Still on the first morning!  Our first activity was working with Trevor on a 12 foot line.  He asked the question “How do you lead your horse?”  Because how you lead your horse around on a regular basis is going to affect how well your liberty is going to go.  Is your horse really “with” you as you lead him? The challenge he gave us was to lead our horses on a loose line and encourage them to bring their withers nearer to our shoulder.  Basically, you would be leading from about zone 2 or 3 as you would if you were playing “stick to me.”  Those of you who were at the Jonathan Field presentation last year may remember he referred to this as the sweet spot. Next, Trevor challenged us to turn this into a circling game where your horse is still mentally with you.  To do this, you would ask the horse to continue to bend his body around you as he circles as opposed to pushing his ribs or shoulder into you in a brace.

Yeouch!  This is a real challenge for Dolly and me.  This is one of those intangible “things” I have been trying to figure out since I started Parelli.  How do you get your horse to bend around you on a small circle at liberty?  I see videos of people circling their horses at the trot and canter at liberty.  The horse is on less than a 20 foot diameter circle and his body is bent around the person in a sort of moving bear hug.  I got Po to do it, but the darned thing is:  I Don’t Know How!  I’m beginning to think it is not really a behavior as such at all, but an outward manifestation of the quality of the relationship.  You can’t really teach the horse to do it.  You just keep plugging away at the ingredients long enough and building the relationship of trust as you go until one day, the horse just wants to do it.   (At least that is how it was with Po–one day, he just somehow “got it” and that was that.)  So what Trevor had us doing was working on the ingredients, but the actual “hug” may not come for a while.

Dolly and I were quite successful at walking with her in the “sweet spot,” because we have been leading this way ever since seeing Jonathan Field talk about it last year.  We are also good at bending her around me while leading because this is something I have been doing since I first audited a Karen Rolfe clinic.  But when we try to turn this into a circle it all falls apart.  Dolly immediately goes “bad banana” on me.  I can almost feel her pushing that inside shoulder against me as if to shove me aside even though she is at the far end of the lead.   This is how she will do it at liberty also—if I can even get her to stay on a small circle.  It is more like a weird sort of triangle.  We start with the send… I get about a quarter to a third of a circle-ish segment, then she drifts out…I partially disengage and she says:

“Fine, you want me close, I’ll give you close!”  And here comes the shoulder.

I say, “please get that shoulder out of here.”

She says, “fine, you don’t want me close.  I’m leaving!”

Partial disengagement, lather, rinse, repeat…

I have had limited success using a neck rope for this.  The idea is “look, I have nothing on your head, but you still need to stay on this small circle!”  Dolly is not convinced.  But since Dolly and I have just reached a new level of trust and understanding this year, I am willing to be patient.  This, too, will happen.  Right now, we will work on ingredients.

As we played (struggled really) with the circle at the clinic, I heard Trevor talking to another participant about asking the horse to move the ribs away to help achieve the proper bend.  I have been doing this previously, but decided maybe I should be doing more.  I got more assertive about asking her to move the ribs away and she leaped into the air.  But she did achieve the proper bend for a few strides.  Hmmm…  Later Trevor made a comment about how I have a lot of energy in my body (really?).  In the next segment, Tara made the same comment, which really made me think.   Hmmm….  Either they are telepathic, or maybe… maybe I have a lot of energy in my body.   And is this perhaps contributing to the brace?  It kind of feels like somebody handed me a diving belt right now.  If you’re a scuba diver, you need a heavy belt to counteract your buoyancy and hold you underwater long enough to see interesting or important things.  Without the belt, you would just keep popping out of the water before getting a good look around.   (Kind of how I feel at clinics sometimes.)  So now I have this belt and I’m wandering around in the murky depths trying to see something interesting or important—I know there is something really profound out there, but I am still groping around and trying to make sense out of it.  How is my energy causing the brace and what do I have to change to make the whole picture change?

I’ll tell you if I ever get there.  I have played with the circles a few times since the clinic, but still without much change.  I try toning my energy down and Dolly moves like she is swimming through molasses—if at all.  (And she still braces the shoulder).  I know I am expecting too much of myself right now.  We have gone from being absolutely unable to do liberty because she would just panic and run and run until I simply had to walk away, to having some nice things happen and having some good trust and communication between us.  So my mantra now is “ingredients, ingredients, ingredients.”

