The Natural Horsemanship Journey

Today Rascal picked up the trot while circling, and all I had to do was point my finger and put some energy into my body. I didn't even have to touch the stick. True, he only trotted like three steps, then stopped and faced me with, "Did I do what you wanted? Was that good?" all over his face. It was one of those "aww, what a cute wittle horsey" moments.

And while we circled at the walk, he stopped a couple of times for grass. All I had to do was look at him and he started walking again. He's NEVER done that before. I just wish I could ride. :-/ Ah, well, soon.

Today I just wanted to relax, so I was bad and just hopped on Rascal bareback without really playing with him. (He was almost asleep, so I figured he was pretty left-brained, heh.) We rode around the property looking for good eats. At this time of year, the only real grass is under the poplar trees that line the street, so we headed there. He's fine with traffic, so I wasn't worried.

Anyway, we munched and walked, and after a while I noticed our little old dog trailing behind us. While I thought it odd that he had been let out of the yard -- he's deaf, so he doesn't go out unless someone is with him -- there wasn't any harm as long as he stuck with me.

So, of course, he decided it would be fun to head across the street.

There I am, knowing that if I get off my horse, I'm not going to be able to get back on thanks to my bloody chaps. So I can either use the horse to drive the dog back to our property, thus having TWO animals in the middle of the street, or dismount and chase the dog. I figured that because Rascal was busy eating (and NOTHING interrupts him when he's busy eating), he'd be OK while I chased down the dog. I hopped off and ran toward the street, where the dog was already in the center.

I'm whistling and clapping so he can hear me while I'm jogging toward him. All of a sudden, when he starts to come (slooooooowly), I turn around and see the horse trotting after me! I stopped short, and he stopped, and I grabbed his reins. His front feet were on the street, so I'm trying to back him up and whistle to the dog so he keeps coming toward me.

Cue circus music.

Finally, we were all back on the righe side of the road, and I noticed Rascal looking at me like, "Well, you taught me to jog with you when you jog! Aren't I a good horsey?"

I guess I need to teach him how to ground tie. :-p

After all the frustration of jogging two steps at a time and stopping, Mom got me an early Christmas present: Parelli's "My Horse Won't Go" DVD. I watched most of it last week, but today was the first chance I had to try the new ideas I'd come across (mainly that I need more energy in my upper body and that I need to be firmer with him while he's circling).

Holy cow. My horse trots.

I started out with the intention of loping on the circling game. So I went through the steps to get him to up his gait from the trot, and he bucked away from me, pulling the rope through my hands. This was repeated several times. He DID NOT LIKE being told to move AT ALL, no he did not. HOWEVER (caps overload today ahhh), he then kept a nice trot for one full circle each direction, something he has NEVER done before. (Something I never thought he'd do, even.)

Then I got on him, deciding I wouldn't try to lope him until I work the kinks out on the ground. I tried the tactic of putting as much energy as I wanted him to have into my body. That doesn't make much sense outside of my head, I'm afeared, but IT WORKED. We trotted around the arena, to the gate (his favorite place), out the gate, to the yard, around the yard, etc. I only had to go to phase two or three most of the time. I've never seen anything so close to being magic.

Now I just have to be careful that I don't overdo it and make him sick and tired of working with me.

Yesterday's ride was . . . interesting. And painful. Okay, it wasn't the ride itself that was painful. It was more the launching-myself-over-the-fence.

Rascal had his halter off so he could roll, but he didn't want to roll. He wanted to come sit in my lap, so to speak. He was stuck to me like glue. I thought that was pretty cool, so I decided to see if he would follow me while I walked around. And he did. I was excited.

Then I decided to see if he would change gaits with me, so I started jogging. He stood still and watched me for a few seconds; then from behind me I suddenly hear really fast, irregular hoofbeats. Meaning he's bucking and coming toward me pretty quickly.

I wasn't scared he would run me over -- Rascal would never do that unless he thought I was threatening him. (He's had perfect opportunity before and missed me purposefully.) However, I *do* have a healthy fear of getting whacked by a flying hoof.

So I grabbed the edge of the fence and flung myself over in a Jackie Chan kind of move. Rascal goes flying around where I was, with a nice big buck in my general direction, does a spin worthy of a reining horse, and stops, just looking at me. I could practically hear him saying, "What's up? Didn't you want to play?"

It was about that time I noticed my right thumb starting to throb. I took off my glove, and sure enough, I'd bent my thumbnail backwards. Like a centimeter down. Today it's mostly purple and I couldn't even open a jar of mayonnaise because it hurt so much to put pressure on it.

Ah, the fun you can have with horses.

