Lucy's Parelli Journey

Friday 27 March 2009

Today Lily and I played some more with saddling and purity of gait - today's session was all about the Friendly Game. I say purity of gait with Friendly Game because the emphasis wasn't about how well she was moving but whether her movement was Left-Brained and flowing or Right-Brain and short/choppy. Lily is well known for having restricted movement whilst wearing a saddle, not because of physical issues but more emotional and mental difficulties. It seems that she has never been taught how to wear a saddle and comfortably move under it. Previously, she has gotten tense and introverted when around the saddle and being saddled up so I thought that my plan today could be to get her to be less sensitive about the saddle.

So I arrived at the yard and she instantly started walking over, first thing I did was collect my saddle and Theraflex pad and put them in the field on the floor. Last lesson I had with Arran, when she saw the saddle, I kissed goodbye any hope of catching her for a little while. Since then, I decided I could either confront that issue head on or only get the saddle out once she'd caught me which wouldn't solve the issue. This had been the second time I'd put the saddle in the field before she caught me and I'd placed a few treats on the saddle and pad so that once she'd caught me, I'd instantly send her over to them.

I must've spent at least an hour playing various different types of Friendly Game with the saddle, pad and girth. She was much better than she has been previously and the more we play with saddling, the more confident she becomes. Each time she got a bit tense, lifted her head and/or had a vacant expression in her eyes, I would ask her to lower her head or flex laterally to bring her back down to earth. This proved to be a good little arrow for her as it made her a lot more relaxed. To be progressive, I had tied one of my Savvy strings to a ring on the back of her saddle so that it would rub her right side and even touch against her hind leg from time to time. This was a bit tough for Lily to deal with at first on top of having the stirrups flapping about but she soon started concentrating on other things and worrying about it didn't seem important. Success!

We played with purity of gait and the main plan for this was to get her more comfortable with moving under the saddle and stretching out as she usually would. At first, she couldn't trot for more than a few strides, her head was up, she was bracing heavily against the halter and it was as though I was asking her to gallop through 4feet of mud! At that point I thought to myself, "was this such a good idea? Am I Savvy enough to be able to tackle this issue" which I answered "yes" to both because I wanted to be positive and progressive. To get Lily more confident with wearing the saddle, the thing that seemed to be the best remedy was to ask her to move as much as possible and she'd figure it out the more she did. I was trying to play Friendly Game on the move at the same time to encourage... well, friendlyness... but I realised that right now that 12ft circle was too tight for her to trot whilst wearing the saddle and that I was micromanaging her. I then took the initiative of trusting her to figure it out herself if I gave her more rope and left her alone. As soon as I stopped playing the Friendly Game, it became clear that our circling game was broken because she would come in behind me. So I stuck to walk until we patched it up again and then asked for trot. It was tricky for her, especially seeing as she was introverted and wanting to go slowly and everytime she went back to walk, I'd ask her to trot again. As soon as I started to see her put slack in the line and relax her neck more, I'd draw her in and rest. Once she'd licked and chewed, I'd ask her to do the same thing again. After 3 more tries (after playing the pattern well 4 times, move on), we then played the same thing on the other side. 10 minutes later I had a much more fluid pony, maintaining gait and direction on a loose line for the first time. It felt great!

On that brilliant note, I brought her in and she rested with her head under my arm, licking and chewing and coming off adrenaline. After petting her and telling her how pretty she looked, I reached my arm over to the other side to bring the stirrup over in preparation for unsaddling her. Silly me! She jumped to the side and right into me, jarring my neck and shoulders and then bolted off to the gate. That's the thing about introverts, they can often surprise you when things cause an explosion, she looked fine and tired a second before. It was quite the assumption that I made and I'm paying for it, I feel like I'm being forced to wear a plank of wood along my spine. As soon as I drew her back to me, I tied another Savvy string to a stirrup and drove her from zone 3 whilst I flapped it about. I've been doing plenty of desensitisation with her, especially stirrups but I suppose it was the stirrup going from the left to the right eye that bothered her. I played with that until she was calmer but she still didn't fully get it which is fine, another thing to play with next time.

After I took her saddle off, to finish off our session I thought it'd be cool to play touch it at liberty. So I undid her halter and loosened her off and then went to hide treats on different objects whilst she just stood watching me. I called her over and drove her to the tire about a foot or two away from me and it was as if a lightbulb went off above her head... 'TOUCH IT!!'. I then set off at a fast pace to the next item and she came trotting after me, after all, I know where all the good places to go are. I stopped a few metres away from the next object and sent her, she got the treats and trotted back to me. It was fun to see Lily so animated and excited, it's strange how she's mostly RBi yet she loves treats; she is a tubby cob when all's said and done. She followed me to the gate after I'd hugged her goodbye and called after me when I was getting in the car to go home. She's a special kind of crazy but I do love my black and white pony! :)

posted by Lucy at 3:23 pm -

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