Spirit-to-Spirit Horsemanship

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 re...

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 ...