Hiding Shelled Application Activity

I have created a program using VB5 that uses the Shell command to launch QuattroPro and then issues a bunch of send key statements to create an analysis report.  While the analysis report is being created in QuattroPro (approx. 5 min.), I would like to display an avi file with an animated hour glass.  My question is, how can I hide what QuattroPro is doing and display the avi file without losing the focus of QuattroPro and thus screwing up the send key statements?  Also, is there any way of disabling the keyboard and mouse so that the user does not interupt the QuattroPro commands in progress?

Thanks,

Don