Grabbity

Today I decided that small children have the right of it.  The word is not "gravity" it's "grabbity" because it sure as heck feels like someone GRABBED me and body slammed me into the ground today.  I had a lovely, long ride around the neighborhood on Tina yesterday and today hubby wanted us to both go riding down the road a little ways for a change of pace.  We've done this with Tina and Traveller a few times and Traveller has been ok as long as Tina's there with him.  We even put in a new little trail through the cedar to the road so that the horses don't have to go on the crushed stone driveway since it seems to bother them so much and I was kind of looking forward to trying it out. 

We didn't ride that far, maybe 10 minutes or so, when we turned back for home.  Tina was doing her speed walking trying to hurry so I thought what the heck, Traveller's done this route a few times now, he should be ok, and asked him for a little trot to catch up.  He frickin bucked!  I had one of those moments where you have a split second to think, hung on tight trying to find the right moment and spot to go flying off and, thank goodness, managed to miss being splatted on the pavement.  I almost stuck the landing in the grass but I came down on one foot before the other so it crumpled under me leaving me with what feels like a sprained ankle.  But I gritted my teeth and got back on. 

At that point I was DONE, absolutely DONE with gentle and nice so when he started doing some little half bucks I really clamped down on those reins and put him back on his hind!  We've got a super gentle bit on him so I didn't feel bad nipping another incident of me taking a flying lesson in the bud.  I just want to cry!  This is really eroding my riding confidence!  Yeah I got back on and made him behave but I got off and walked him the last little bit to the pasture because I was scared he'd do it again when he got in sight of Brother and Nugget. 

Once we got in the gate I got back up on him.  He stopped at the post where I tacked him up like he thought he was all done but I gave him a good nudge in the ribs and made him keep walking!  Oh he didn't like it!  He tried to stop where Tina was being unsaddled, stop again at his spot, walk at a super reluctant slow, cut corners, speed up to get to Tina or his spot faster...UGH!  I finally had Eric hand me a crop and the next time he tried to stop I popped him one.  He startled and I had to clamp down on the reins again.  For some reason his whoas have gotten bad so for awhile I just did walk and whoas trying to work my courage up enough for a trot.  I was so scared that he'd buck again if I asked him to trot and honestly I'm terrified that my luck may be running out!  I've been HURT plenty bad during the few times he's thrown me but I haven't been really INJURED yet. 

I came really close to chickening out, just stopping the ride without asking for a trot at all, but when I finally just made myself do it everything was fine!  Sure I had to cluck and squeeze more than once because I was trying to ease him into it but for a second he gave me a really gorgeous, soft, dreamy trot!  It turned into his ugly trot, fast, choppy, bouncy, doesn't want to be controlled but for a second it was like letting out a great, big, pent up sigh of relief.  What the heck goes on in their minds?

Time off

We weren't able to ride for a few days so Thursday I insisted that I had to ride or I'd implode.  As we were tacking up unexpected guests arrived but I was determined to get at least a quick ride!  Eric rode Tina, I rode Traveller, and we both experienced some of the same things, horses acting bratty.  Neither of them did anything awful but they had a general "do we gottaaaaa???  Why can't we just have a cookie insteaaaaad???" attitude trying to stop, go, and turn where and when they wanted to instead of when we asked them.  It seems a few days off are not good for these two at this point!

So Friday I gave both of them a more thorough ride.  The last time I asked for a canter on Traveller he threw me off so on him I'm doing a lot of work at the walk and trot, cantering we practice on a long line in the round pen.  I felt confident enough on Tina to ask for a canter for the first time and it wasn't too bad!  Eric was watching and said she has a "really funny lope" but it felt ok for a first time.  I really want an arena!  Right now I can either ride off our property on Tina (not on Traveller yet!) which means I have to keep it at a walk or in a space in the pasture which I know is safe for them but hard, uneven, and I have to keep a lookout for rocks.  It makes it tough for me to figure out what's going on with them exactly.  Is this "funny lope" her normal stride, being a stinker, feeling unconfident, or a bit of uneven ground? 

Yesterday we had to go work on my friend's garden.  She has a bad back so she asked us to put in a raised garden for her which we're doing with the wonderful natural rock that's plentiful on our land.  We finished laying the concrete footer for it at about 10pm then we had a two hour drive back home.  I'm so sore today and my poor hands!  Ladies, if you want beautiful, soft hands never have anything to do with concrete because that stuff will just eat your hands up!  I'm really hoping we can get this done in the next month or two because our next project is going to be my arena!  But even sore and not having an ideal place to ride I gotta get back up in the saddle sometime today. 

