Highlights from the Biggest Small Town

I had an amazing experience this past weekend with the TSW Parelli Play group in Reno, NV. TSW, in case you, like me, haven't caught on yet, stands for This S*** Works! What a fantastic name.

Anyway, over the weekend I became good friends with a fantastic group of women. Marie, the organizer of the weekend, was especially gracious and helpful as well as experienced having organized countless clinics over her years with the Parelli program. Her quote of the weekend had to be when she turned to me and said, "there just isn't much else I want to do in my spare time besides play with horses." Well said I thought! And as a person Marie completely embodies Parellis mission to make the world a better place for horses and humans. Plus she took amazing care of me!

The facility, and the woman who owns it, are beyond words. Absolutely stunning, and her generosity in opening her home, stables, arena and playground are in my experience un-parelleled. Thank you Candy!

The whole weekend provided so many highlights for me as a teacher, student and human being its hard to know where to start! I had a few cool BFOs of my own as well as watched many occur for horses and humans. For myself I found a clearer sequence for teaching relaxation freestyle to horses, and of course had the importance of how much our groundskills transition to our horses back, hammered home again.

I further honed my skills in creating a beginning, middle and end in the weekend for everyone present. And learned a bit on how to vary this appropriately for humanality and horsenality to hopefully leave everyone with that over arching feeling of being "pleased with their horsemanship, but never satisfied."

My own personal highlight was being given the opportunity to ride Marie's beautiful gaited mare, Bella. Wow! As you can see in the photo, it was awesome, I can see why people fall in love with gaited horses! Thank you Marie, So much, for allowing me to ride her and feel that!

It was Also incredible to have one of my best friends Amber come join me for the weekend ;)! So fantastic to see her, and hear about her third year in Vet School at UC Davis. She is going to be an amazing equine vet in just a short year and a half, and I'm sure an incredible asset to the Parelli AND Veterinary community.

Sitting on the plane flying back to Durango I can't help but be thrilled at my first weekend teaching since leaving Linda Land, and so excited for more. Every moment I'm grateful that I get the amazing opportunity to do what I love, and share this program with the world.... And this weekend, with the amazing women of TSW in Reno, NV! I can't thank you enough!