Yippee! What a fantastic day!
It was trimming day and Seymour finally got his back hoof trimmed for the first time! (This is a donkey who came to me very frightened, head shy and hadn’t been trimmed in years!). For non donkey folk – donkeys are very good at kicking and can even kick sideways and forwards!
All my patience, clicker training, desensitisation and counter conditioning to pretty much everything – being touched, bending over his feet, voluntarily offering to lift his hoof, having strange scary people touch him and ask him to lift his hoof, like my wonderful trimmer Tanya French. A big thank you to Tanya, I couldn’t have done it without you on Seymour’s team! She listened to me and to Seymour and she trusted that I’d done the training to be safe to bend down and ask Seymour to give her his back hoof (and not kick her head in!) We got it done and I am so thrilled and Seymour is so much more comfortable now, he was very sore on that foot.
His fronts got trimmed too and he just gets better and better every time with them.
It’s been such a long road with him and he is really starting to bloom. He even let me give him a really good scratch and massage all along his back and he relaxed into it and let his head droop all the way down to the ground. That’s probably another first for him, to really let himself enjoy my touch.
I think he’s turned a corner in his trust of people, thanks to Tanya and myself showing him that people can help him feel better. He feels so much better with 3 beautifully trimmed little donkey feet.
Onward to that last tootsie and he’ll be like a brand new donkey! 
