The ball is part of the training that Allen Pogue uses to engage the youngsters' minds. I can't remember offhand exactly which website I got it from (it cost about $80 and I think it's called EquiSport), but I can look if anyone's interested. It should be on Allen's site at
www.imagineahorse.com although I can't find it off the bat...maybe you can contact him directly.
When I got our first ball (he's managed to burst at least three of the human kind in the last two years!) he was totally disinterested in it, even as a toy. However, when I started using clicker whenever he went near the ball, he started to get really interested in the possibilities and you can see him on my smugmug site in another album really going after the thing! Go to:
http://alphabetranch.smugmug.com/gallery/315229/3 to see them.
Xino is only two years old and won't get shoes for a long time yet. It will be inevitable one day as we have rather rocky trails around here, so having tough feet around here isn't much use.
On a side note, my 27 year old OTTB gelding, G'Donya, has just been diagnosed with recurrent uveitis in his good eye (he lost his sight in the other eye 9 years ago to the same thing) and we're hoping at this point that there's some way to keep the resultant pressure down. The way we discovered it was that he had a swollen eye on Sunday and I figured he must have bashed it and the pupil contracted so much that he was totally blind and I rushed him to the vet, but luckily he seems to be recovering some of the vision thanks to early intervention, although the eye is still cloudy. His under saddle days are by no means over, and hopefully we can resume our outings soon.
Christina
Indian Hills, Colorado
www.AlphabetRanch.com 
