Better Leadership Through Game of Contact

WOW what a breakthrough day today with Linda! So as many of you know ... I've recently jumped head first out of my comfort zone (at least that's how it feels!) into the study of the elusive fourth savvy, Finesse.

Photo by Coco

My wonderful partner and teacher, a grey Arabian mare, Damo, charts as an extreme Right Brain Extravert ... just a tad more extreme than me ;). Which can either go really well, or really poorly depending on the day and my own level of personal development.

For the last 4 weeks with Linda we have been playing with Stage 1 and 2. Now we've also been away on tour and lots of other stuff so we haven't had that much consistency, but Im petrified of contact, and my mare has some fairly intense feelings about the bit as well, (Surprise, Surprise!). So we've been plugging on building confidence and trust as I build better posture and better hands, attempting to avoid her usual tendencies with the bit which were teeth grinding and well ... taking off with me! We had a minor set back which you can read about in my last blog if you're interested where she actually began to refuse to bridle; but besides that we have steadily been making progress, and learning together every day.

On the flip side, Linda has also been really pushing me to be a better leader FreeStyle. My tendency is to float somewhere between having a plan and being a passenger. So Linda has begun coaching me on getting a "light seat forward canter" which of course REALLY tests my leadership as Damo gets way impulsive and starts to think about running off. Then when I loose that mental connection she also begins to get really spooky, making her pretty challenging to ride. So I've been playing lots of approach and retreat and going back to patterns like the Figure 8 and Bullseye to get her mind back to me and our impulsion organized again every time we go for a fast canter. Again, I've been slowly making progress and its been getting better and better ... but slowly!

Photo by Coco

This is a recent adventure where as you can see

I had too much GO and not enough WHOA!

Photo by Coco

You can also see what happens even in the halter 

when I block Zone 1 when she gets impulsive.

So as your reading this you may wonder how these two trains of thoughts intersect ... well SO DID I UNTIL TODAY! Today I said to Linda that I thought I was ready to play with the flying change piece of the forward canter, and she said she would help me through it. So Damo and I got a really nice forward canter going on the Question Box Pattern. Then I changed the flexion and the weight in my stirrups and headed onto the other circle ... and yikes up came her adrenaline, she changed in front and not behind, spooked fairly violently at the mounting block, and I could feel I was on a bit of a runaway. I half yelled to Linda what to do, and she basically said, ignore it, "shorten your reins, and have a stronger focus!"

I did what she asked and we got on the correct lead and came around the circle again. I shortened my reins and was able to ask Damo to have correct flexion on the circle and act like a partner. Then we came through the box again and I changed my focus, changed her flexion, weighted my stirrup, and we got a perfect change ;). It was my first flying change, on purpose, without micro-managing, that felt soft, in control, and just plain FUN!

Photo by John Sinclair

The coolest thing to me though was the moment before that. When my RBE had her energy, life and adrenaline up, in the past I have always had to slow things down ... revert to patterns and get her confidence back by breaking it down that way. Today I was able to shorten the reins, take more leadership, and re-direct her! In the past she would have felt completely blocked in Zone 1, and by doing that I would have made the problem WORSE for sure! (As you can see from the photos above!!)

For me that moment completely solidified me on how amazing Stage 1 and 2 of Game of Contact really is for horses. My mare felt like a different horse today, and without this incredible breakthrough of Linda's Game of Contact I don't think we ever would have gotten to this place. I know have a completely different tool available to use in my Freestyle riding because Damo no longer feels like the bit is a barrier. I can hold hands with her and offer her more leadership that way. Now I just have to keep playing with getting that feeling in Finesse too! Can't wait to continue the journey, and thanks so much for your help today Linda!!

Photo by Coco

Lessons from Linda Land: Processing Feedback

Well I had a lot to write about today, so I thought I'd share with you all a bit about a "Day in Linda Land."!

Today for me ... was all about becoming better at processing feedback. From peers and instructors ... and most importantly, from yourself and your horse!

My day started this morning with some pretty TOUGH feedback from my beautiful Arabian partner, Andiamo. She has been with me for 13 years now, I rescued her when she was 6 months old, and we pretty much grew up together. In that ... I always know, that everything she does poorly is my fault :(. On the converse, everything she does well is my fault too!! Anyway, at this point we are BOTH pretty anxious about Finesse and contact; luckily Im in the right place for that, and Linda and Marion have been helping us slowly unravel our anxiety and find calmness and connection in contact! Super cool! We have been playing with aspects of contact and riding with the bit for the last 2 weeks.

One part of this that Marion has helped me play with is getting some exuberance in her bridling. She is VERY obedient and will put her head down and allow me to bridle her softly ... but she doesn't seek the bit at all. Through cookies, and some approach and retreat, and truly setting it up so bridling is a GAME, I was starting to be able to hold the bridle out, and have her actually bridle herself! Stick her nose through the headstall, and open her moth and take the bit. Very cool stuff. Well... until today anyway ;(.

