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So welcome to week there.
Here I'm standing on the beautiful university of Florida campus right in
front of the Baomen center, one of the prize buildings on campus.
And this sits around lake Alice.
Lake Alice actually sits on the UF campus where
we actually have our mascot in the water there live.
You know, we, we do have the gators here.
So if you do come visit don't go swimming in lake Alice.
You don't want to get chomped.
Anyways, just to kind of recap week two and heading into week three.
Week three, we're going to jump into a, a topic near and
dear to my heart, you know, animal, going into animal behavior.
Specifically horse behavior.
And I do touch a little bit upon donkey
behavior and, and provide some videos of research we've done.
You know, I did some research with Dr.
Lori Warren our equine nutritionist here at UF.
Looking into foal behavior.
And then I did some work with
the conservation center here in Florida looking at
some Somali wild ass and Grévy's zebra behavior so, so look for that this week.
Just to kind of recap week two Stephanie from
New Jersey has actually got a wonderful thread going.
You know, week one, week two.
And constructive feedback on the course.
You know, some things that you quite
didn't like, or, or quite didn't understand.
And things you would like to see.
And, you know, as, as we push this course further, and
look at redesigning the course after we do this initial run.
You know, we may expand it to eight weeks.
You know, we may go a little but longer than that, we'll
see, based on your feedback, and, you know, also I can sense
the frustration from some of the students in their postings that, you
know, we can't quite go deep enough in some of the material.
And, and again, with these MOOCs, you know these Massive Open Online Courses, you
know, the format is designed to, to,
to, to really kind of be brief with information.
And since this course is designed to be an overview of horse care and donkey
care and use, you know, the, the lectures
are kind of short and the information's kind of short.
So, so I apologize, but, you know, as we look to redesign the course,
you know, I'll definitely look at jumping deeper into some, some of the topics.
Also you know, this, this week has been a
wonderful discussion on, on natural hoof care and shoeing.
Those are things I knew would be a
little bit controversial, you know, because some people are
really passionate, you know, on either side, you
know, but, but the discussions have been, been wonderful.
And I know there was one thread discussing trimming feet, and,
you know, nobody should ever trim their horse's feet unless they're trained.
You know, there is some truth to that.
That, you know, especially if you're trimming feet.
And I've trimmed my own horses.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can harm them.
So, you know, if you're not comfortable,
definitely seek training, talk to your farrier.
But you don't want to jump in there, and just start going
away with a hoof rasp, without really knowing what you're doing.
So that was a wonderful thread.
And, you know Jamie from Iowa, if you're looking for, for
study groups, she actually has started a, a wonderful Facebook group.
So that's really awesome to see.
People getting together from all over the world talking
about horses, and donkeys, and ponies, and, you know,
the, the, the zebras and hybrids it, it's just,
it's just wonderful and it's wonderful this community coming together.
So, you know, please keep the constructive feedback coming.
You know, as we go into week three, you know, we're looking at equine behavior.
For those that have turned in assignments we're going to
ask you to do your, your peer evaluations this week.
So the peer evals are of week twos, you know, hoof care plan.
Stuff like that, and then this week you're going to be putting together a training
plan or just a couple of training
contingencies just to get you thinking about that.
Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
