Introducing.... Flo!

For the next month, I'm excited to announce that I will be playing with a beautiful Mustang mare named Flo. She was rescued by the lovely team in Cedar City at Dust Devil Ranch Sanctuary for horses...and is looking for her forever home!

My hope is to try to blog about each of our sessions so that Flo can get some publicity and hopefully find a special human!

So today was our first session. We began with Catching, something that she has struggled with in the past. Flo wanted to come and see me and walked right up, but when I moved my hands or the rope she moved away. This tells me that I don't so much have a catching challenge, I think I have more of a challenge with Friendly Game, or Rhythmic Motion. I allowed her to approach and retreat and after not too long she was happy to be haltered. She has some pretty big "uh-uh" muscles under her neck though from lifting her head in tension.

We wandered up to the indoor arena where Flo stood tied while I played with another horse. She pawed a little, but for for he most part she stood really nicely.

I began our session by playing with improving her understanding that when MY energy is in neutral she doesn't have to worry about any stimulus that's going on... She should focus on relaxing! One of the techniques I used was to throw the rope over her back a few times, and then ask her to yield her hindquarters. Because so far she strikes me as a more nervous horse (Right Brain) and she tends to freeze (introvert)... Adding in this motion, and asking her to cross her hind legs helps her to turn loose and be more vulnerable with me, as well as building her confidence.

At the end of her session we had some awesome yawns, big neck shakes and adrenaline releases! I look forward to continuing our sessions.

Lastly when I turned her loose... I made sure to wander with her until I found where SHE wanted to be. Then I let her go, so that I could be the one to leave her, because of her former troubles with Catching.

Please share this around so we can find Flo an awesome home, and thanks for listening!!