Sunday, January 30, 2011

No Pattern Progress

Now I remember why I had trouble with patterns, I spend all of my riding time with thresholds. After the great day I had yesterday, I figured I was going to be following the rail, point to point, corners game, etc. Well, Can Do had other ideas and was worried about everything in the arena. I got to thinking about it and it is the same thing with Gizmo. So now that I've discovered the obvious, I need to do approach and retreat. If I recall correctly, the reason I thought Can Do needed Parelli was because I could never take her out alone. She never wanted to leave the other horses and my ride was miserable. If others were trail riding with me she was fine and a joy to ride. So I'm backing up my journey a little and putting in the time to get that fixed. Reading horses is so much more important than I ever realized. I'm licking and chewing on that for awhile and I'll let you know how it turns out.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Pattern Progress

I just finished a lesson with Can Do and she did great. Why did she do great? That is because I just finished watching the new savvy club DVD and I had a BFO. I know I'm supposed to do the patterns, and I do, but the DVD put it in a different perspective for me. I was always worried about boring my horse. According to Pat, you have to do it more than I realized. I did as Pat said and put different patterns together, mixing them all up and she was on! Don't think I bored her at all. I thought I was doing them enough, but I wasn't even scratching the surface. Before we rode I played the circling game on a 12' line and I made her walk, which is very difficult for her to do. It took about 10 laps of corrections both ways until she got it. I then disengaged her and it was game over. That my dear was progress! Even if it was a baby step.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Relationship Issues!

Ok, if my witchy mare who I love so much did not have fun playing today I am going to trade her in for a newer model. We went trail walking and ate lots of clover and other goodies. She understands driving from zone 3, we did it for about a mile. Then we got to this wonderful log and we played some squeeze games and sideways. She participated fully! She is giving me a hop with the front end but walking over with the back. I’m trying to prepare for the big barrel jump one day. Then we went on the trail again and had the greatest conversations. I know mine was great anyway. We ended up at the trailer for a couple of loads and then we were done. It surely was fun for me. We’ll see if she’s waiting by the gait for me tomorrow. Heck, I’d be hysterical if she allowed me to slip on her halter without walking away. An update to this posts is that she really did have fun. The farrier came by later and I had to go out to get her and she was with me. She approached me and let me slip on her halter. When it was time to bring her back out she did the same. I need to make a note of how to be more provative with her. She did stick the middle finger at me when I directed her for the figure 8 and weave though. Need to work on that!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

My First Blog Post!

I have recently been very inspired by reading blogs by Parelli students. So inspired that I am stepping out of my box and becoming a blogger myself. The other day, for example, I made contact with a parelli student who I located on the forum. After reading some of her posts, her story sounded a lot like mine so I sent her a private message. I was really nervous doing that, not sure why. Low and behold, she wrote back to me. Now I have a freind in New Zealand. How cool is that! I want to keep track of my journey that is already two years in the making. I've lost those records by not writing anything down, but now I'm serious. I'm finished level one (self assessed), have got two horses in level two (self assessed), and one of them is doing level three tasks. Now I'm getting into the good stuff. I am taking my savvy to great heights. I want the black string! So here goes, you gotta start somewhere right?