Cisco's flying changes!

Cisco is officially a genius! Here, he is doing flying change while being ridden bridle less by is loving but totally ignorant partner (me) : http://www.youtube.com/user/izagreenfield?feature=mhee#p/a/u/0/ulG7rR5q8Qs
OMG! Last night at 5am I could sleep because it was very stormy and I was playing the video we had filmed at the week end,  in my mind and I had BFO: Cisco has been doing flying changes and I hadn't even realised! What on Earth is wrong with me! You'll see in the video at one stage he is disunited in his canter and I was aware of that but he is so well balance that I hadn't even realised that we were doing counter canter and I had missed the flying changes! And there I was wondering how I was going to start teaching him flying changes! LOL. I just would like to crawl in hole right now!
Now why is he doing counter canter is another question that I can't answer. I am pretty sure that we ride in hackamore he canters in the right foot. I really need to get a lot better very quickly with this little horse of mine. He is so talented and amazing and I feel like a complete moron! 

Another BFO!

My brain must be hyper active at the moment, all those BFOs happening!
When I meet people, before I get to know them, I usually have a pretty fair assessment of them and my instinct is often right, but then as I get to know them and develop relationships, emotions often cloud my judgment.  I am a LBE cusp RBE so it must be the RBE side of me!
What I have just realised is that I do the same with horses! How funny is that!
When I first got Cisco I immediately assessed him as a LBE but as we got to know each other and I fell in love with him, he became my little LBI so I spoiled him with treats and incentive! He had me running around at the end of the 22 feet line while he was standing at the middle! LOL
The reality is somewhere in between of course, just as it is with human. He is indeed a LBE as I had thought but cusp LBI!

Is my horse a LBE cusp LBI or a LBI cusp LBE and what does it matter?

I got Cisco nearly a year ago and I feel I know him pretty well. He loves food, doesn't like running very far and when he licks his lips his tongue stays in his mouth. So he must be a LBI. But wait a minute, he also loves putting everything in his mouth and can be quite wilful. Okay, so he is cusp LBE.
Well anyway, that was my diagnostic and I stuck with it and decided that I would treat Cisco like a Left Brain Introvert. Lots of incentive, go as slow or slower than your horse wants, don't push him...This worked more or less well while Cisco was in his 3rd year but then things started being not as good. Nothing dreadful, but I felt that he was loosing respect for me. He didn't come and meet me at the gate as willingly. He was doing less and less and I was doing more and more. Very much like having a teenager in the house, sleeping in till midday and spending every day light hour eating not cleaning up after himself. Horses are such good human trainers! and Cisco had trained me perfectly!

Rather than waiting for things to get worse, I ordered my horsenality report. The computer said:
"Cisco is a LBE cusp LBI" Surely, I know my horse better than a computer program and I must be right! This was my initial reaction. Well, I am a LBE cusp RBE so I know better!
Fast forward a couple of weeks. After reading and re-reading the report, I started seeing a pattern emerging. Actually, yes Cisco was perhaps more LBE than LBI! Maybe I was wrong!
So I started treating him like a LBE. I paid a lot more attention to what he was doing and realised that he had been challenging my leadership in very subtle ways time and time again and I had done nothing about it because I didn't want to upset my 500 Kg baby! In horse world, everything means something but I had been too blind with love for my horse to see it! And the results? We have so much more fun! and Cisco is now offering to do things that we have struggled with for months such as figure of 8 or canter circles.
As for my humanility match report? I am not going to reveal all my secrets right now, but let's say that it was amazing and a little spooky to read about myself in such details!

From Natural Horsemanship to Natural Bee Keeping!

I have a couple of hives at the bottom of the garden. I've kind of inherited them but the thing is: I'm dead scared of bees!

Today I had to rob my hives and had a few "Oh Boys!" moments. First of all, the Queen had decided to move in "upstairs"in the boxes where normally there is only honey. This meant that the whole hive had to be taken apart and reassembled. So, rather than the fairly straight forward process, which although still a bit scary, I have learn to deal with, I ended up with a whole hive of bees flying around and wondering what on Earth was happening to them. I started feeling more and more anxious and bees like most wild animals react to fear and not in a positive way! I normally sing gently to soothe them as much as me but this afternoon, my throat was dry with fear.

My first thought was: "What would I do if it was a horse?" Approach and Retreat, of course. So I moved back and retreated to the safety of the bushes till I felt calm enough. Each time my fear crept back, I walked backward. It was very much like playing the yoyo game except that I was the horse! By the time I had finished with both hives I was calm and composed and actually in the moment enjoying the peaceful hum of my little workers who had settled down by then. This is the first time in 3 years of bee keeping that I got to that level of peace and serenity working the hive!
My point is that I have reached the place where; whenever something unsettling comes my way, my instant reaction is to turn back to my horsemanship. The question is simple: "What if it was a horse?" and the answer always comes straight to my mind.

Pat Parelli Proudly Presents "Colt Starting Naturally"

I thought I would type my notes from the colt starting event and share them with you:

Day 1 Session: Colts are 2 backyard Colts and Colts from Atwood Ranch, plus another colt that has been handled a bit.  
Pat explain the process of education for a horse: Taming, Starting, Foundation, Specialisation. 
Taming may happen at Birth during imprinting. It must happen before Starting. The horse has to be convinced beyond the Shadow of a doubt that you are not going to kill him.  

