Head Way! (Literally...)

Yesterday we made progress. The long rope was left aside and I spent about 30 minutes keeping Firecracker calm while I eased my way into her space, close enough to get the halter over her neck and onto her nose. Once it was there, I held it in place for a minute, then released her. Her eyes were wide and she let me know the mustang eating halter was not appreciated, but she survived the ordeal.

Today she wanted nothing to do with either the halter or me, so it was back to the long rope, working in circles and coming to the realization that the halter wasn't such a bad idea after all. Took longer than yesterday to convince her of this, but once she made up her mind that this was the easy way out, I was allowed to slip the halter over her nose and even tie it closed up near her eye without any objections.

Do you like the padding I added to it? It's a wool scarf that I'd had sitting around; I felted it over the top of the rope for added padding over the poll injury. And here's a spot of good news; there appears to be no scarring, the old hair if falling out in chunks and there's new hair growing in. That's right, she let me run my fingers up there just long enough to pull up the loose hair and see the soft new fuzz filling in what ought to have been bald and scarred. Hooray!

To celebrate the halter getting on, I didn't bother to do anything else. I brought some hay in for her to munch on; she shared it with Bessie, who's in the stall next to her. Firecracker is really sweet with the sheep. Jet gets bossy, but Firecracker backs down if they get pushy around food.

I left the halter on so she'd get accustomed to the feel of it moving around on her nose for a couple of hours. It's about to come off now that it's dinner time. I'm really happy with today's progress, even though it didn't go as smoothly as originally planned. I'd hoped after yesterday, today would be a snap. Nothing ever seems to work that way though, does it? But it's on and she let me touch the poll; I'm calling that a good day!