After spending five weeks away from Rascal, I was scared to death that we would have to start ALL over again. But my first session since being back, a couple of days ago, went a heck of a lot better than I was anticipating. All four feet came up with just a tiny bit of pressure, and not in an "attitude" way, either. He held them up for me until I could grab them. I just about cried. (He did get a little confused when I asked him for the foot on the side opposite of where I was standing, and tried to give me the foot nearest me. It was like he was saying, "You stupid human, you want this foot! I know you do!")

So I continued watching Level 2 stuff. The parts I specifically watched were about the "put your nose on something" game and the seven games with an obstacle. The former is intruduced in Level 1, and I hated it there. I could never get Rascal to go forward, or to hit the intended target, or to understand that he was supposed to touch it. While I watched this, I was dreading trying to do it. But something sparked when I did try it. Linda must have explanined something in a better way (using the handle, as she demonstrated, to tap his back works a heck of a lot better than the other way round), because we got his nose on four different objects, EVEN when he wanted to stop and eat! Breakthrough!! It was an "I WUV MY HORSEY" moment.

(The only bad thing about the game was that I kept tripping over that dang 22-foot line. That thing is loooooooooooooooooooong.)

Once in the arena, I let him loose to roll. That's our custom. He rolls, and when he's ready to play, he comes over to where I am and I halter him again. Except this time, I didn't halter him. I just started brushing him. I thought I'd see how far I could get before he took off.

He never did. He let me groom him all over, pick his hooves (I never, ever would have thought I would be able to pick his hooves without any kind of tie, he hated it and would move so much), put on his sports medicine boots (something else he used to despise), even saddle him without a halter on at all. The halter was the very last thing to go on.

We continued with the seven games + obstacle. That went so-so, as he was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. We attempted lifting his foot on to a chair, but he totally wasn't down with that. ;-) We did the yoyo and circling games with me sitting in the chair. That kind of freaked him out. He responded to phase one and two at the yoyo, though, and that was AWESOME. At one point on the circling game, he spooked at something and took off loping and bucking and kicking, then decided it was too much effort to do that and went back to the circle.

He just barely let me get on him. I kind of forced the issue, hopping on him while he was moving (a big no-no, I know. Bad me). But we had a decent ride. We are still just doing the pushing passenger lesson, which doesn't feel comfortable to me unless I'm pushing on the saddle and not his withers. Dang short torso. He offered me the jog several times, which rocked. The only downside is that when he jogs (with or without the saddle), he puts his head down and shakes it. He used to do that going into the lope, but never the trot. I think it might be because his back has lost a LOT of muscle tone over the summer, due to me not working him. Hrm. How interesting . . .

I can't wait to play with him some more today. :-D

I get to practice ALL my games! A lot! Oh boy!!

It continually seems like I am having to start over again, and that is frustrating. Day before yesterday, we could NOT do sideways, or circling. Today, I started over with the basic three (porcupine, driving, and yo-yo) to see if maybe my problems were with those games. Yep, they was, missy. Had to go to phase four almost every time for every game. ARGH. And now I've started level 2, and the whole "long phase one/quick 2-3-4" confuses me. Do I use that to reteach the game or not? It doesn't seem to work very well. Maybe the games need to be solidly in place first (that only makes sense, since it IS level 2). I knew he was kind of right brained when I went out, because the irrigation ditch (Dad's replacing some pipes and has trenched all over the place) freaked him out, although we'd done squeeze over it a bazillion times a week ago. (That was actually really neat. The first time he saw it, he spooked when he got within three feet of it. Then, gradually, he spooked when he breathed in it and dirt fell in; he pawed the edge of it; he jumped over it -- a real jump, too, which he's never done to my knowledge -- and snorted; and, finally, he stepped over it with no problem and actually stopped to graze with his front feet on one side and back feet on the other. We did that going both directions a few times. Took us about 45 minutes to get over it the first time, but after that it was a piece of cake. So he shouldn't have had a problem with it.) Then I tried to jog with him, and he broke into the lope (!!!) before he pulled himself back to a jog. So I tried porcupining him and driving, and he kept ignoring me. He'd do what I asked, but his brain wasn't with me, so to speak. Then we yoyoed (that looks relly weird). I did the long phase one (etc.) every time he stopped. And every time, he'd stand there licking his lips. Finally, when he got all the way out to the end of the line, he started yawning.

I need to get a picture of that. Watching a horse yawn is one of the funniest things in nature.

So I got him calm, and saddled, and then we tried to play some more. That was minimally more successful. His HQ yields are really nice; phase 2 for porcupine and phase 1 for driving. FQ needs work. He likes to walk forward AND around, rather than just turning his front end away. When I bop him on the nose to stop him going forward, he pivots around *on* his front feet instead of moving them. How interesting . . . Oh, and his back-up from his nose was pretty good the second time, too. Phase 2, and just barely.

