With Bells On
I put the bells on Rusty’s legs today for the first time. Actually attaching them had become a big scary thing for me. I’m not sure why except for the build up to it. We had worked on having things around his legs before. He’s been playing with the other bells for a long time now. But to have them attached to him seemed so final.
I took him onto one of the corrals and even put his halter and lead rope on. The two combined threw him off a little but he still behaved. I had only attached bells to one of my straps so we started out one leg at a time.
It was about 5 degrees out, but the sun was shinning and the wind wasn’t too bad around the buildings behind the windbreaks. I had bundled my small child up and sent him off to play in the yard. The other two horses got buckets of feed to give them a little extra to keep warm with, and too keep them from getting to mad about Rusty being fed. I thought it was going to work perfect. As I got Rusty separated and ready to go to work the small child showed up at the gate carrying his hat and complaining that his gloves were wet. I had to leave Rusty throwing a fit about being abandoned while the other two ate and get my child bundled up again. I didn’t want to but, well, I have to make some attempt to keep my priorities in order 😉
Once he was dressed warmly again I went back to my horse. We did a quick desensitizing, making sure he was good with the ropes around his legs for sure. We had done all of this before, and had the straps around his ankles just without the bells, but better safe than sorry. I did a quick under the tail with it while we were going anyway. He was good with all of it. Nothing was left but to attach the bells.
Now all I need to do is actually attach the bells to the straps. I thought I could staple them but it’s to thick for the staple to go all the way through. And I need to shorten the belts I’m using for straps. They are woven leather/plastic fake leather stuff so I will need to prevent the weave from unweaving, it’s not going to be overly easy. Looking forward to it though, I should make use of the freezing cold weather this morning and work on that.
Have I mentioned what all this bell stuff is about? Well, I’m not going to now either if I haven’t. But it’s going to be cool. I hope.
You could try wire ties to attach the Bells