Playing With the Horse That Shows Up

This post connects to yesterdays, but I thought it would become a chapter book if I wrote it all in one day...

Just this morning I was telling my godmother how happy I am to have my best friend Melissa board at the same barn I do. It is beyond helpful to have another parelli student so close; we bounce ideas off each other, talk about problems and solutions, and of course inspire one another. It didn't really hit me how connected we are until I tried to figure out what I wanted to title my post today. The only thing I could come up with is exactly what Melissa titled her post yesterday. I didn't want to be a 'copy-cat', but it actually sparked my interest.

Melissa and I have two very different horses, very different backgrounds, come from totally different places, and here we are titling out blog post the same thing in two consecutive days. How interesting! It seems like we tend to be discovering the same things, we are just taking different journeys to get there. I think this is just too cool!

Monday night I met Melissa at the barn and she was having such a great time with Rydel! She had this fun little course set up and I was so eager to play with it with Sonny. But, if you read this post, you know that Sonny was not in any kind of mood to be doing any playing. Putting the relationship first, we did nothing but spend some undemanding time together that night.

When I went out yesterday he was in a great mood and eager to get going! Interesting...a completely 180 from just the night before. Immediately it made me think of reading Melissa's blog on Monday night...Play with the horse that shows up. I had planned on doing nothing but undemanding time with Sonny yesterday, but he was in such a playful mood that undemanding time would have been so boarding. I felt a little guilty when I started setting up a course, thinking that I should still be not doing anything with him after the depressing last two days he has had. But, I kept thinking about Melissa's blog and decided to go for it. This is the horse that showed up today so who cares what horse showed up yesterday!

Boy, am I glad I did! We had one of the most fabulous days ever. I recently watched the savvy club dvd from May 2006, Issue 17, where Pat plays the circling game with Magic then doesn't let her stop until she puts all 4 feet on the tarp which is set in 3 poles (if you login in, you can click here to watch the video). He talks about really making it a 'game' so that Magic puts effort into getting to the tarp. I thought it would be an awesome game for Sonny since there is so much incentive.

I started out Tuesday playing with that. He caught on so quick! I didn't want him to get bored with it so we moved on. He went sideways towards me by only just raising my hands and backing up. He has never went sideways towards me from phase 1 before (he usually waits for me to put my carrot stick on the other side of his body), so I was super excited about that. Also, my 'Up' command has really been improving...he lifts his leg up even with the pedestal isn't around! How fun! We moved on to playing with the barrels Melissa had set up. At first he tried getting out of it and would madly dash around the barrels at the last second rather than jumping. I knew that our friendly game must be broken, he wasn't connected to me enough because he wasn't thinking, and he didn't see the incentive to jump.

I played some friendly game for a while, then moved onto the connection and the thinking. Disregarding the barrels, we played with some transitions online from only my energy. Once he was with me there, I started making him think about the barrels by doing things like trot up to the stop and back up or side pass around them. Once I felt that everything was improved, I asked him to jump and he said "No problem!". I wasn't expecting him to be that willing, but I sure did love it! After lots of carrots and scratches, he went on the jumping the barrels without a problem from the walk. One of our biggest improvements in such a short time!!!

After that we were so connected I decided that it would be a perfect time to practice our phase 1 transitions freestyle. I didn't have my 12 foot line around, so I just tied my savvy string around his neck since I didn't plan on doing a ton since we played online all day already. Since the barrels were out, I thought it would be fun to see if I could get on him from one since I think that is a level 3 freestyle task. Getting on a barrel when you are 5'1" is a LOT tricker that it looks. In the meantime while I struggled to get up there Sonny had wandered a few steps away. Oh crap...I don't have a lead rope on him and now he isn't close enough for me to get on and I just used all my energy to get up here. As soon as I stood up, Sonny looked at me and came sideways right over to me..."Wanna ride?".Being the emotional person I am, this gave me goosebumps and almost brought tears to my eyes. Then after that we were just walking around and I aimed him at the pedestal. Not only did he offer to stand on it, he offed to put all four feet on it without me asking! He has NEVER put all four feet on it when I am on him...I couldn't believe he offered it! He melts my heart :).

Practicing our new trick...'Up'!