This message is from: Cynthia_Madden/OAA/UNO/[EMAIL PROTECTED] To Terry, Regarding Patrick's ground manners/dominance issues. When we got Tank as a 2-year old, he had never been halter broken. We used Linda Tellington-Jones TTeam methods to teach him and had great success. If you do not have access to her books or tapes, let me know. In fact, Tank has apparently forgotten some of what he knows about this over the winter and we are about to start a little retraining session, especially before my granddaughters come to visit.
If anyone has any good ideas about the mouthiness issue, I would like to know about it. It is Tank's only real irritating trait. I know a lot of Fjords are like this. One of my favorite images of Blue Earth is seeing the Fjords in their stalls standing in the corner so that four of them can have nose conversations. Cyber evaluations - Tank and I have discussed this. He is perfectly willing to share the limelight with Gunther. He doesn't care what you say about him as long as you ARE talking about him. I can't wait to hear what Julie will have to report after her visit to Norway. On evalutions - As Tank is a gelding, I have no plans to enter him in a evaluation other than if it becomes a "vanity" issue. I do feel they are essential for breeders and it behooves (is that orginally a horse term?) non-breeders who have Fjords to know what constitutes a "good" Fjord. The shows at Woodstock, Turlock, Libby and Blue Earth are times for everyone to get together to show off their horses and have fun! They are very much family occassions. My granddaughters come every year for Blue Earth and have a blast. I compare Blue Earth to a chataqua event. I hope that more evaluations can be made available to breeders and the issue of their availability is important given their numbers and geographic spread. Another point of evaulations is to recognize stallions that are superior for breeding. I for one want to hear a big cheer for geldings! They are always there for you - not worried about mares or babies or seasons, just about their next meal. More geldings are a good thing. They are very marketable as using horses. Let's have the best stallions for breeding and the best geldings for using and lets have lots of places to show them off so that the public wants to buy them! But don't forget we need good quality mares also. Cynthia Madden, Coordinator Office of Sponsored Programs & Research University of Nebraska at Omaha
