Vargas elephants in practice #1

Exactly a month ago I ran a series of pictures from the winter of 1989-90 explaining how we wound up in California working on the Circus Vargas elephants during their three week lay off. Since then Dalilah came up with these pictures going into more detail. This is "Joe" now featured with Circus Krone. Gene Holter got him from the LA Zoo in 1972 (where he was called "Dillinger") and sold him to Cliff Vargas the following year. He was trained for the ring by Wally Ross who named him "Colonel" after my dad but this later became "Colonel Joe" and finally just "Joe".