More training

Brother STILL has his shoes on!!  I had to get that off my chest because this is the longest he's ever kept shoes on for us! lol  And it's because of those shoes that I'm able to get Brother back into training.  So far it's just been the leading exercises that we started last week but today I got him back into the round pen.  I only had him go for maybe 15 minutes, most of that just walking in both directions, and only a few turns around each direction at a trot then ended it with a little more leading practice.  He didn't even breathe harder but I want to take it slow and build him back up.  I've finally got him at the weight I want him to be so I hope he doesn't start losing it again!

Traveller I walked and trotted in both directions to start.  His trot is really coming along very nicely!  He's beginning to relax and give me more of a very soft, smooth, floaty trot that's so wonderful to ride.  His canter, on the other hand, needs some serious work.  His last owner really loved for him to go super fast while I'm not as concerned for speed as much as quality of movement.  While I was riding him once I cued him to canter and he very smoothly bounced his back end in the air throwing me right off.  Now I know that if I'd only asked him to canter in the round pen I could've seen straight off that I wasn't ready to ride him at a canter.  He seems to get very irritated when asked to canter, tossing his head around, often breaking down into a crazy fast trot.  A work in progress like everything else!

Catching up

Labor Day my hind end!  It's been nothing but busier than a one legged man in a butt kickin contest for me since my last post!  I did manage to get a little time in with the horses though!  Friday Brother was a bit limpy in one of his front feet but I figured it was just tender from all the work the farrier did on him.  Sure enough it seemed better later in the day and was gone Saturday.  He's still got the shoes on!  Keep your fingers crossed that he manages to keep them on at least until his poor bruised feet can heal up! 

Sunday I watched a few Ken McNab shows where he demonstrated how he teaches his horses to follow his movements when being lead instead of pulling the horse along by the lead rope.  It seems so silly basic but I realized how often we have to twirl the rope at one of ours while we're leading them somewhere because they get those I-don't-wanna sticky feet.  This was the subject of Nugget and Brother's first training session since it really is so basic and would be easy enough on their couch potato-like present stamina! 

The goal is to keep the horse's head roughly even with your shoulder with you leading from their left side.  You want them to move with you as you move, to read your body language to figure out which way you're going to go.  When you lean forward as if starting to walk off if the horse doesn't move with you reach behind with a *insert your own training tool here* (I used a dressage whip) to wave at/tickle/tap the girth area to get them moving forward with you.  When you back up if the horse doesn't step back tap the ground in front of their feet, escalate to tapping their front legs if you have to, until they back up.  To turn left you simply turn left and tap their hindquarters away if they don't move with you.  If you want to turn right turn into their head/neck and push it away to make them move over for you.  Seems simple enough, right???  

Nugget didn't really get it, maybe she just doesn't want to get it?  I don't know how to tell the difference yet.  She caught on to how to go forward with me, though I had to keep correcting her for getting ahead of me, and she kinda sorta got backing when I walked backwards.  Actually she caught on to taking one step back if I tapped her front legs firmly but she wouldn't progress to two steps.  To give her legs a break from all the tapping I tried turns which didn't go well at all.  When I tried to turn right she was really dull to me pushing her head away like she didn't care and was perfectly content to be pushed.  Turning left was worse since she overreacted to me tapping at her butt like I'd thrown a rattlesnake at her.  After awhile I was getting a little frustrated so did a few more backing steps and ended with lots of forward to give me an excuse to give her lots of praises and pats.  Maybe next time will be better. 

Brother, on the other hand, was my big super star with this exercise!  After not being trained at all for so long I had to stop fairly often to reassure him that he was doing a great job because he kept blowing out hard like it was scary to him.  He got the general idea very quickly on all four directions though which was very gratifying.

Tina got a break but I decided I needed to do a little riding.  I just did not feel like lugging the saddle out so instead I took a ride with Traveller bareback.  I didn't know if he'd ever had someone on him without a saddle so I stood on the ladder I mount from with one leg slung over his back for awhile to see how he'd react.  He really wasn't bad, seemed more surprised than anything, and stayed quiet after a moment of shifting around a bit.  I eased the rest of me onto him and voila! 

