Compassionate Contact

Even though I bought the Game of Contact back in April, I haven't done a whole lot with it. We played with steady rein at Jesse Peters' clinic, but haven't touched it since then. Yesterday I took him out in the huge, freshly mowed, field and played around.

He definitely remembered that reins mean go and stretch. Off to a great start! I played for a while at the walk and trot, trying to see if I could get him to stretch steady rather than drive down and pop back up. I wasn't having a huge amount of success, but I wasn't too worried about it.

I switched it up and started practice canter walk transitions consistently for the the first time. I was counting strides and trying to walk every 5th. In the beginning the transitions were okay but got worse as I went on. I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. How can something get worse and worse the more you do it? I can do perfect canter-halt transitions without a halter or bridle but was having really bad canter-walk transitions with my bridle. How interesting! After thinking about that I dropped my reins and tried again. Bam! Perfect transitions. So...what was the problem? I was making assumptions and going back to old habits. After the first few transitions I must have started to use my reins to try to slow him. Well, reins me go, right? So he probably wasn't in a 'downward' frame of mind when I started using my reins since I had just spent so much time teaching him reins me go. When the transitions got worse because I was using too much rein, I made the assumption they would be bad and used even more! Yikes. As soon as I went back to not using reins and trusting him, the transitions were there.

After a few fabulous transitions I went back to playing with contact. I thought about the DVDs and what I was missing. I thought about Jesse's clinic and something popped out at me: the theme of Jesse's clinic was to make it a game. Everything we did we were supposed to have the frame of mind "If I were you....". I have been so good at keeping up with that until it came to the Game of Contact. I got so focused on the contact I lost the game. Lightbulb! I picked back up my reins and thought to myself if you don't take the contact, I will. Then I experienced about three strides of the most beautiful contact I have ever felt. It was so...unbelievable to have this contact with my horse that wasn't forced or pushed, it was just natural. We had a mutual understanding and it was just so...pleasnt. There wasn't any fuss or fight or any of that. It just...happened. After all those years of riding dressage and pushing my horse into the contact, it blew my mind to just let it happen. As always, I am so thankful to have found Parelli and for Linda and all the fabulous things she has done. I can't wait to play with it more and see where it takes me!

Photo by The Perfect Pear Photography