LDivo's progress 7-4-09

LDivo has been with me for 3 weeks today. His progress has been way beyond what I had expected of him. I just cannot get over his willingness to please and his nosey, friendly, curious demeanor. He is much more interested in what I am doing than anything else. Terrie Russell from KOLO 8 and her cameraman, Walker, came out to start filming his progress last Monday. It was LDivo's second trip to the round pen. I saddled him and started my ground driving process. I put a sidepull on him for the first time and then hooked up the driving lines. As I would expect he ran, kicked out, turned around and wrapped the driving lines around himself a couple times and then he figured it out and that was the end. From that day on he has learned to stop nicely, reverse, back up, walk, trot and lope from my verbal cues. Today was the day to introduce him to my paniards, which are saddle packs that go over the saddle. They bounce around, sack him out, and get him used to things bouncing on the saddle. I introduced him to the the white "things" in his pen without a saddle. He looked at it as if to say " so" what? I put them on his bare back. From there I saddled him, put them over the saddle, hooked up the driving lines and off he went. No bucking, spooking, he just did his job as if he had seen that thing forever. I put a jolly ball in each side, they bounced around, stuck out, and again, no big deal.