As Pat kept saying, horses are not scared of predators they are scared of predatory behaviour!
That is why, you can see on different occasion the colt starters kneeling down in front or on the side of their colt.


5 things you shouln't do:

1. Catch them anyway you can
2. Saddle and get on
3. Kick them to start
4. Pull them to stop
5. Pull on their mouth to turn

The skeleton of Starting a horse is the same for every horse:

1. Accept the Human
2. Accept the Saddle     
3. Accept the Rider
4. Accept the bit 

The preschool program at Atwood Ranch involve the 7 games,  bare back pad and saddle, colts have been already sat on once of twice. They are happy to have they fit trimmed. By the time they get started they are ready to ride.

Basically, the colt starting process is very similar to level 1.

• Lots of friendly using the tools: Carrot stick and line.
• Rubbing horse legs, pick feet
• Disengaging HQ. 
• Whenever your horse turn and face you, walk away

Pat set the colt starters 5 tasks for this session:

• Green ball on back  
• Stand and walk on tarp
• Jump barrels
• Front feet on pedestal
• Load in trailer.

Once the colts have accepted the human on the ground then the colt starters jump across their backs. They have to lift the hand that holds the line to stop the drift. With their other hand they rub the colt other flank where they leg will be once they sit astride. That looked really hard! The next steps are to swing legs, then lie down with knees together, kneel or stand on colt, then sit astride. Walk bend stop relax! How do you keep your energy down and stay relax? This, I really don't know. I think my heart would be racing and I would be full of adrenaline by this stage!

A similar process is repeated first with the bare back pad then the saddle. The cinch is progressively tightened. First no cinched at all till the horse can relax then move to the next step.



By the end of this session, most colts had accepted the rider! 

The process of learning.

I often think, if only I could do everything that Pat or Linda Parelli suggest in their DVDs I would be a great horseman! So what is stopping me?

As a school teacher, I understand the process of learning: You have to be ready! It doesn't matter how great the teacher, if the student is not ready to work with that concept, he just can't learn it. It is very obvious when teaching young children. If you try to teach a child to read the time on a clock before they have assimilate the time concept, it doesn't matter how bright the child, it doesn't matter that they can already read numbers, they just can't learn to read the time.

Trigger

I am discovering, as an adult that it is pretty similar. It is very interesting because now I am on the learner's side of the fence and I consider myself a super learner, always got High Distinction at uni... but with horsemanship, which is quite new for me, I cannot assimilate all the teaching of the Parelli Program by an act of will.
To be a good horseman we have to take the time it takes, just as we do with our horses.

Today I finally got the concept of doing the same program for 7 days in a row. I have heard Pat saying this a hundred times but I just didn't actually properly get it. As a LBE, it doesn't come naturally to me. I want to do too many things at once. For the sake of my horse, I had to make myself do it!
The results have been awesome! Things we have struggled with for months have just got better and I have discovered that in actual fact, I do enjoy the consistency because the reward is in seeing your horse getting better so much quicker.
My horse is so ready to learn that it is hard to keep up! I am looking forward to my next breakthrough.
I just love it when suddenly something you have been hearing for a while becomes part of you!

This is such a fun, exciting journey!

Cisco

writter's block

It's amazing how many time during the week I think of things to write on my blog and then when I finally get the time I go blank! Is that what they call the writer's block?

The last few weeks have been a bit frantic so I should have lots to say. I finished a 6 weeks training block with my 3yo. I try to do 6 weeks then give him at least a couple of weeks off. It's been a great time to reflect on what we have achieved and where we are going. I wrote a new plan for the next 6 weeks. Everything is getting better, softer and more established. Our big break through was with Liberty which is now developing nicely.
While Cisco was having his little horsey holiday, I started playing with Trigger again. I've really enjoyed the change of horsenality. It's quite different playing with a damaged horse. Everyday I have to prove to him that human are not all bad. We start most of our sessions with a horse that has gone so deep within, that he is almost catatonic. We mostly finish with a LBE and often have gone through all the horsenalities in between. Keep me on my toes!
The big new challenge has been my new volunteer position on Parelli Social Media team. It's been a great learning curve in many respects. The most difficult so far has been to try to porcupine myself away from the computer and to keep some form of balance in my life. In my attempt to drag myself away from Parelli Connect, I have started reading again. I am reading Temple Grandin. My mother had given me the book years ago. It's one of her favourite books. When I saw that it was on Pat Parelli reading list, I thought I would give it a go. It is a fascinating insight in the mind of an autistic woman who because of her illness developed a deep understanding of the psychology of prey animals. I am trying to understand what it is like to perceive the world in pictures. What a challenge!
It's been really funny because, in my initial efforts to dissociate my private life to my Parelli life, I've set up a new FB page and a new email address, except that they are both almost identical in their content. I came to realise that there were no longer boundaries between my "normal" life and my "horsey" life, and that the Parelli ethos and philosophy had become my way of life. I can't think of a situation where I do not apply some of my Parelli principles to solve the puzzle.

Well, maybe I did not have writer's block after all!