Spirit-to-Spirit Horsemanship

Pat Parelli is a genius.  Linda is one too.  I am not going to allow myself to fall off that slippery cliff of Hero Worship again, but it is difficult not to sit back from time to time and just go, dang, that guy knows a thing, or two.....or seven. Like his Seven Keys to Success. Attitude, Knowledge, Tools, Techniques, Time, Imagination, Support. I've been cycling through the keys....trying to touch on each and every one and assess where I need work, move on, rinse, repeat. I noticed a funny thing about those keys.  Key number 6 is "TIME".   Tool number 3 in teaching is also TIME  (Principles, Purpose, Time). Hmmm.  Time, an integral but oft-overlooked ingredient in any recipe for success is almost just.too.simple. As I see my savvy hours that I am logging on www.parelliconnect.com go up and up, I see a direct co-relation to my accomplishments.  Of course, it isn't the one and only thing as I have spent at least two gazillion hours doing things WRONG

Did you ever teach a giraffe how to fish? No? Me neither. And yet when I really seriously think about the various things we expect to be able to get our horses to do, it's about as crazy a notion. The difference is that we haven't grown up seeing John Wayne or the Lone Ranger out by a pond fishing with a giraffe.  Now another big difference is that I don't think giraffes actually fish on their own and a lot of what we do with our horses, they can already do on their own....still, we have added the component of putting a predatorial species beside them, around them and even on top of them and asked them to give complete control of their bodies to us. Pretty crazy. And yet, people get sooooo frustrated with their horses. Pat and Linda Parelli say:  "Don't get frustrated, get fascinated".  I love this concept and have come to realize that the ONLY time I truly CAN be frustrated is when I am task-oriented.  I simply can't be frustrated if I

I remember studying logic in Philosophy in college.  I loved the clinical, clean, analytical structure of stripping away all emotion and prejudice from thought and getting down to the bare bones of TRUTH. Of course then I'd walk out into the light of day from that ivory tower of the classroom and be faced with the reality of life, teeming with chaos, unpredictable patterns and concepts that don't fall into the 'neat' and the 'tidy'. I wish I would have held on a bit more tightly to that respect that I had for the proper sequence of things, for logical progression and for linear movement.  I lost that somewhere along the way.  I now understand that all that chaos really does rest on predictable patterns. When I first was exposed to Parelli more than a decade ago, I used the 'smorgasboard' approach, or as a friend of mine recently described it:  treating it as a buffet .  Perfect terminology. That's precisely what I did with pretty much all the

....of what you've done with your horse". ~ Pat Parelli Sky    The above quote is from the Savvy Club DVD Issue number 43 and is in the context of balance exercises.  I found it, like so many gems that come from Pat, to be such a powerful statement. Get your opinions to match the facts. Oh boy. How many times my opinions did NOT match the facts. My horse accepts all the points of the skeleton of being rideable for one. I shouldn't see problems with saddling and then expect that I'll go on to have a flawless ride.  Facts vs. opinion. And yet, how many times have I allowed opinion to be the determining factor of what I do? I believe that each and every problem, wreck, upset or other issue I have had with my horses has been when I have been in a situation that I had not adequately prepared for in some way. That could include not preparing my horse well enough for what was going to be asked, or failure to develop enough savvy to recognize th

I had a very challenging session with my LBI mare last night.  She pushed ALL my buttons and I had to fight and fight hard to not go all "Clinton Anderson-direct-line" on her. It shows me just how much work I have to do on myself and how my emotional fitness is not where it needs to be. My mare simply would not move.  And if I did manage to get her to move, she exploded with huge and repeated caprioles in place with such height that I believe even Xenophon would have been impressed. This morning I e-mailed these thoughts to someone who has been a life-line to me....she's rapidly becoming a major portion of the 7th key of success to me:  SUPPORT.  (Thank you, TK!) It seems like if I write to her and also get on here, I can get a stream of consciousness kind of thing going and maybe get a little piece of wisdom to break loose from my very thick skull. Ok, so I'm trying to think of all the ways I can progress in the areas I need to in order to be more EMOTIONAL

Part of my daily discipline is the studying of Parelli materials.  I tend to cycle back and forth between videos from the vault found on www.parelliconnect.com , to levels materials, to the Liberty and Horse Behavior set.  I am currently on disc 4 of that wonderful set and have already decided that when I complete the last disc, I will put the first one in and start over again.  That is a set that I will need to view again, and again, and again. I've just gotten through a leadership segment that Linda covered. In it she & the students composed a list of positive and negative leadership qualities.  Terms like 'focused', 'calm', 'persistent' were on the positive side and concepts like 'scared', 'frustrated' and 'scattered' were on the negative side.  Linda pointed out that those of us with the traits on the 'negative' side are attempting to lead our horses in those states.  And that is why we have problems with our horses

