go boys go!

Andrew was given a challenge this past fall; by the woman who spun alpaca fiber, to go head to head in a goat driving competition at a small local fair - he accepted and has started with Buckley. Buckley has been in the harness before but not with anything attached to it, much less dragging behind him but Andrew could ask anything of Buckley and he'd try it. The weather here had been glorious recently so we've been outside a lot and it seemed like a good choice to give it a whirl today. We got part of the harness on backwards, but not to worry, it was the part that would have held the shafts (which we didn't have or use) and Buckley didn't seem to mind. We've been working with Buckley on commands when he's got a halter and lead on; commands like walk on, whoa and stand, so he was familiar with those and took to this whole experience like a duck to water. At first I walked beside Buckley to give support to Andrew's command with the halter and lead he had on in addition to the pulling harness and reins, then I stepped back to see how things would go and they went pretty good. Andrew would give a command and Buckley responded pretty quickly so we responded with praise, a scratch, or both! Once we got outside his comfort zone in relation to being so far away from his herd he started acting up, we turned around shortly after trying not to let him think naughty behavior gets him back to the herd. Goats are pretty smart you know. Andrew and I will work on tweaking the pulling apparatus, this worked for today but not ideal, we've got some ideas and will work in those in the next few weeks so stay tuned!