If you've never tried riding bareback I heartily recommend it!  It's not something I'd want to do all the time but it's definitely one more fun thing you can do with your horse from time to time.  I also really think that at some point when you're learning to ride riding bareback is a very valuable learning experience!  You can feel SO much more of how the horse moves and holds himself, you can learn a ton about your seat and how to move with the horse, and it really forces you to improve your balance. 

With the first few steps I learned that I've been sitting too far forward on my pelvis because I was like a weeble wobble!  When I rolled my pelvis so I was closer to sitting on my jean's pockets I was way more stable.  That last trainer I worked with told me a few times to "sit on [my] pockets" but I didn't truly get it till I felt it on Traveller the other day.  I may've brought my knees forward too bringing them out of line but I couldn't really tell and since I felt so much more secure I kept at it.  All in all it was loads of fun and I think my riding made a step in the right direction.

Feet

Tomorrow the farrier comes out to trim up Tina and Traveller's feet.  Having all four horses done at once is a bit of a strain on our budget so we just do two at a time every 6-8 weeks or so.  Thank goodness Tina and Traveller don't have any problems with having their feet worked on!  It's easy to get them to pick one up and after that they automatically pick up the next one in line for you.  As a matter of fact Traveller once picked up his next foot for me before I was ready, was pawing it around a little expecting me to grab it, and almost set it down on my foot!  And they both do so great barefoot!  I'd swear that they don't really need to be trimmed yet but by the calendar it's time.  I'd rather stay on a schedule to keep them well maintained then to start a problem that can go downhill in a hurry.

Brother and Nugget still need work on having their feet handled though they're much better than when we first got them.  At first they were obviously very nervous about the whole thing, refusing to pick up their feet, trying to jerk them away, breaking out in a sweat, and such.  Poor babies haven't had good foot handling experiences in their past.  I hear that's not really uncommon with racing horses, that too often the track farriers are too rough with them.  Even though Brother was just trimmed a few weeks ago he's getting more and more limpy looking on his fronts and his hooves are so chewed up looking already!  We've ordered some supplements for him and we're going to have our farrier look at his feet again tomorrow.  I'll get some before and after pictures and let you know how it goes. 

A new step

Last night I started reading a new book, Discovering Natural Horsemanship by Tom Moates.  It's not a step-by-step how-to book, it's more the story of one man's journey falling in love with horses, trying to learn everything he can to improve his relationship with them, his successes and failures along the way.  Even though it's not a training manual there are lots of great nuggets of horse sense to be gleaned from it's pages and when I finished devouring it this morning I found that more than anything else it made me rethink some of the things I've been doing.  For instance, I've been so in love with having horses I can actually ride I haven't stopped to consider if I should ride them. 

I completely passed up any groundwork with Tina and Traveller.  It's pretty obvious though that their previous owner not only didn't do groundwork with them but by and large let them develop bad ground manners, walking off, being spoiled and pushy.  In the months we've had Tina and Traveller I've fallen off of Traveller once when he bolted, he bucked me once, Tina acts like she'd like me to fall over dead, and Traveller isn't interested in hanging around me unless I have cookies to offer.  Something fundemental needs to change in my relationship with these two in order for me to have the type of connection I want to have with them one day.  If groundwork is the foundation and I basically skip it I'm building on a faulty foundation and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how that's going to end up!

When I went out everyone come up to the fence but when they figured out an early dinner wasn't forthcoming Traveller and Tina wandered back over to munch on their hay.  I totally ignored them and spent some extra time brushing and petting Brother then Nugget.  By the time I was halfway through grooming Nugget Traveller had come up just behind her and was watching me.  By inches he got closer and closer to me and I kept right on fussing over Nugget pretending that I didn't notice Traveller at all.  When I was done with Nugget I turned and just started brushing him.  Normally unless he was haltered and tied off he'd move around too much trying to nose me for cookies for me to be able to groom him but this time he stood fairly quiet.

