penn valley | Horsegirl on a Journey

Posts Tagged With: penn valley

A mutual promise of rhythm, relaxation, and respect

Posted on November 28, 2013 by horsegirlonajourney

Pat’s “problem horse makeover” segment of last month’s Savvy Club – Inside Access video shows Pat helping a woman who is just starting out with Parelli and a horse who “won’t let anyone touch his ears.” Here’s an excerpt:

Naturally, it’s not about the ears. It’s about the … say it with me … relationship. Pat explains that horses tend to get ear-shy because people take off the bridle too fast, allowing the bit to drop suddenly and clonk into the teeth. Ouch! The horse first starts bracing and then escalates to tossing his head and lifting it high and barging into the person’s space to dominate or trying to flee or otherwise resisting, because he knows that if he lets the person reach for his ears, he’s going to get punched in the mouth.

Pat sits down to work with the horse, to show us that we don’t have to be as tall, strong, or athletic as Pat to be effective. He uses a combination of Porcupine Game™ and Friendly Game™ to help the horse learn a new pattern of cooperative participation: relax, lower your head, and bridle or unbridle yourself.

Porcupine Game™

This is how you teach a horse to follow a feel and move away from pressure applied with your fingertips or the Carrot Stick. This game prepares him to understand how to respond to communicative feel (or pressure) from the rein, the bit, the leg, etc.

This pressure is applied with a steady feel (not intermittent poking) and steadily increasing intensity until the horse responds, at which time the pressure is instantly released. It is applied in Four Phases, each phase getting progressively stronger. Releasing only when the horse responds. In this way, it’s the release that teaches the horse he made the right move. Reward the slightest try with instant release, rubbing (as in the Friendly Game), and a smile. ~ The Seven Games, Parelli.com

Pat also shows the horse that humans can be more cooperative and relaxed, and without directly saying so on camera, expects that the owner will henceforth ensure that anyone who handles this horse (and hopefully any others she is responsible for) does so with the attitude and techniques that Pat demonstrated.

Rockstar was head-shy when I got him and would fling his head up and become 27 feet tall if I reached toward his poll. If I stood on a mounting block to reach, he would pin the ears and lean away from me. If that didn’t work, swing into me. Luckily for us both, I found Parelli soon after buying him, and I had a good horsewoman friend and instructor in Jenni (of Ravendaisy Farms in the Los Angeles area, shameless plug!).

As I watched the video of how Pat moved his hands and body and how the owner moved her hands and body, I understood why I’ve been able to get Rocky so much better about us touching his ears, but only to about 75 percent about 75 percent of the time. I’ve learned to be slower and more deliberate in my movements when I’m paying attention, but so often I’m still operating my body on auto-pilot while my half my mind is in the present moment and the other half is working on a dozen other things.

So yesterday I sat on the mounting block with Rocky in his halter and lead, brought my full attention into my body, and allowed the moment to permeate my skin. Then I played the combination of Porcupine Game™ and Friendly Game™ with “passive persistence in the proper position” until both Rocky and I won.

I won, because Rocky relaxed and put his head down and blew out and licked and chewed and didn’t brace when I moved my hand toward his ears or when I asked him to lower his head an hour later. He even nudged me (gently) and leaned into the massage and sighed. To quote Linda Parelli, “that’s HUuuuuGE!”

Rocky won because he found relaxation and comfort in a position that has caused him anxiety for most of his life, and possibly pain for the first several years.

My goal for December is to improve my ability to uphold Responsibility #4: Use the natural power of focus. Three behavior changes that will help me meet this goal:

Save the talking for rest breaks. Talking with my ranch friends when I’m also asking my horse to do something, even something “easy” like “walk in a straight line along the rail,” splits my attention so much that I can’t use my focus effectively at my current level of skill.
Wear my glasses.
Only ask my horse to do things that I have an IMAX High Frame Rate mental picture of what it should look like. If I can’t picture it that vividly, find a video or ask Erin to demonstrate before I make the attempt.

I’m heading outside now for our last Freestyle practice session before filming our dress rehearsal audition on Saturday. The one area I’m still struggling with is riding with one carrot stick — so maybe I’ll just have to do it with two!

Categories: Feel | Tags: parelli natural horsemanship, penn valley | 2 Comments

Are we ready to audition in 10 days?

Posted on November 20, 2013 by horsegirlonajourney

Ready or not, we’re filming on the 30th.

I’ve been riding River in the bareback pad recently and working hard on training my body to give clear, distinct cues. Not “eyes, bellybutton-leg-rein” but “eyes, belly button, leg, rein if necessary.” I’m also working on not rolling my knees out and putting the backs of my thighs on her. In our lesson today, Erin said that as long as my lower legs aren’t gripping or on her unnecessarily, I can relax more about my seat. Riding bareback puts me in more of a “chair” position than I want to have in a saddle, and that’s just how it is, because the saddle lifts me above River’s back enough to make things a little narrower so I can get my legs more under me.

Last week I rode Rocky at the rodeo arena and found that with the bigger space he is much more able to follow the rail and walk in a straight line. I practiced walking and trotting the length of the arena, using a hindquarter yield to turn around with the nose to the fence, and walking or trotting back. Most of the time he was able to stop just with my relaxing and exhaling and didn’t require me to lift a rein, even though we were in an unfamiliar place.

We then played with follow the rail around the whole thing, sprinkling in transitions (walk, trot, halt, back) and circles (at walk or trot) to keep things interesting. I used circles when he got rushy so that he never felt like I was holding him back, and having room to do a bigger circle helped him soften and relax sooner. When necessary I could spiral the circle a little smaller, but the big circle is much better for his joints and it was so cool to feel confident and able to use strategies to achieve outcomes. We finished with some barrel racing; I took Rocky through the cloverleaf at a fairly big trot, and then Barbara gaited Hermoso around it, and then Maddy trotted River leisurely to wrap up.

Then Rocky lost a shoe on the way back to the trailer and had to spend a week in the barn with a boot on.

I’ve had a minor setback in my daily Healthmanship practice in the past two weeks as we consolidated two households into a single cottage. We’ve been renting two cottages on the ranch but it has become financially unsustainable; it’s not a problem as our human herd has adjusted well and we can get along in a smaller pasture than we needed a year ago. Thus I’ve had plenty of exercise, especially of the squat-and-lift variety, but very little horse time. Although I did realize that the day I felt like it had been a month since I’d last ridden a horse was actually only 5 days after the trip to the arena, and I had petted at least one horse at least once a day each of those 5 days.

During the “down time” I caught up on recent Parelli Savvy Club video lessons and read some back issues of the Parelli magazine. I find that I can read an article or watch a video segment on just about any topic and discover that it applies to me right where I am, doing exactly what I’m doing. It’s like re-reading a wonderful book — the book is different every time, because I am different, and my life experience is different, and my perspective on events and people has probably changed.

I’m starting to put the building blocks together more often and more naturally. “Separate, isolate, and recombine” has been my puzzle-solving mantra, and I feel like I’ve reached a “recombine” phase of late. I’m much improved in using my legs and reins independently of each other, and I’m starting to develop a sense of what patterns to use to address an issue or advance a skill. My latest pattern with River is a combination of circle and weave using 4 cones.

I worked on it today in a lesson and asked Erin to coach me on getting the circles bigger and rounder, while getting the sideways part in the middle straighter and closer to the cones.

It’s a challenging pattern because as soon as we straighten we then have to turn rather sharply, and as soon as we get a nice circle, we have to straighten for the line back to home. It takes coordination with each leg and hand working independently while keeping my focus strong, my body relaxed, and my seat centered. We repeated it 5 times in the lesson and I felt it when River started to understand that it was a pattern, and we ended on a good note. In the next session I will add in some walk-trot transitions to keep it interesting and to give myself practice sitting the trot bareback for short distances.

I am trusting myself more, and allowing things to happen without worrying if I “did it right.” The “try something and see what happens” approach is working really well with both horses, now that I have the skills and the confidence to flow with the go if someone spooks or trips or fumbles or braces. Both of the horses are more interested in our sessions now that I am asking for more complex patterns, and allowing them to participate in the learning and solve the puzzle.

More partnership, less micromanaging. A relief for us all.