So as I mentioned we've been playing in the bit and contact for the last two weeks, all just Stage 1 and 2, building her confidence, plus a bit of freestyle steady rein style on the patterns. I thought her anxiety was diminishing and we were really making progress. But today when I offered her the bridle she turned her head the other way ;(. I played the game for a bit, but the best I could get was back to obedience. Even with the bit places with the cookie DIRECTLY under it, under her nose, she wouldn't open her mouth to take the bit/cookie ;(. Now, I obviously could have put my thumb into her mouth and she very willingly would have participated, but I want better than that. To me she was saying clear as a bell ... "Even that cookie is NOT worth opening my mouth for the bit." ;(

Phew! Big deep breath ... and realization! Now, my goal is to be able to process that feedback without emotion, but that's HARD. I was devastated! I thought I was on the right track ... and helping her to understand and not be afraid of the bit, but clearly my hands haven't been good enough, and there is something Im doing that is causing her not to want to be a partner.

So, after the emotions, and being super upset at myself for not having seen it earlier, and not being more savvy ... then I can start to process it. I realized that feedback is what makes me a better horseman. Whether its TOUGH feedback from my horse, encouraging feedback from my horse, or thoughts and advice from other horseman. Its all what helps us improve and we just have to figure out how to process it and learn from it!

Theory Helping Me Back Into My Comfort Zone

The last few days have been all about filming! Up coming Savvy Club DVD's and a few other exciting things in the pipeline. I was lucky enough to be a part of it on many different levels ... and as always its a journey of self development isn't it?! So, those of you Right Brain Extraverts who want to commiserate with my ramblings please continue reading ... every one else ... at your own risk ;).

My grey mare Damo and I were invited to be a part of some of the Savvy club filming which was really really exciting! For those of us who still have a soft spot for praise and recognition ... and also because in the format of the SC DVD's (where Linda, basically teaches a lesson) I knew that I would learn a ton! Plus ... whatever mistakes I made would only lead to bettering the world for horses anyway, as it gives more opportunities for learning. Not to mention being in the super capable hands of Parelli's amazing film crew, director Niel Pye and Sue Shoemark, and being taught by none other than Linda Parelli herself! Most of the world would think this would be enough people telling me "you're ok!". :)


The first day went fabulously, and I was playing in the Savvy's I was less confident in. Damo was a rock star ...  acting like such a partner and hanging around all day. The second day we did a Liberty section. This is where my emotional fitness started to let me down. The first thing I noticed was that when Linda started asking me to do specific things or tasks ... that splitting of my focus caused me to loose my draw. What a surprise? One of the human's mutual responsibilities in the partnership is "understand the natural power of focus." So as my focus was divided ... Damo began to not act like such a partner. Now ... in hindsight I can analyze this with a clear head, and realize that my liberty used to consist of me seeing lots of hind legs and tail straight in the air and a horse galloping away ... AFTER she had busted through the round pen! So when I say I lost our mental connection ... mostly I mean I had to use a lot of disengagement's to keep her with me, because I lacked draw ... because my focus was off and I wasn't being a good leader!

This is all well and good and we kept it together and finished the filming ... I was pretty bummed and trying to kick myself in the pants, and back into an emotionally fit state! Not to much avail. Here was my PC update after that session:


Lillan Roquet with Andiamo, (Liberty, 45 mins) Today we played with the weave at Liberty. Damo was AWESOME ... My focus was really off :(. She did really well as long as I gave her my total attention ... but when Linda started tasking us, I lost mental connection with Damo and then I had to use a bunch of disengagements to force the draw back to me! YUCK!


I spent most of the rest of the morning stewing ... Feeling like I didn't do right by my horse, because I wasn't upholding my responsibilities ... feeling bad about that ... then feeling even worse that I was feeling bad and not more emotionally fit! I felt like I kinda got myself together after lunch so I thought that I would go out and have a ride with Linda and all of the senior instructors here studying with her. And here's what happened next:


Lillan Roquet with Andiamo, (Freestyle, 45 mins) Played with getting a forward canter today. She did better than she Has EVER done ... so of course I pushed it :(. Too far. Lost her mind and she started spooking, and getting way impulsive ... at one point I weighted my inside stirrup and my saddle slid almost completely off :( ... I did an emergency dismount ... but also had to pull on her face too much to stop and broke a bunch of her confidence in GOC.

Linda says I need to play with maintain gait first (haha ... DUH! maintain gait ... then direction). So she suggests the round pen where she can go fast and I don't have to steer. Then take her up for a lap or two, then bring her back to a trot ... etc til she gets more confidence and connected with the speed I want. I also don't KNOW what speed I want, which makes it hard, because Im not being clear ... so Im just saying to her, "um thats ok ... thats ok ... thats. ok ... ThATS TOO FAST!". Which isn't clear communication is it?!

HUUURRRRRUMPH! Perhaps I will get myself figured out one day :(


As you can read ... not my most successful ride! Again ... into that terrible spiral of being disappointed with myself for not having more savvy and being a better partner, and then being disappointed for being disappointed! 


