We did it. We loaded both horses into the trailer and went to Kirstin's drill team practice. Taz hasn't been in a long time. He did fantastic-of course. The video is of Kirstin warming Taz up. We arrived early, at least we thought we arrived early. Kirstin wanted some alone time in the arena with Taz before everyone arrived, but evidently everyone else decided they wanted some alone time in the arena also. We arrived about 1 1/2 hours early and almost everyone was already there. So much for alone time. I think Kirstin was a little worried about how Taz would react around so many horses. You can see for yourself, he was not in the least bit bothered by them. He is getting so good about having other horses running in all directions around him. Kirstin used her other horse, Trigger for most of the practice because they were working on the flag drill and Taz is still not sure about the flying flags over head. At the end they did some basic work on just the drill and she tried Taz out there to see how he would do. Taz is great with the horses in open arena work, but he is not fond of working as a team player just yet. It's really hard to get the necessary practice time with him so that he can get used to the concepts of drill. At this point, the team is working on perfecting the drill and the last thing the rest of the team wants to deal with is having the necessary patience to let this horse learn to become a team player, although I really don't think it would take that long-he is a very smart horse who learns quickly & is so eager to please.

We did have an issue loading Taz to go home. We have encountered this every time after drill practice. It's late, the trailer is dark and he just refuses to go in. So before I agreed to take Taz back to drill, Kirstin had to prove that she could load him in the pitch dark which she did a number of times at home with no problems what so ever. I think my son might have figured out the problem. At drill there is light provided by the arena lights & security lights, but they throw a wicked shadow on the trailer floor. Imagine being a horse and seeing a completely dark section of the floor and then these light shadows from the slats of the trailer walls. I would imagine that it would be quite discomforting for them if they weren't used to that. Taz loads right in during the day light hours, so loading isn't the issue. We are now going to practice loading in different light situations and try to simulate different lighting sernarios. We had a wonderful person who helped us load Taz-Thanks John. He was extremely patient and worked with Taz and by the time he was done he had loaded and unloaded Taz 4 times with each time Taz going on easier and easier.

All & all I am very pleased with Taz and the way everything went Friday night at drill team practice. We haven't taken him anywhere in a while. We are now going to start trailering him & Trigger to places close by just to give them practice. We have a piece of land that we are renting for our cows and we plan on taking the 2 horses there to ride around-the land has a really cool gravel pit on it and it goes down to the river. It would just be a nice relaxing time for all.