Proud, jealous, lost....

BG is doing well. We even had rain the other night, at least four hours overnight and I lay in bed with a smile on my face listening to it coming down. Unfortunately I got up her field in the morning and it looked as though it hadn't rained at all, it was still pale, dry and dusty with cracks running through the earth. More rain please.

Yesterday morning we got up there to find her lying down again, only this time she was flat out. I don't think I have ever seen her lying flat out, normally she has her neck up and is resting on her chin. So I was a little concerned when I first glanced up the field to see her. Then one of her hind legs started moving as if she were galloping in her dream, I'd love to know what she was thinking of.

The biggest thing in the last few days though is watching my husband with her a couple of nights ago. I tend to go and get her food whilst she makes her way down the field and he wanders across to her shelter. Quite often recently she has paused on her way down and waited for him so she could follow him around the scary corner (I think there's some animal in the hedge and it's been un-nerving her). That night she made her way over to the shelter quite happily, but then she doesn't like him touching her and will swing her back on my husband.

Tough, she did that to him the other night so I said that she would have to like him and come near him as he was going to put the head collar on her before her food again. She went into the shelter with him, but when he tried to show her the head collar she swung round and exited. I don't know if she thought I still had the food or what, but she followed me back in and I shut the door. So my husband tried again and she swung her bottom round on him and stubbornly stared at the wall. I told him he might well have to leave with the food and re-enter to try again, and then I went to go and do another job and leave them to it. She needs to learn he won't give up and when he asks her to have her head collar on she has to do it or no food. That's the same rule with me.

I stood outside the shelter feeling a little lost as I wasn't involved and couldn't see what was going on. I could hear my husband encouraging her as she obviously made another attempt to get up the courage to have the head collar on. It sounded like she tried, then backed out again. Then he did it. It didn't take her long to come round for him at all, so perhaps I was also a little jealous that she behaved so promptly for him when I thought she was going to be really stubborn.

Lastly, once she had eaten, my husband led her back out to the field. He got out of the shelter and then switched to lead her from her right (which she isn't too confident about even now). The ease at which he turned her and the fact she respected him and kept to that side made me proud of the way the two of them were interacting. That and him getting the head collar on BG despite her protest made me proud. It is good to know she will be in capable hands if I can't make it up there one day soon. My husband is now only the third person to get a head collar on her in nine years. So I am proud of him, if feeling a little lost that I wasn't needed.