Liberty

Liberty

Riding and running on a Sunday evening

Posted on May 7, 2012 by horsegirlonajourney

I rode Rocky bareback tonight for a few laps around the arena in each direction. No bareback pad, no saddle blanket with surcingle, no breeches with leather or grippy seat. Just his bare back and my yoga pants.

Honestly, are horses coated with Teflon, or is it just Rocky and me? What a slippery perch I had. All those Parelli mastery students zooming around in Wranglers with only a savvy string around the horse’s neck make it look way, way, way easier than it is. For me, at least.

I noticed in the photos that my left foot is lower than my right. In every photo. Hrm, how interesting! When I looked back at the photos of me on Kresege, I have the same imbalance. Perhaps that explains why Rocky has a hard time walking in a straight line, and why Kresege began to drift? I can’t curl my tailbone in all the way either, or it feels like we are rubbing bone on bone.

Cameras are powerful tools in our horsemanship journeys. They can show us that our body position is not as elegant as we thought it was, or that our motions are still too quick and spazzy for our poor, patient RBIs. They can also show us the trust and softness in our horse as he follows along behind us at liberty. Or, in some cases, ahead of us…

It helps if you take video on your own and then work with it in a video editor for a while. That helps you develop an eye to see where the camera deceives, through foreshortening or flattening or adding shadows. I find it hard to capture the true steepness of a hill. But the more I edit video, the more I see how valuable a video camera can be to a student of the horse.

While uploading Rocky’s pictures, I found a self-portrait of the photographer. Thanks, Steve. 🙂

Steve is a national class distance runner and thus couldn’t resist taking this photo of Rocky and I running together. Look at Rocky’s amazing tail!

Categories: Freestyle, Liberty | Tags: horseback riding, parelli natural horsemanship | Leave a comment

Parelli Level 1/2 On-Line Savvy Audition, Take 5

Posted on February 15, 2012 by horsegirlonajourney

Some of you might remember one of my earlier attempts to capture my on-line audition. (Hint: Flies.)

This past weekend, I made another attempt:

I learn so much from these.

For one thing, I did what I tried not to do — I started out too intense, stiff, not playful. I could feel myself being that way, and could feel and see Rocky mirroring it. I tried to just keep on doing things and breathing and trying to ease myself down and bring him with me into the easier place. That was good practice. I’m sure I will be on the spot again some day, maybe even at a demo or a show, and will need that practice of centering myself.

I also tried staying on-line instead of letting Rocky go free first. I wanted to try to capture his fresh-from-his-pen exuberance in the audition. We’ve been playing at liberty a lot recently and it’s been crisp and clear and cold, and he wanted to frolic. I think we would have been fine frolicking on-line if I had been able to loosen up right away. Instead, I think I insulted him, and what he gave me, he gave with a tail flick and pursed lips.

And yet, things did improve. We both relaxed and our partnership became more evident to our observers. He gave me contact on the circle, and did his best for sideways. He trusted that I could see he was stiff and would not demand too much, and I didn’t. Our best of the compulsories was the trotting figure 8. He offered a great one, with a flourish in the middle, and I brought him and took off his halter. At that point … well, if you watched the video, you saw what happened next.

This morning I opened the latest audio CD and listened to an interview about auditions with Parelli Professional Kristi Smith. She talks about how the audition process has evolved from a task-based focus to a relationship-based focus, and gives some tips for capturing that relationship on film.

The further I progress in my journey, the more certain I am about my goal of becoming a one-star licensed instructor so I can teach newbies enough to get started and then pass them on to higher level instructors for further study.

I was thinking just this morning of Pat’s saying that the better a horse goes backwards and sideways, the better he does everything else. When I feel like I’m “going backwards” with horses, or that things went sideways because they didn’t go as I planned, I remind myself that the more “off track” experiences I have that result in my returning to my “track” with deeper knowledge, skill, and understanding, the better guide I can be for others.