The water obstacle at the Trail Trial photo courtesy of Kitty Carlisle, Projections Photography

I discovered something at the TnT clinic that I did not expect to find. It upset me very much. Dolly was looking for Po. I hadn’t had her out with other horses since he died over a year ago, so I knew she might be a little silly, but I didn’t expect that. The first thing she did was buddy up to the horse in the stall next to her. At first, I thought she was yelling for him, but later realized he was standing right next to us. She kept craning around and staring of into the distance at all the other horses and screaming her head off (right in my ear, which makes it a bit difficult to listen!). Of course, all of the feelings of loss and grief began to surface in me, on top of the fact that I felt terrible for her, on top of the fact that she was screaming in my ear. I decided I needed to get her out more!

So yesterday, we trailered over to Smith Valley to do the annual Alzheimers Ride at the Hunewill Ranch. There is a Trail Trial, followed by the ride itself. I decided to sign up to do both. My goals for the Trail Trial were simple: walk quietly between obstacles on a loose rein, wait quietly for your turn at obstacles on a loose rein, don’t get silly about the other horses. Notice that my goals had nothing to do with the obstacles. I figured I’d just do what I could and not worry about scores. It would be good experience for Dolly and give purpose to what we were doing. We didn’t do so well on some of the early obstacles. She wanted to rush when she needed to stop and relax, so that’s added to the list of goals for the future. But, basically, Dolly tried at every obstacle and did very well in between them. She screamed once or twice, but the only time she got concerned was when a group of 4 horses we had been following disappeared into some willows up ahead and she wanted to catch up.

The ride itself started right after we finished the Trail Trial. There must have been maybe 50-60 horses there. I rode with my friend Sandra and it was a beautiful autumn day for a trail ride through the cow pastures. Except that it wasn’t exactly an “autumn” trail ride. After the first dry pasture we rode through, we hit the wet. And then more wet, and even more wet (it was a wet year!). It was kind of the Mud Bog Alzheimers ride. Fortunately, I had double taped Dolly’s Easyboot gaiters with Elastikon so they stayed on the whole ride. Dolly was just a little champion about going through all the boggy, marshy and creeky stuff. I was very proud of her. Sandra’s horse Tesega was reluctant at first, but by the time we had waded through about a mile or so of boggy stuff, even he was squelching through the bad spots like it was old hat. About halfway through the ride, Sandra noticed there weren’t very many riders behind us anymore—I guess a bunch of them turned back at one of the ditch crossings because it was so wet!

Dolly was quite tired by the end—I had been in the saddle for almost 4 hours. When we got back to the trailer, she got oodles of good cookies and a well-deserved roll (giving new meaning to the word Claybank). Then I left her with hay and water and headed over to the barbecue. If you are a local and haven’t done this ride before, it is well worth it just for that part. There is always lots and lots of great homemade food and good live entertainment. In fact, it is worth it just to show up for the barbecue even if you don’t want to ride—there is a run you can participate in before the rides or just make a $30 donation to Alzheimers research when you get there. There is also a silent auction and a raffle that you can join in on. So we were sitting around eating when they announced the winners of the Trail Trial and Dolly and I came in second in our division! How funny is that? (It has occurred to me that there may have only been two people competing in my division, but I can live with that.) I won a nice leather punch that can live in the horse trailer and Dolly got a few more oodles of cookies. To top it off, I won three of the raffle prizes. In the end, Megan Hunewill announced that we had raised over $10,000 for Alzheimers Research.

I’d like to start this off by stating that I can’t possibly write down everything that Trevor and Tara taught during the clinic.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even hope to capture everything I was supposed to have learned there.  The best I can do is try to convey my interpretation of what insights I may or may not have gleaned as a result of spending two days playing with concepts in a clinic setting.  It sounds pretty vague, but that’s about the best you can expect, I think, and about the best I can deliver.