Then I took out one of the little broken up bits of cookie I had in my pocket for him.  As soon as he took it I turned my back and walked off towards the round pen with him following.  There are two things I've learned about Traveller so far, he's scared of whips, crops, stick and strings, or pretty much anything that resembles them  and he hates being made to go round in that round pen.  So my goal for today was to not use any kind of tool but myself and a few cookies to get him to enter the round pen of his own free will and maybe have a little fun.  When I got to the round pen I stood in the gate.  Traveller stopped before I reached the gate, safely out of arm's reach, and was looking at me again.  He really seemed to be thinking whether the bit of cookie I held out was worth getting any closer to that hated pen but after a few moments his mouth won and he came over to the pen for his nibble.  Then I went into the round pen, held out a bit of cookie, and after a moment he again followed.  He was in!

I've always loved watching people with their horses at liberty when the horse willingly follows the person around even tossing their head, kicking out their feet, playing and just genuinely having a good time together.  I don't know how they did it exactly but today at least I was using Traveller's cookie lust!  He stood and watched as I walked two horse lengths or so away.  I held out a cookie bit, he walked up to get it.  I walked off a little ways again, held out a cookie piece, but this time when he started towards me to get it I started walking away.  He stopped right away and just stared at me with a "what the heck" look on his face.  He recovered from his surprise pretty quickly though, started towards me, and I again walked away.  I went faster and faster until he was chasing me around the pen at a trot.  That didn't last very long, I'm not very fit right now, so he got his cookie bit! lol

Because he's so pushy with his head I decided to work on him yielding different body parts starting with that.  I remembered what I knew about stating with very light pressure and increasing it only until they gave even the tiniest bit and then releasing right away.  I touched his neck right up next to his head with my fingertips, pressed harder till he barely moved his head away and removed my fingers the instant he moved his head.  He caught on to this pretty fast, I only had to push my fingers in fairly firmly a few times before I only had to touch my fingertips to that spot and he'd move his head away.

Then I went to his shoulder.  This one seemed much harder for him to understand for some reason.  Several times when I got to the point of pressing very hard he'd try taking a step back.  I tried to stay consistent holding the pressure if he stepped back and only releasing if he stepped either front feet even a little bit to the side.  He sort of got it, not very well but I didn't want to make the mistake of boring or frustrating him by asking him to get it perfect before I let up. 

When I got to his rump he turned into a horsey genius!  I only had to press firmly a few times before I was following his hindquarters in a circle with only a light touch.  I did the same three spots on his other side, played another quick game of chase-me-for-the-cookie and stopped.  He's a very intelligent horse, you can just see him thinking when he stops and watches you, and hopefully I engaged his brain and curiousity a little today.  I think it was a really good session!  Now if I can just figure out the best approach to use with Tina!

Get it together

Now that school has started it's even harder to find a good time to work on the horses.  Because my sweet hubby has such a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep we're the sort that don't usually wake up until the crack of noon which means that horsey time is in the cooler part of the evening.  But that means that we're trying to pack feeding horses, kiddo homework, eating dinner, going to pick up our oldest son from band practice, and riding into just a few hours.  I could get up early to work with them but that means that dear hubs gets left out.  Ah well it's starting to cool off so I'm sure it'll get easier and easier to go out more in the afternoons.  How do others deal with this, I wonder?  I guess after work they just tough it out whatever the heat is and do it.  I guess we gotta get our act together!

Sweet hubby definitely wants to regain his riding skill and confidence plus riding would be so good for him so I definitely want to include him in working with the horses as much as possible!  Yesterday he graduated to riding on his own outside the round pen for about a half hour or so.  Yay for my sweetie!!  He thinks it's kinda funny because we actually got Tina for me and Traveller for him but where he's at right now Traveller intimidates him a bit so he's been riding Tina.  I can't blame him, if I stop to think about it Traveller intimidates me a bit!  Which is exactly why I don't allow myself to stop and think about that part of things while I'm riding him! lol  He's just young and green still, I'm not so young but just as green which could be a bad combination.  Thank goodness he's really a very gentle horse that just needs a little "continuing education."

I'm happy that one of our son's, Stephen, is developing an interest in riding too.  Stephen always had severe asthma and some minor heart problems, SVT, and so was never a really athletic kid.  Thankfully he seems to have outgrown the asthma pretty much and last year had heart surgery which seems to have cleared up his bouts of SVT!  If only changing his couch potato ways was as easy!  But the last two nights he's gone out with me to ride Tina some and says he really enjoys it.  I'll be so relieved if he continues to come out and ride so that I know he's doing something nice and active finally!  But that also means if the two of them keep riding more and more on Tina the more we'll probably need another horse.  Tina is in her teens and I don't want to push her past what she can comfortably do.  So I'll have to dive back into training Brother and Nugget which once again means I gotta get it together!  Whew, I wish I had someone to worry about pushing me past what I can comfortably do! lol

Ouch!