One of the neatest things that's happened with Parelli is that I can now pick up Rascal's front feet. Sad, eh? We used to *really* fight about that; he's always been protective of them, I think partly because they're his weak spot. (That's another thing I should get pictures of. They're painful to look at sometimes because they're so crooked, but don't bother him. Yet, at least.) Today, he picked them up for me at phases 1 and 2! Wow. And he didn't even try to pull them away once I was holding them.

So we rode. Or attempted to. Pushing Passenger is the most aggravating thing ever. Rascal ALWAYS wants to hang out by the gate, because there are a few little scraps of weeds there to munch on (poor starved horse that he is :-p). He'll go three steps and stop. Three steps and stop. Oooh, look, we went ten steps that time! Let's celebrate! Grrr. Thing is, he's good about going on phase 2, so I can't really spank him for not going (phase 4). *sigh* It's like he knows *exactly* what he can get away with before things get too uncomfortable for him. Heck, that's probably what he's thinking.

But it was better than a couple of days ago, at least. We walked more, and over a wider area. For some reason, he does NOT like the east end of the arena. He will go there quite happily if I ask him to, or if I lead him there -- it's not like it spooks him. But on his own, nope, not a chance. We rode for about half an hour, getting in a couple of trot segments (I asked twice, and both times he gave me about three trot steps before breaking). He needs the exercise, but I don't want to push it. He REALLY doesn't like it when you force him to do things, and I don't want to jeopardize being "friends" with him by making him do it before he's ready. He's closer now than he was two days ago, though.

Even though all we did was walk, thanks to our wonderful hot weather, he was still drenched in sweat when we finished. I hopped off to hose him down, then realized I'd left the carrot stick back on the other side of the arena. So I wrapped the leadrope around the saddle horn where it wouldn't trip him up and went to get it. Two steps later, I hear my creaky saddle following me. That horse followed me all the way across the arena to my stick, then stood there like, "Whatcha doing?" I turned around and he was right in sync with me, so I started jogging just to see if he would follow suit. AND HE DID. He jogged behind me all the way to the other side, at which point I smothered him in horsey hugs.

Then I tried to hose him off. Apparently, he has decided that he is afraid of water. Oooookay. He wasn't last year, to my knowledge, and I bathed him several times. But today, I stood there with the hose as he *trotted* circles around me. He would have loped, had he been comfortable doing so on such a small circle. At one point he even ripped the lead out of my hands. I finally got him to accept the water on his front legs, and the rest of him followed suit. And then he learned that, oooh, it's water. And proceeded to DRINK OUT OF THE HOSE as I stood there in shock. That was hilarious. He did it twice.

It was the best part of the whole day, I think. Silly boy.

I wasn't intending to play with Rascal today because my nose was busy attacking itself, so I put him in the backyard to graze. Dad had recently mowed, however, so the grass wasn't as tender as he likes and he started following Mom around the garden. All of a sudden I hear her yell, "Heather, your horse is looking for you!" Hehe.

So I went out to get him, using the approach and retreat method to get him to come to me, and he started following me around. I decided to see how much he would follow me, so I walked out around the lawn and did a couple of circles. He stuck to me the ENTIRE TIME. It was *so* cool. Then I put his halter on him and just laid his lead rop on his back (so I wasn't pulling on him at all, and he followed me out the gate, across the patio, and on to the lawn to the dandelion patch. It was sort of freaky, because he was really looking to me to lead him and I didn't know what to do. But it was SO neat.

After he grazed a little, we moseyed over to the arena and played a little circling game and a little sideways. He cuts really close to me on one side in the circle and then goes out far enough to pull on the end of the rope on the other. Hmm, how interesting. His sideways left is fantastic, but right needs a LOT of work still. He doesn't like coming all the way to the fence going right. I'll be glad to get my arena fenced off again so I have more rail room (AND I CAN RIDE AGAIN YAYAAYAY!!!).

After that, I took off the lead rope and decided to see if he would follow me around the arena. Normally he just wants to head off to the grass surrounding it. But today he stuck right next to me as I walked in a circle and a couple of squiggly lines, then he stopped right next to me. OMG SO COOOOOL!

Oh yeah, and he tried to drink Mom's tea. X-D She had a bottle of Fuze Tea, and he pulled the cap off and practically stuck the bottleneck up his nostril. He kept coming over to smell it like he wanted some.

I can't wait to go out again to play. I need to remember this day next time I feel like I want to smack the crap of of him. :-p

I decided to start a journal devoted to Rascal's and my Parelli journey 1.) so those reading my regular blog don't have to be bothered with it, and 2.) so I can keep track of our progress better. (I found myself wishing the other day that I had been keeping a horse-specific journal from before Parelli, so I could compare.) Therefore, this is mainly for myself, but if you want to comment or read, please do. No horsey knowledge necessary. :-)