Foot Rot and Water on What Brain I have Left

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by Not-Herneschase @ 2008-01-22 - 20:17:07

... and still it comes. Rain, rain, rainity-rain! But at least the grass is the right colour again and it is visibly growing so who am I to moan. Oh yeah I am hingerlish and genetically programmed to moan about the weather :))

Today is an intense one. We have to continue the training of the poor beleaguered calves for Sunday's Agricultural Show. During the first three days we had progressed from mule-like to not quite so mule-like so the children were becoming quite dis-heartened. Yesterday morning one of them - Gracey - had gone on complete work to rule. Time for a change of tactics :idea:

Yesterday afternoon I spent 2 hours sitting on the floor of a stable looking at my feet. It worked. They came up to me and had a lick of my wellies. Then I brought the 'Not Girls' in and they sat quietly too which was quite an effort for my girls :)) (another half an hour) The next stage was to put lead reins on them and sit quietly (another half an hour) and then the big move outside into the yard for 'walking up and down' training!

By 5pm we had them both able to walk independently without 'Gracey calf' performing her big Rodeo leaps and pulling Mog or I across the yard.

We did, of course, adopt an quite controversial training method into our regime. "The Labrador Cow" technique©! Never heard of it Lindow? Well it's like this:

Step One: Cuddle your black Labrador who apparently does a passable impression of a baby Dexter!

Step Two: Put him on a lead and walk him up and down.

Step Three: Lead the Dexters up and down behind him (calling the Labrador a 'good cow' throughout the process is an optional extra!).

Step Four: Tie one of the calves to the fence and just perform the exercise with the Labrador and one heifer.

Step Five: Alternate heifers

Step Six: Send Labrador home for his tea and work with the heifers on their own. Works like a dream.

So today, I am under no illusion that we will have to start all over again from the beginning. I hope Gus is up to another day as a Labrador-Cow :crazy: