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Sorry I haven't been posting, guys. Alately I have been busy making Arran's website, preparing for my degree course which starts again on the 7th Feb and trying to finish other personal projects before that date to reduce stress and then some! Being this busy though means it has taken a toll on my health so I'm not doing so great at the moment.
I'm hoping I'll be well enough to play with Lily on Sunday though so stay tuned. |
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Today I felt a little reluctant to go play with Lily but I told myself things are never really as bad in reality as they are in your head! Catching was understandably a bit iffy but she caught me within a few minutes. I always feel like our catching game is a little like a game of chess, she makes a move, I do, she makes a move, I do until the Queen finally comes and catches the lowly pawn. :P
They were shooting in the next field which tested my Savvy under rather intense situations, we moseyed and as a friendly game, I flicked my savvy string over her hindquarters and rested it there as we walked along. But when things got too much and guns were blazing, I played falling leaf until she calmed down, she really got the idea of it quickly and it helped a lot although I kept tripping up over the 22ft line. After the shooters had moved on, we played a little driving game here and there, incorporating touch it with follow the rail and then to finish I played friendly game on the move in zones 2,3 but concentrating the most on zone 4 until she licked and chewed.
Because today has been such a lovely day, I'm going out to play with her again this afternoon! The plan is to play the basic porcupine and driving games but refining them and once again concentrate on zones 4 and 5. The blog entries will mostly be about zones 4/5 for a while until she's more confident and we can move on! Oh and she's getting a lot more confident with the 22ft line dragging around and behind her the more we mosey which is always good. :)
And my January Savvy club DVD arrived today which has just made it even better! I'm off to watch it for a little while, let my lunch settle and then I'm back out in the sun again for another play! Yahoo!
EDIT: So my DVD is warped and doesn't play properly, hmph. I went to go play with Lily a second time only to see that she was in rightbrain overdrive; she was disconnected, jumpy and just wanted to move her feet with this expression on her face (o.O) so we moseyed again and played stick to me on-line. That combo helped a lot but just as she was starting to come off adrenaline, I saw another load of shooters pull up. So I turned her out on a relatively good note rather than have to go through the kuffufle of shooters vs. me thing, I'm very glad I did because the shots were louder and more frequent and all 5 horses freaked out. My afternoon didn't exactly go as planned but it still wasn't as bad as it could've been and that's good enough for me! |
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After having a rough play session on Wednesday, I'm ready to sit down and blog about it!
I'm not going to go into too much depth but I wasn't feeling confident, Lily picked up on it which exacerbated it and things just really went out the window. She got away from me twice which won't do wonders for her confidence with ropes in zone 4/5 and I decided to call it a day because although ending on a bad note is undesirable, if I kept on trying and getting the timing wrong and not being in control of the situation it would mean worse repercussions in future play sessions. I was so frustrated at myself at this point that I was just completely in the wrong frame of mind. I sat down and I cried at my incompetence and Lily, whilst coming off adrenaline and enjoying endorphins, was just looking down at me as if to say, "I'm sorry, my little pet predator, I'm trying". I knew it wasn't her fault but what I didn't realise at the time was that it wasn't anyone's fault.
I beat myself up about it ALL day Wednesday and most of yesterday. I felt like I had royally screwed things up including Lily's trust in me and our relationship, that we'd be right back to square one. No, we're not, I spent UDT with her for a while yesterday and she caught me just fine. Tomorrow I'm going to dedicate a whole long play to fixing any bridges I set fire to and she might be a little hesitant about catching me when I'm holding my ropehalter and line tomorrow but we'll play on as always.
It felt like a major mistake but a good friend told me that it wasn't, it was purely a learning curve and it only becomes a mistake if I do the same thing all over again knowing what I know now. I realise what went wrong and I spoke to Arran for a few Savvy arrows and a confidence boost. Now I've had time to reflect, learn and set the task up for success, tomorrow will be a good session. I'm planning to play with fixing this task, amongst other things, but the good thing about a plan is you can throw it out the window if needsbe. They can't all be great sessions and I need to learn not to beat myself up so much when we have an off day. I am a student and I can't know when to be, where to be, what to be and how to be all the time just yet!! :) |
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Today I had a 3 hours tuition with Arran and boy, am I tired!! An emotionally testing session but still a good one as always. Arran said that I was doing a great job and had obviously done my 'homework' and spent a lot of time with her. He noted how she found it difficult swapping from her left side to her right side and vice versa and was still very tense about things flapping/being near her hindquarters so he asked us to try something a bit trickier.
n.b. Arran is a fantastic teacher and although his ways might seem a little unorthodox, they are always what's best for Lily and I. Lily is not a straight-forward, 'by the book' horse and thusly we have to explore other routes than the most obvious one to encourage her to develop into a calmer, smarter, braver and more athletic horse. He would not recommend doing higher level tasks for lower level students if he felt it was unecessery or that the student's safety would be compromised at any time.
So Arran had a bit of a play with her with two lines, using one for the friendly game and the other to encourage forward movement/control if needsbe. Whenever the lines or anything catches her on her HQ or hind legs, she gets very tense and will jig on the spot/kick out a little. After seeing how she reacted and playing around with swapping sides by flipping the ropes over, he asked me to have a play. It took longer for me to get the hang of it but after a few fumbling attempts, I got quite confident at changing sides from zone 5 and although Lily's still not that sure about it, she's getting much better and licking and chewing plenty. Arran believes that if I do this solidly for the next 6 sessions, it'll improve our relationship sevenfold. It's all about the friendly game! Oh, how I wish I could tell Lily that everything I do with her is for her own benefit.
After that we had a bit of a play with the saddle and she was a lot less tense than I thought she would be! She was quite relaxed and I rubbed the pad on her, the girth and put the saddle on and off, on and off and she was pretty good. After she was saddled up and ready we played with the purity of gait concept at the trot because I had told Arran she gets very short and introverted when wearing the saddle. It took a fair while and lots of laps before she could maintain gait within the gait but once she started calmly striding out and not bracing, I brought her in and finished whilst the going was good!
I always spend undemanding time with Lily before and after playing sessions so I don't have a catching issue the next day but today I felt like I needed to spend a while with her because the session had been tough on her. Once she yawned the tension out and licked and chewed, the endorphins of coming off adrenaline kicked in and she just sort of rested her head on me whilst I stroked her face. She is wooly because of it being January, she's yellow and black rather than white and black and she was sweaty but being with her at that moment and looking into her soft, gentle eyes I felt like I had the most beautiful horse in the world as my partner. I'm very lucky! :) |
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Due to lack of health, time and having to go to mandatory appointments such as dentist, doctors etc. I haven't been able to spend much time with Lily. Not to mention the weather has been dismal, but then again it is January. My health seems relative to the 'chicken and egg' syndrome at times; is it because I'm ill that I can't play or is it because I can't play that I'm ill?
In any case she was right where I left her, after I'd hayed both of them and done the fence, I walked back up the field to get my equipment. She thought that because I was walking towards her that I wanted her to catch me then and there so I humoured her, she left her hay and had a nice expression on her face but she was dragging her heels. I fed her a treat, rubbed her neck then carried on walking. When I came back, this time holding my ropehalter and 12ft line, she was much more enthusiastic to catch me which was nice.
I didn't do anything too mentally, emotionally and physically taxing for the both of us although my main plan was to continue bettering the driving game so that she responds rather than reacts. After a few minor-explosive reactions, I thought about my phases and how loud or quiet they would be to other horses. Was my phase 1 really a phase 1 or had I assumed she wouldn't respond to it before I'd even tried? Was my body language implying for her to go forwards or to go around?
So, although it seems common sense now, I experimented to see how little it took for her to yield her FQ away from me. I remembered in Fran's blog she had said there were phases within the phases and I realised that what was the standard driving phase 1 taught in the Parelli levels packs turned out to be way too much for Lily already. After about 5 minutes of testing the waters I found that all I had to do was tap the air with my index finger, that was enough and then some! To make sure she didn't get away from me too quickly as I asked her to yield, I played plenty of friendly to get her to stop. At first she thought I was trying to kill her by moving so quickly but then afterwards, although there was no obvious licking and chewing, it got easier.
We also continued with our driving from zone 5 and she has been great on the left side but hadn't picked up the follow the rein pattern on the right. Sometimes it seemed like she had but she was scoring points when I had to get out of zone 5 to drive her then go back to zone 5. So today I played with my carrot-stick and she got the idea a lot better but then I realised that what phases I had been using to ask her to move forwards were difficult to do when holding a carrot-stick, she soon caught on and only did a few steps then quit. At that point, I wondered if most of her negativity towards the carrot-stick was because I'm not very co-ordinated when carrying/using it. Hmm, how interesting! :) |
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Before I went to play today, I rung Arran to ask him how I can porcupine/drive Lily's forequarters without her getting evasive and moving out of my reach too fast. He said that I needed her to respond rather than react so plenty of friendly and use lighter phases. I then went out and picked the field with her on line, I tucked her rope under a velcro cuff on my coat so I did have to hold her but the rope was by my hand if I needed it. I think she enjoyed some undemanding time with me and she was licking and chewing a lot and coming for cuddles. Afterwards, I didn't have much energy left so I played plenty of friendly with the CS around and on her face and did as Arran suggested with driving her forequarters round with much lower phases and she was a lot calmer because I'd stopped 'shouting' at her with such high phases. I played a little porcupine, refining her back up and then played 'touch it' to finish. Once she got the idea, she was very enthusiastic about putting her nose on things and recieving a treat!
Added: I must've done something right because this morning (7th) she trotted to me with a good expression on her face. Feedback! :) |
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First play session of 2009 was pretty good.
I'm still rather puzzled how to balance the ball/chair (newer level 2 concept of the porcupine game) and also how to improve her driving on her right side. Hmm, how interesting! :)
She's getting much better with the friendly game and is less resistant when I touch her face, at times she will even check in when I put my hand on her cheek or under her forelock.
Diane brought over a friend and her young children to see Molly and they were doing usual kids stuff; darting from here to there, jumping around and making loud noises. It was good desensitisation for Lily but I honestly nearly had a heartattack when one of them ran behind Lily despite numerous warnings. Thankfully she just got a bit introverted rather than boot him into the next village. Phew, crisis averted and a new thing I need to get her used to; little people!
2009 is going to be a great year, I know it! Lily and I are going to go from strength to strength, I will focus on being a better leader and, without sounding too predatory, I'd like to be in level 3 groundskills this year. It might be overly optimistic, but it might also be achievable, what I know is that I'm going to try my hardest to be the human Lily has always wanted. |
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My name is Lucy Middleton, I'm 17 years old and from the United Kingdom.
I started Parelli in January 2008 and it has been an incredible journey so far.
Pre-Parelli I did the best with what I knew but now I know better; I want to do better!
This is my blog to document my progress as a natural horseman.
Want to 'follow' my blog, fellow blogspotters? Add my url to your list on your dashboard to stay upto date!
View my profile
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I am owned by this gorgeous piebald cob mare, Lily. She's an interesting character, fun to play with and is a great teacher.
There's more about her on her own page.
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It's not about disposable horses; it's about relationships for life.
It's not about quick fixes and artificial aids, it's about savvy; true understanding and expertise.
It's not about winning and others losing; It's about win-win: you and the horse need to feel good.
It's not about me me me; It's about changing the world for horses, becoming a person of knowledge and influence, and sharing what you know.
It's not about fear and doubt; It's about unconditional love and trust.
Love for the empowerment of others and trust that you'll never ask the horse to do something that would hurt or diminish his dignity.
Reveal your horse. Discover your potential. Live your dream.
-Parelli
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Profile designed, made and coded by Lucy Parelli Student.
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