’t been updated lately.

Our goal for the weekend (if no potential adopters showed up) was to get the ‘stangs where we could run the shop vac on them. Clair calls it being hoovered. I started out grooming Ocho and rubbing him with the detached vacuum hose. He liked that well enough. Then I set the vac up on the other side of the yard (15 meters away). Then we (Lucy, Clair & I) walked the horses up to the vac. When they got their mustang nose over the vac, the boys got a horse cookie. Pretty soon they wanted to be at the vac.

Then we went back across the yard. I would turn on the vac and each horse would get a cookie. We were making the sound of the vac a conditioned reinforcer. It wasn’t long until when the vac switch was flipped on, the mustangs were expecting cookies. Then we moved the ‘stangs closer to the vac. After a minute Ocho and Telikos were standing around a running vacuum cleaner watching us flip the switch. Trinity was must more dubious and would only stand about 2 meters away.

Today we took Ocho out just before lunch and rubbed him with the hose again, once with it off, and then with the shop vac screaming away. I started vacuuming him and he seemed to like it, though he wouldn’t just come up for a full body hoovering. Later we will be hoovering the others.

We measured these boys and they are 13hh tall now. They have grown, but they have a long way to go before they are filled out.

I got quite a few calls from our mustang advertisements but most of the callers want kids horses (already broke to ride) and one of them wanted a horse to eat (YIKES!!) One man called and wanted a mustang to ride while he was herding his sheep. I thought that would be a good life for one of the boys, but the man didn’t show up over the weekend, so perhaps he changed his mind? We will start breaking them to ride when they get a little weight on, but meanwhile they can learn to drive.