Last week, Odin reached another milestone. While standing in his chute, he met my outstretched hand and asked to be touched all the way up and down his nose and head. I didn’t write about it right away because I didn’t want anyone jumping to conclusions about what this moment meant, or trying it on their own. Odin and I have spent two and a half years together, working regularly toward moments like this. It has taken over a thousand hours to arrive at a single moment of trust like that.
Several days later, we went back into training, and he couldn’t even get into the chute. Not at all. No matter what we tried. What happened? I wondered. More importantly, what am I doing wrong? Why am I unable to understand and meet his needs today?
On the second day, with Butch, we asked him again to stand in the chute, and again he resisted. When that plan failed, we pivoted and brought him to the round pen to work on confidence building. That plan didn’t go according to plan either. We fouled up the lead lines, and one became caught around his neck. We were worried. Had we just created another setback? But Odin stepped up. With courage, he stood in the very chute he had not wanted to enter earlier so that Susan could remove the lead from around his neck. Was it confidence building? I’m not sure. But we all survived the day, and Odin showed us something about himself that I don’t want to overlook.
Two days later, we tried the chute again after a short stint in the round pen to work off a little energy. Again, we met resistance. And again, I found myself wondering what I was missing—what I wasn’t understanding, what I might be asking of him that he wasn’t ready to give, how I could better meet him where he was, and most quizzically, how I could figure out what he was actually ready for that day without inflicting damage while trying to get there.
But this time, eventually, Odin figured it out for himself. He got himself into the chute. Yes, he got apples and praise. But more importantly, he got this…
And so did I.
Odin 