September | 2012 | Horsegirl on a Journey

Monthly Archives: September 2012

Back in the saddle…and out of it

Posted on September 23, 2012 by horsegirlonajourney

I have not ridden Rocky in almost a month, so I decided to start back with an easy Sunday morning ride. No learning new patterns or intense physical challenges. Just a horse and his girl puttering around the ranch.

I forgot that Rocky has not been Out since our last ride. He gallops around his pen regularly before meals, and pushes Rociada around when she is being saucy (and she loves it!), but he has not been out in the arena.

I saddled him at liberty, as I have done the past six times or so, and then haltered him to walk around the ranch for our warm up. Also this allowed me to look for new Scary Things before I got into the saddle. We found a full hay net so to blow his mind, I encouraged him to have a snack, and I hung with him for 15 or 20 minutes. He had left his morning hay without protest to be with me, so how fun to find more hay and enjoy it!

But when the time came to ride, he felt odd. Not lame or resistant. He actually had a more forward walk than usual, going down the hill. But something was different.

To focus him, I asked for either a leg yield or a side pass (I can’t remember which is which, but anyway, it was a sideways-and-forward step) as we went along, so we flowed from the left edge of the track to the right and back again as we moved along. He liked that. But I still felt something.

I thought back to the Parelli Performance Summit. Linda Parelli taught a session about warming up. She said that when your horse is calm, connected, and responsive at walk, trot, and canter, he is warmed up — and I caught my breath, because I had only warmed up Rocky by walking around. I asked him aloud, “Are you calm? Connected? Responsive?”

Nope. He was working hard to contain himself lest his exuberance unseat me.

I rode him up to the arena and leapt off so I could play with him and trot and canter from the ground. When I brought out the 22-foot line, he gave me that “you finally heard me, thanks!” look, and off we went with various patterns.

At the canter, he wanted to buck a little but was totally holding himself back and I thought the saddle was feeling restrictive emotionally or mentally, so I stripped it off.

After that he had a great time practicing traveling circles with changes of direction and transitions among all three gaits in both directions. And when he was truly warm, he blew out and all of his muscles were relaxed. And he was — say it with me now — calm, connected, and responsive.

I climbed up bareback just to get the feel of it (he is as Teflon nonstick coated as ever) and we puttered around the arena for a short while before ending the session with a nice roll in the sand and cookies at liberty.

Categories: Freestyle | 1 Comment

Family picnic: grazing with multiple horses

Posted on September 14, 2012 by horsegirlonajourney

I took Rocky and River out to graze together this afternoon. This is a Big Deal, as in the past their close encounters have resulted in insult or injury to Rocky — injury because he got stuck in the fence while trying to get away and she double-barreled him twice before a human could come to the rescue, and insult because she was too close to him on the tie rail while they were being trimmed or shod.

Today, everyone emerged unscathed, and I feel like we are well set up for another practice session tomorrow.

What has changed? Well, for one, I have become a better leader, and was able to keep each one out of the other’s space. For another, I read River better now; and River herself has learned to do phases instead of going straight from “sweetie face” to KA-BLAM. And I think I’ve made significant progress in my horsemanship this year and can see more of what happens before what happens happens, and act to prevent the undesirable happening before it happens.

It looks easy because I’m just relaxing out there in neutral. Yet I was managing the ropes, gently drawing them in and letting them out as the horses moved around. I also had my carrot stick and string, and brought intensity into my body when it looked like one horse was going to move across the invisible line toward the other horse. I did make sure to move each horse at different times, so neither one felt like they were the princess who got protected or the close talker who got driven away.

Rocky seemed fascinated by River and wanted to go over to her more than she wanted to go over to him. Eventually he got the idea of playing hard to get, and hid behind the tree. She did glance his way at that point, but River tends to be pretty focused when she’s out grazing.

At the Parelli Performance Summit this past weekend, Kalley Krickeberg taught us about playing with multiple horses at liberty. A key component is to grant release when everyone is having the same thought. That is harmony, and harmony is natural for horses. When Rocky and River both stopped being quite so obvious in their awareness of each other, and both were thinking about grazing and about checking in with me periodically, I gently gathered them in.

I tied Rocky at the hitch rail, keeping River a safe distance away, and then took River into the front arena in case she wanted to roll. All she wanted was a drink of water and then to stand by me, so we hung out for a while and then I put her away. I took Rocky into the covered arena to play “hunt the jump,” a game I learned the Summit that I plan to blog about soon. He enjoyed it and we took some additional bonding time before I put him back in his pen.

What a pleasant way to start this next year of horsemanship, before next year’s Summit.