Welcome to my attempt to blog about my horsemanship and teaching journey as a Parelli Instructor :) I plan on writing whenever I can and want to ... so don't expect religiousness! haha, but hopefully this will give everyone a little food for thought, and perhaps be a unique way for me to puzzle through my various musings!
Well, this weekend started off with me getting the opportunity to play with a young two year old Hanoverian that Kerryn has started. He is really spectacular and quite an LBE! haha, but he also seems to have a lot of moments of RBI, and unconfidence. It got me thinking about Horsenality... and then ALL the different ways that horses can change their horsenality depending on different things. Many horses are different horsenalities within the 4 savvy's (on-line, liberty, freestyle, finesse) others are very different within each of the areas of confidence (learner, leader, self, environemnt, herd). These make our horsesboth different, challenging, interesting and complex! haha, and thats why I love it. Pat always says a horse is made up of three things, learned behaviour, innate characteristics, and spirit. It can be so so powerful to have a grasp on what our horses innate horsenality is, but equally powerful to realize we must address the horse that shows up each day!
So... back to the two year old. He was quite interesting because he was very LBE, but a little RBI as a learner, and about me... this brand new person who was trying to be a leader. As I played with him, I was trying to keep both of these theories essentially balanced in my mind... he is an LBE innately, but was showing RBI tendencies. I felt my horsemanship become a thousand times more effective as I tried this! Although I was using some RBI strategies with him, ie, waiting, not phasing up, retreating, etc, I always tried to have in mind that he was innately more of an LBE. That way I was also able to use a little bit of variety in our touch it game to keep him interested.
I also got the opportunity to play with a beautiful broodmare who has a two week foal at her side. The mare was I think an LBI innately, but was showing STRONG RBI tendencies, especially about trailer loading which was what we were playing with as the mare and foal need to be transported in about a months time. Now, Troy Henry always said that a GREAT horseman is good at three things, Trailer loading, liberty, and flying lead changes. I can confidently say that I feel I am "good" at only one, liberty. Flying changes are coming along, but I dont have a true horsemans grasp on them, and trailer loading, I am mostly just unconfident about my ability to help horses understand this puzzle. I have been succesful many times at trailer loading challenging horses, but Im still a bit hesitant, mostly just a personal confidence issue I think :)
As such, I was very excited (and nervous) for the opportunity to play with this mare (Kerryn played with the foal, who did GREAT)! Kerryn had done a quite lengthy trailer loading session with the mare before she had foaled, and they had made HUGE progress, so my job turned out to be fairly easy. I began with a strategy that I have seen Linda use in a few RBI trailer loadings, she asks the horse to come forward to where the edge of their "bubble" is and they start to put the breaks on and say the trailer is scary, then she backs them until their feet get sticky ... hence the "bubble" of the trailer is no longer causing them to retreat. I did this a few times, and the mare licked a lot. SLowly her"edge" started getting closer and closer to the trailer. I think the key to this approach is to make sure you are only really putting pressure on the horse during the retreat phase, and then you are almost letting the yo-yo effect pull them back towards the trailer.
Once this was solid, and we could confidently get nose, neck and two feet onto the trailer with less than phase 1 pressure from me... I noticed that the mare had switched from being RBI "I can't" to LBI "I won't" HOW INTERESTING?! so then I changed strategies :) I asked the mare to come forward into the trailer, and rubbed and scratched her while she was in there. I put NO pressure on her while she backed herself out, but as soon as she stopped outside the trailer, and had a moment of silence, I asked her to come back in. We repeated this a few times, and pretty soon as the mare was retreating herself out of the trailer she was blowing out (I think because no one was forcing or trapping her to stay IN, on a side note, this mare had had a few traumatic trailer issues, especially in regards to her TRYING to get out and realizing that she couldnt and panicking). The next time after that, she retreated herself out of the trailer, but left her nose and neck in the trailer :) And then the next time, she only felt the need to retreat a little, and left both front feet in! And that's where we quite for the day!
During our whole session the 2 week old foal was sniffing, and stomping and pawing at the trailer, what a great first experience for her! My last musing for the day is how important it sometimes is to think of getting things done "without making dust." As the mare had a young foal at her side, I had no choice but to keep things very calm and relaxed so as not to stress out baby, and I think because of this I was MORE succesful. Don't get me wrong, sometimes horses NEED to go through a dark patch to find the ease and sunshine on the other side, especially horses with baggage, but more often then not, it is US, the human, that feels the need to cause all this dust!
Thanks for reading!
Lillan Roquet
L4 student & 2* Parelli Professional
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