horsegirlonajourney

Things that eat horses, according to Rockstar

Posted on April 17, 2014 by horsegirlonajourney

Today’s top predators:

Tarp over the burn pile, which now open at one end and three times the height it was two days ago.
Neighbor’s riding mower, which we’ve only lived next door to for five years.
Other neighbor’s Mystery Big Square Thing, which neither moved nor made any noise.

After warming up in the arena, Rocky and I went out the gate (like it was nuthin’!) to trail ride around the ranch. Little did we know that the burn pile has changed in the past few days, growing taller, fuller, and also open at one side. Like a dragon’s cave. Full of bones.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/92294719]

What’s really cool about today is that:

I was totally confident –and skilled enough — to deal with it from the saddle.
I had enough savvy arrows in my quiver that I didn’t even have to use them all.
Rocky got to experience my leadership in balance with my respect for his thresholds.
I got to sing a whole bunch of songs I know only some of the words to, replacing their lyrics with words about Rocky.
I never felt inadequate to the task. And therefore I was not.

Rocky was spooky in general today. I don’t know if it was the breeze making the tarp really billow or if it was anything other than Rocky being in a Mood. But what worked was a combination of focusing on patterns and providing incentive.

At the burn pile, we made excellent use of yo-yo game, sideways game, bending, hindquarter yields, and resting.

At the neighbor’s mower, I simply turned Rocky to the left and started a pattern of figure 8s. When Rocky started to pay more attention to the pattern than to the spooking, he got to rest and nibble on the grass. When he shifted his focus back to spooking, I made the pattern more complex. Interlocking figure 8s around three trees that involved tight squeezes, terrain changes, stepping over a log, trotting the straightaways, sharp turns, and traveling through dappled sunlight and shadow? Not worth spooking at anything. And when not spooking, there was resting and grazing and eventually a nice walk back to the arena to strip off the saddle and roll in the warm sand.

We passed the burn pile again on our way back and Rocky still hesitated but we did not need to repeat any of the strategies. I focused on our destination and asked him to “just walk by it” and he did.

Categories: Leadership, Rockstar, Thresholds, Trail | Tags: horseback riding, parelli natural horsemanship, penn valley | 1 Comment

Back in the saddle again. Again.

Posted on March 11, 2014 by horsegirlonajourney

Confidence has made all the difference in my riding. With confidence comes leadership, and with leadership comes higher expectations, and with higher expectations comes noticeable improvements in performance. I can feel the change in our energy as I ask Rocky for higher quality and hold him to the standard and appreciate him when he achieves it. This is the “be particular without being critical” Parellism.

That I can envision a performance standard and recognize when we’re getting closer to it or achieving it…that’s perhaps the biggest improvement in my horsemanship since I last blogged.

Fixing the steering

Today I had an “intervention lesson” at my request — a quick shout-out to Erin with “my steering is broken, help!” resulted in half an hour of focused instruction and many, many 180s and 360s as River and I figured out where my hands legs weight eyes stick reins need to be and where her flexion and impulsion needed to be when I ask her to turn. And I got it. Now it’s simply a matter of practice to train my muscle memory.

Keeping to the pattern

When Rocky plays “what are you going to do if I think about spooking at that tarp? at the pigs? at the shrubbery? at the man fixing the roof?” I just keep asking him to do what I’m asking him to do. “Yes, there’s a man on the roof, let’s keep this figure 8 around the trees going,” and Lo! Rocky figured out it’s less effort for him to look where he’s going and do the thing than it is to keep pretending to spook at things and then having his weight, feet, and balance in the wrong places during the pattern.

I’ve also experienced some breakthroughs in keeping to the pattern until Rocky actually relaxes. Not just until he gets it and starts offering the pattern on his own, but until he does so with relaxation. Creating patterns around the ranch using the natural features of terrain and structures makes the change more obvious, as the arena is both small and safe, so the line between relaxed and bored gets blurry.

Just this once, just for today

I noticed that I was stopping myself from going out to “do horse stuff” with the dangerous thought “You aren’t going to make this a regular, consistent, recurring activity because reasons, so it’s pointless to attempt to do it now.” So I made a New Year’s Resolution to try a new mantra of “just this once, just for today” and see what dreadful things happened to my horses from not having a regular, consistent, recurring activity.

As you probably have already guessed, nothing dreadful has happened, but our partnerships have grown and the relationships are solid. We’ve had less time together than usual in the past four months but what time we’ve had has been positive, provocative, and progressive.