
I had a few spare moments this afternoon, so decided to give Gypsy another chance at loading into the trailer. After some grooming and a few games with her, we eventually made it over to the trailer. She was not too interested in approaching so I just let her make it there in

her own time and working through her thresholds. As soon as she did make it up to the open end of the trailer I backed her up and let her graze a bit. I then asked her to reapproach a few more times and backed her up a few more times. Eventually I got her to put her front end in and backed her up. This was the first time she's done that without me being IN the trailer first and asking

her to follow. Yay! Then the next time I asked her to go in the trailer, she went right in. But then immediately backed out. I must have asked her into the trailer over 30 times after that and each time she either went in half-way and backed out or in all the way and immediately backed out. I was having trouble finding a way to get her actually stand still in there for a few seconds before backing out, but couldn't figure out how. I remember Don Halladay saying if the horse comes out 100 times, you load 101 times. Well, I lost count, but I think it may have been around 40 when she went in and stopped and looked around. I rubbed her with the carrot stick and asked her to back out. Then I led her

away and let her graze some grass. Inside of me was an EXPLOSION of emotion. I know it was such as small thing, but it was HUGE! I was almost at the point where I was starting to get frustrated and was thinking of calling it quits before I did something stupid and ruined any progress we made. When she looked back at me in the trailer she was TOTALLY asking me "is this what I'm supposed to do?" I was jumping up and down inside. It was such a good feeling. We ended with that.
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