Copper's First Walkabout

While Tuesday was a huge day for me and Skeeter, it was also a Big Day for Copper.

His training with the lead rope had come to a stand-still and I thought that maybe he just didn't see the freaking point of it.  He likes to learn new things, so I asked Jay if it would be okay to take him out of the pen when Mom and Bill were down.  It's such a milestone that I felt bad for asking, but I didn't know how Copper would behave and I thought it would be nice to have experienced back-up (or lead in this case).

Copper has learned to respect his halter/lead enough that he'll give to pressure, which came in handy a couple of times.

He marched right out the gate behind Bill and then got a look at the world beyond the pen.  His feet just had to move, so Bill circled him a couple of times, but Copper is just so level-headed and laid-back it didn't take much.  He might actually now see the point of learning to lead so we can go do cool new things.

Food pushy horses really irritate me, so they are not even allowed to look at the hay when we feed until we give them a verbal "eat" command.  Bill took Copper to a green patch and told him to "eat".  Poor Copper didn't realize that applied to anything other than hay, so Bill pulled some grass and hand-fed him, then pointed to the ground and said, "eat".   The light bulb went on and Copper enjoyed some hand grazing.

There were only a couple of times where he sort-of had a temper tantrum.  His are pretty pathetic compared to Princess Skeeter's (remember the dirt skiing?).