horseback riding | Horsegirl on a Journey

Posts Tagged With: horseback riding

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

The first necessity of progress

Posted on September 2, 2013 by horsegirlonajourney

One of the refrains that used to confuse me in lessons, before Parelli, was being told “That was perfect! Let’s go do something else.”

There I would be, panting but ecstatic, having finally achieved a good 20-meter circle or a small jump or a walk-canter transition, and instead of celebrating this masterpiece by doing it one or five or twenty-seven more times, my instructor would cheerfully come up with some other impossible task. And five minutes later, there I would be, fumbling and incompetent all over again, unable to bask in the glory of the previous accomplishment.

Now I understand that we were letting the horse know that he had performed his task beautifully. Once he put his will and effort and grace into the pattern, there was no need to ask him (or worse, to make him) do it again and again and again and again until it was no fun at all.

I understand even more now why not to ask your horse to repeat his performance. While your motivation is likely something like Wow! That was amazing! I loved that! Let’s do it again!, for your horse, asking again is like saying the first time wasn’t good enough. That he put his best hoof forward and you weren’t satisfied.

On Friday, riding Rocky around the arena in the bareback pad, everything felt right, and I asked for a canter. I’ve never cantered bareback and have only cantered once — on a lesson horse, not on Rocky — in the past four years. Yet I’ve been feeling caged and discontent recently and needed to try something new, something unexpected. I didn’t even ask my witnesses to get out a camera to document the occasion. I just shifted my weight a little, asked for Rocky’s attention with my outside rein, and kissed.

He was soft and smooth and willing and engaged his hindquarters and we cantered the short side of the arena and then came down to a trot with me laughing and saying gooooood booooy in that low voice Rocky responds so well to. We stopped and received much congratulations and petting and love.

And I knew that the one thing I could do that would ruin everything for Rocky (and thus for me) was to ask for it again right away. I let him feel my delight and love, and made no further demands for the rest of our ride.

I spent the rest of the afternoon euphoric and telling everyone within earshot, but it wasn’t until bedtime that I remembered what I wrote on my About page when I first launched this blog.

This blog is my personal journal of a lifelong love of horses and my commitment to pursuing excellence in horsemanship every day. My goal is to have the best relationship it’s possible to have with my horse — and then improve that into the realm of impossibility. I also want to be able to canter bareback. ~ Horsegirl