Pat Parelli speaks quite a bit about wanting to help us become better puzzle solvers. I had a chance to really think about this concept this week as I set about de-bugging the figure-8 with three of my horses. All three of them were doing the same thing, basically blowing by me in continuation of a circle,  instead of crossing over...always after the second barrel. These horses are two mares (RBE/RBI, LBI/RBI) and a gelding (extreme LBE), so clearly the common factor was me, not the horse. After getting frustrated and feeling deflated, I remembered one particlar video where Pat looks intently into the camera lens and says:  it is my goal to help you become a better puzzle solver. Well, you can't solve a puzzle if you don't have one to solve, so I realized this was an opportunity for me----I just needed to up my first key to success:  ATTITUDE, and jump in.     I walked into the arena and it hit me where the hole is in my figure-8.  I reasoned that probably

Lately, I've been working through a few of the Parelli concepts.  The Keys to Success is such a powerful paradigm.  Key number 3 is TOOLS.  One of the beautiful things about the Parelli program is that there really are very few tools needed, and in fact, key number 6 is IMAGINATION.  Looking around our place, there is a endless supply of materials and items that can be used in a different way to help me on my horsemanship journey. My mini-pedestal has become a really fun tool, but I decided it needed a bit more stability.  (See original construction post of mini-pedestal here:  http://www.spirit2spirithorse.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-dont-need-no-stinking.html  ) It seems like if there is a funky way to step on this thing, Dani will find it.  (At least I have the problem now of her stepping on it!!!  That is progress!). My LBE, Sky has also found it difficult to position his front feet squarely on it....the top surface of the pedestal is a bit small.  And while these situations h

One of the most delightful aspects of the Parelli program is the fact that it is a PROGRESSIVE program.  Progression:  Movement from one member of a continuous series to the next. ( www.freedictionary.com ) This concept could be the single most powerful aspect of Parelli Natural Horsemanship. As I look back over my long and varied history with horses, I can where my 'failures', my accidents, my ineptitudes all are completely explained by a violation of PROGRESSION.  That is, I either went too fast for my horse or too fast for myself, leaping forward past steps and over-estimating our abilities, or underestimating the time it would take for us truly to master a step before moving on. Most times, I just wasn't on any sort of an organized CONTINUOUS SERIES at all. I can also look at the successes I have had and see where the concept still applies....I was systematically going in a proper sequence and also reading my horse and presenting things in a manner that could

Life with a Right-Brain Extrovert.... is fulfilling.....     is joyful....          has its tender moments....          and its invigorating ones....           ....always keeps me on my toes....        and is oh-so-special when I've passed her test.              Sue, playing with fire, in Ohio  

.....saw horses. --------------------------------- I'm at the point where in the Parelli levels where a pedestal would be handy.  I have tools.  We have scrap wood.  Hmmmm..... Let's make a pedestal. Horse pedestal, lazy-girl-style.  (Full disclaimer:  I am not known for my attention to detail and thoroughness in my home-projects.  I tend to start hammering first and ask questions later). See that square board in the photo?  That's what I've been using for a pedestal.  And actually, that has been about the right gradient for Dani's learning curve....Dani, who is terrorized by ground poles. She put her foot squarely on that board yesterday....and left it there.  Wow.  MAJOR progress. So, we are ready for a little pedestal.  I just want something that will be more sturdy and a bit more of a challenge. Being basically lazy, I mean adept at the conservation of energy, I thought I could just work with that little board and simply screw other boards

is:   progressive..... rewarding.....  (backing by tail hair)         Fun...    exciting..... full of opportunities for personal growth.... and... NEVER boring! ...Sky vs. camera.... Sky: 1  Camera: 0 Sue, loving my LBE, in Ohio

.....the ground pole. See this? Doesn't look very threatening does it? Look again... Now do you see it?  The scary monster that lives within it, around it, through it???  No?  Me neither. But she sees it....or feels it....or just wonders.... what the deal is.... This sweet little mare can be completely undone, transformed into something closely resembling a badly-cartooned version of a tazmanian devil ......by just a close proximity to this evil ground pole.   I'll bet I can conservatively estimate us as having 30+ hours of work on ground poles over the last few years.  I've even broken it down to just a stick on the ground, even just drug my foot through sand and worked with that.   Doesn't matter.....she can still become completely unhinged....at just the hint that we are going to go work on groundpoles.   For a while they were on my 'avoid at all costs' list with her, but I always knew we would have to revisit th