Yesterday we took it kinda easy.  We tacked Tina up and Eric actually got on her!  This was his first time back on a horse after nearly being killed in a fall from Brother.  I lead him around a bit for him to remember the feel and he did wonderfully.  I was so happy with Tina for being on her best behavior for him!  It helped him start to feel safe in the saddle again.  After just that very easy, short ride we made a big fuss over her then let her amble over to the others to share in their evening hay.

Tonight I was pleased that he wanted to try again and it went just as nicely.  I lead him around the round pen a few times and then he felt comfortable enough to take the reins on his own.  When Tina's in the pen where she can see the other horses she has an excellent whoa so if he started feeling at all unbalanced he asked her to stop which she did immediately.  I think that really helped him a lot in feeling safe and starting to regain some confidence.  Even in this heat she wasn't sweated at all with such an easy ride so we just untacked her and let her loose again.  Then came Traveller's turn.

From the very start he was being oddly twitchy.  When Eric put the saddle pad up Traveller suddenly spun his hindquarters to the side as if trying to avoid it and wouldn't be still for the saddle either.  I figured it's just been a few days since I've ridden him so he was just being a stinker about going back to work after a little break and he'd settle down.  We just did walk-trots in the round pen for awhile.  He has a very jarring, fast trot so I've been working on getting him to slow down and smooth out a bit.  I honestly don't know how you're supposed to teach them how to do this but whenever his trot gets fast and bouncy I've been pulling back on the reins, immediately giving him slack reins for a slower, smoother trot, occassionally stopping him when he's giving me a nice trot for a little breather.  It seems to be working as far as I can tell!  It still needs a lot of work but he's giving me the nice trot more often and for a bit longer than when we first started working on it.  Encouraged by this small success I decided to be brave and at least try a bit of a canter.

I waited until he was giving me the nice trot then cued for a canter.  He broke into a really fast, long legged trot just shy of a canter, I could swear I felt a stride of canter maybe, so I pulled him back down to try again.  When I thought his trot was good I asked for a canter.  I might've gotten two strides of a canter before his back end flipped up and I was on the ground.  He bucked?  He really BUCKED?!  Ugh!  When the initial overwhelming ow wore off I discovered that I wasn't injured.  A scraped elbow, two fingers, and the suspicion that I'll probably be a bit sore tomorrow makes me pretty darn lucky!  So I secured his reins and started working him around the round pen.

After only a few times around at a trot he decided that he'd like to go the other way so he simply turned his happy butt around.  W-R-O-N-G!  Right away I jumped in front of him with a big "uh uh!", smacked the ground in his path with the lunge whip and turned him back the way I had asked him to go.  Now he acted a bit agitated and looking to the sides for a way out so to distract him I stepped in front of him and asked him to reverse.  Very soon he tried to reverse on his own again and again I made him keep going the direction I wanted him to go the same way as before.  Suddenly he stuck his whole head and neck through the bars of the pen and with a big push and buck he tore right through our round pen!  The cry baby ran straight to Nugget and half hid behind her like we'd been beating him!  When we went to get him he ran tossing his head and kicking up his feet but thankfully he ran right into the side pen.  It took a minute of chasing him around before we caught him.  I couldn't believe how he was acting! 

We took him right back into that round pen!  I lunged him for awhile then Eric lunged him around when I got tired.  Traveller was literally dripping sweat (weren't we all!) and we'd raised a huge cloud of dust in the air when he finally started really licking his lips and acting more obedient.  I was done in but made myself get back up on him.  When we walked past the big hole in our round pen he really tried to go out through it but after about three or four times in each direction of me very firmly not letting him slip out he only looked out as we went past.  We untacked him, gave him a really good hosing off, a cookie and a pat before going inside.  Whew!

Plus two makes a herd

While my husband was recovering from his broken ribs I met a lady on Facebook with horses and we hit it off.  Not very long ago she decided that she needed to cut back on the number of horses she had for health reasons and asked if I knew anyone who might be interested.  ME!!  ME!!  PICK ME!!  Of course I told her I was interested!!  She offered me several wonderful horses and I wished I could take all of them but hopefully I chose wisely.

