Details as promised

As stated in my previous post, Vegas is pretty good about approaching me so that I can put the halter on.  Sometimes she chooses not to approach but let's me approach her, a few times she decided that she didn't want to be caught and left, resulting in more movement for her.  In case you're wondering, I'm not round-penning her to the point of exhaustion or even real submission, only to the point where she decides that it's just easier to stand. 

So, since she was doing so well with catching, we worked on those feet.  She is so damn stubborn.  Eventually I was able to get both front feet up and picked out, with a very rough trim on her worse front left foot.  She was very good for it, but my hands were not really up to the task - her hoof wall is so thick that I wasn't able to get the nippers to go all the way through at the toe.  I actually pulled a muscle in my hand (ow!) trying to get them through. The plan now is to work on them a little every day until my fave farrier is scheduled to be back in town, which is unfortunately two Sundays from now. 

Finally, I decided it was time to treat all of those marks on her face, chest, neck and belly. I waited for a few reasons, the main one being that I wasn't sure she'd accept my touch on these sensitive areas.  But yesterday afternoon, I was feeling pretty confident so I threw her some hay and then got out the MTG and a rag.  I started shaking the bottle before I got to the round pen, and you would have thought that I was shooting off Roman candles.  She nearly flipped out, snorting and blowing, about that damn bottle.  I had not anticipated this.  So I spent a good 30-40 minutes desensitizing her to a bottle being shaken.  Then to a rag...It didn't help that every time she sniffed, she got a noseful of that awful MTG smell.  Eventually she let me put on the halter, then she reluctantly allowed me to treat all of her yucky spots. It was obviously very tough for her though, geez.

So, I've come to the conclusion that Vegas at this point has pretty much reverted into a wild thing again.  At one point she was fine living in a stall, being handled, having her feet trimmed, being doctored, etc.  But being turned out for months with no one laying a hand on her has obviously had an effect.  Although we are making progress, it is obvious that her heart lies with the other horses and that she tolerates me because she has to.  This is not what I expected but is an interesting challenge nonetheless.