In level 3 and 4, we work on refining everything we learned in levels 1 and 2 until it becomes seamless.  We call it unconscious competence.  The operative question is “how little can I do and still get the desired result?”  If we do too little, our horse won’t understand—too much and we are shouting.  And if we do just a little, but we do it  all the time, we are nagging.  We have to learn to give the signal as quietly as possible, then go to neutral and stay there and let the horse be responsible for his actions.

Tara spent part of the first morning having us play with this concept of neutrality.  She began by demonstrating with Amy, a Percheron mare.  She used the game “don’t make me pick up the stick” on a circle.  Only now, in level 3, she was far more particular about what she expected from Amy.  If she sent Amy at a trot, Amy was to go at a trot.  If she asked Amy to slow to a walk, she explained that Amy must do so within one quadrant of the circle.  (Later, you would refine this down to an eighth of the circle, then even less as the horse improves.)  If she asked Amy to canter or make any other transition, she must do it within one quarter of the circle also.

Each time Amy didn’t respond within the allotted time, Tara would pick up the stick and wiggle it (in the case of a down transition) or spank the ground (for an up transition.)  Then she would disengage Amy and bring her in, then send her right back out in the other direction and ask the same thing.  This kind of correction only makes it more work for Amy every time she doesn’t respond and gives her incentive to respond faster next time.    The idea was that if Tara had to “come out of neutral,” Amy would have to disengage and change directions.  She explained that she always sent Amy in the other direction because it was more work—you might not need to change directions with a different horse, but you would always disengage.

So off we went to play with the concept.  It became immediately obvious to me that I come out of neutral a lot!  Only when I come out of neutral, it is far more subtle than what Tara had to do with Amy.  Dolly is so responsive, that coming out of neutral for me can be as simple as picking the tip of the stick off the ground or moving one foot forward and lifting a hand.  (If I really spanked the ground on an up transition, Dolly would be in Utah before I got her disengaged!)  I kept making these little movements and then realizing that I had come out of neutral and should have disengaged Dolly and oops, now it’s too late and, oh dang, I just did it again!  It was very awkward.  But I was becoming aware.  Tara also pointed out that I was picking up the stick to ask for the down transition, not asking first, then picking up the stick when she doesn’t respond.  Hmmm…

To add to the fun, we were in a large pasture/playground area and the grass was wet.  We had to make a smaller circle than usual between the “toys” and Dolly was afraid she might slip on the grass.  (She wasn’t the only one—I had my heart in my teeth a couple of times thinking about vet bills!)  It occurred to me that I was making these small movements to try to “help” her when really I should just shut up and let her figure it out.  In the end, the result would be the same.  By trying to help her gain confidence in going forward, I was only making noise that would begin to desensitize her to my signals.  So at that point, I sort of gave up on that and put it in the points to ponder file.

When I finally had time to play with this idea again, we were at home in our non-slippery footing and on our big circle.  I resolved to pay close attention to the question of what specific actions constitute “coming out of neutral.”  It felt much less awkward.    I found what I already knew to be true.  Dolly consistently gives me up transitions within a stride of asking, but the downs aren’t so good.  We spent a lot of time doing trot to walk.  First, the body language and then wait for my quarter of a circle.  Still trotting?  Wiggle the stick, disengage, bring her in, quick pat, send her back out again at the walk (after all, the walk was what I wanted.)  Ask for the trot.  Try again.  After about the fifth time, I could see the question in her eyes.

“Really? … Because you just disengaged me and brought me in and now you want to do it again?  I didn’t even make a full circle! Is this really necessary?”

Bringing her in became work because she knew she was going right back out.  She started trying to solve the puzzle.  By the tenth or twentieth time, the look became more disgusted.  Finally, she figured it out and began to do the down transitions off of my body language.  At that point, I brought her in for a good long soak.

We played with this again the next day.  I still have work to do on the down transitions.  All this time of being noisy first, then asking for the transition later has taught her to ignore my body language.  However, it didn’t take nearly as long for her to figure it out the second time.   I’ll let you know when we get around to doing canter-halts!

And all this was just the second half of Saturday morning.  You can see why clinic notes are a slow process for me.