One was an Egyptian Arab gelding that simply took my breath away with his beauty, I admit that I have a soft spot for the look of Arabs, but he was young, just green broke.  With regret I passed on him thinking that at my utter newbie level of training and really rusty riding skills he and I would probably not be the best match. 

Another was a lovely little Paso Fino mare.  She was bred to a drop dead gorgeous Andalusian and who wouldn't want an adorable little foal too???  *sigh*  I turned down this exciting two-for-one too.  The mare was wonderful but I felt like a foal, while loads of adorable fun, wasn't the best choice for us.  If something went wrong with the delivery the vet bill could get insanely expensive, I'd feel so awful if the mare or foal weren't ok, and again, at my rank beginner level of training I didn't want the added work of training a foal.

She really wanted me to consider Tina, a Paso Fino mare.  Tina was taken out of an abusive situation with a lacerated tongue and deep dislike of people.  Carol babied her and worked hard to bring Tina back around.  She said she really hoped I'd take Tina because she knew I'd be good to her and she really needed to know that Tina was safe and loved.  After running my rescue for so many years I knew exactly what she meant.  We want that for all of our animals, we'd never purposely rehome them into an abusive situation, but when you take an animal out of an abusive situation, work that hard to heal their body and mind, and make that unspoken promise that they will never, ever be treated so badly again it somehow just raises your desire to protect them. 

My husband was most interested in Traveller, a Mustang/Quarter Horse gelding.  Carol warned us that he had an extremely dominant personality and would almost certainly insist on being boss of any other horses.  I worried that he and Brother might clash.  He was also fairly young so I was concerned about being able to continue his training.  I have to admit, though, that I just loved his looks, very sturdy with nice legs and these wonderful, huge, tough hooves.  Not only was he exactly the type of horse that my husband liked he was also the spitting image of the Mustang my husband rode as a child which brought back sweet memories for him. 

In the end we agreed on taking both Tina and Traveller home for a trial period just to see how things would work out.  We had a good laugh about just how much Carol babied her horses and that she didn't call her place "The No Rib Ranch" for nothin!  Tina and Traveller were both rather roly-poly!  We got home, got them unloaded into the pen we had prepared, and waited breathlessly for the first muzzle to muzzle meeting with Brother and Nugget over the fence.  It was nothing unusual but still a thing of wonder to us with lots of sniffing, squealing, bitey-face play.

We had planned on leaving Tina and Traveller in the pen for at least a week before trying to introduce Brother and Nugget without the fence between all of them but within a few days they were all so calm and easy around each other.  They all stood close together just relaxing as if they were already a group and the fence wasn't even there so we decided to see what would happen.  We took Nugget into the pen first since she has a very passive personality and were delighted at how easily the three took to each other!  Traveller insisted on pushing her around the pen a little but Nugget didn't seem to mind so they all calmed down very quickly.

Then we brought Brother in holding our breath along with various ropes and whips that we hoped we wouldn't need.  Traveller started marching purposefully towards Brother.  Brother turned his butt towards Traveller and I swear I could hear him thinking "yep, you come right over here and I'm gonna show you who's boss at this house!"  When Traveller got close enough he turned his butt towards Brother backing up the last step.  Brother got his kick off just a split second before Traveller but when Traveller's kick landed Brother jumped out of his skin in complete surprise and ran like he'd been scalded!  We felt bad for Brother's injured pride but couldn't help rolling with laughter.  When everyone settled down we seperated everyone back out and went inside.

A little later that day we heard a commotion and went to see what was going on.  Traveller was out of the pen chasing Brother and poor Brother was running like the devil himself was on his tail!  We put Traveller back up and watched.  Traveller promptly went to the gate, did some amazing horsey-limbo thing that I'm still not sure should be physically possible to squeeze under the bottom rail, and was right back on Brother's tail.  Well we had tools, opposible thumbs, and big brains so that would be no problem to fix!  I guess no one told Traveller that he wasn't supposed to be able to outsmart us because our fix absolutely didn't hold him in!  We fixed and fixed all that day until finally we had a pen that would hold Traveller in as long as we were watching him and discovered we didn't need the pen anymore since Traveller stopped chasing Brother.  We turned them all out together, watched for any signs of trouble for awhile, then dragged ourselves inside to lick our wounds.