So then comes the realizations ... I got home, and just blurted it all out onto Parelli Connect. I almost deleted it ... then thought, "no one will read it anyway!" so I left it up there ... (ooops! Mistake!). Then my brain came back to me ... writing all those emotions down, and processing the disappointment at not being the partner I want to be to a horse that has given me SO much, caused me to start looking for theory. So of course in Parelli I could find so much to bring me back. That is where my realizations about focus, responsibilities .... maintain gait, THEN direction, clarity of leadership, feeling during the day, thinking at night, etc etc etc came from. And of course ... the realization, that discomfort is learning :). 

So ... I learned that knowledge can help us to find our way back into our comfort zone. "Frustration begins where knowledge ends." And luckily we have this AMAZING program to help us out of our comfort zone ... and then the theory to help us find our way back in. 

Just a Little Better Everyday

While driving across the country from Washington to the Parelli Ranch in Florid, I've been thinking about different things :). One of the amazing things I noticed is that despite 2 days of traveling to Idaho, a weeks rest, then 10 days of consecutive trailer loading and driving every day to get to Florida, both Damo and Shao's trailer loading got stronger! The best loading was actually the LAST day on the way to the ranch :).

So, despite all of the things that were NOT set up for success in our adventures, our horses still became more relaxed and began acting more like partners. No Kerryn and I were not really able to do any of the things I would normally recommend to students to improve their trailer loading. No feeding horses in the trailer, no not making it about the trailer, no play sessions with lots of rest in the trailer ... etc ...etc. No big long breakthrough session on squeeze game.

So, why did it improve? Well, my thoughts are what Kerryn and I focused on is just making each part a LITTLE better each day. Now, our girls both load really well, and in any sort of got to situation they will load like gems :). But, "Good Better Best ..." right? So every day we would spend 15 minutes just seeing if we could get one or two ingredients working better, and over 10 days our trailer loading improved drastically.

In thinking lots about this I remember that Kalley used to say this ALL the time ... "Just a little better every day." All the way down to Haltering and catching your horse! Do you take the time to get your haltering a "little better everyday"? I think so often we forget and just blow through the easy things, wanting to get into our main session. When what is important is taking the time to make EVERYTHING just a little better every day :).

I so often watch Pat and Linda and so many other talented instructors have these FANTASTIC breakthrough sessions with horses, and we end up taking that on as what ALL of our sessions need to be like. Now of course those break through sessions are amazing! And definitely have their place. But if we put pressure on ourselves to create those sessions... we very quickly end up with sour horses :(.

After spending time with Pat and Linda, riding and training with them, it has become very clear to me, that just like us, most of their sessions are NOT fantastic, massive, break through sessions. They are calm, consistent, patterns, and relationship focused days ... where they just think about making every thing a little bit better everyday!

The Learning Zone :) A personal growth story

The Learning Zone is a concept many of us in Parelli are familiar with, both in regards to our horsemanship, and our own persoanl growth. When I was in Florida for my externship, Oct 15-Dec 10 2010, Linda Parelli asked me if I would like to ride with her during my time there. WOW!! What a huge opportunity :)

At first I was OVER the moon excited. WE had a few rides, and I was riding Remmer (before his injury obviously). Linda was helping me with my possition, and lots and lots of excercises to help Rem get more balanced, and engaged, as we have all seen his STRONG LBI nature. It was really incredible.

Now, those of you that know me, know that Finesse, is NOT my strong point :) I STRUGGLED to help my mare get to a point where we could film the old Level 3, and since then I haven't done much finesse at all! Between doing young horse development at Atwood Ranch, and teaching lessons, I have been able to succesfully avoid playing with contact pretty much at all! Well... not so when you ride with Linda!

For the first week I did well; I was learning lots, sore in muscles I didn't know I had, and starting to grasp some theories that I had never truly understood before. Plus, I was in heaven, getting the chance to ride, big, beautiful moving warmbloods for hours every day, chatting with Linda Parelli, and Lyndsey Fitch! I should have been in 7th heaven...

So, why this blog? Well, a funny thing started to happen. Voices in my head started to say...you aren't good enough for this opportunity... you dont deserve this... you are taking this opportunity from someone who could do more with it, would enjoy it more, would benifit more. I seriously considered asking not to ride with Linda and Lydsey anymore :(

WOW, how interesting?!?! So I began to step back, and ask myself why I was feeling this way? Why did I all of a sudden believe I wasn't good enough? Luckily I was able to voice my thoughts to Lyndsey, and also to Kerryn (And later down the road to Linda too!) Both Lyndsey and Kerryn knew me well enough to say... in so many words... that that was a bunch of BS!

It took a bit more personal growth and development for me to finally realize that, I think, all of those feelings were simply coming from being in the learning zone! Linda and Stephanie Burns talk so much about how it can be an uncomfortable place, and boy are they right! I realized that in my everyday Parelli Journey with my Levels mare, or my students, I am happy to push myself into that learning zone, and I know its uncomfortable, and I can just relax and say, its just cause im trying to figure something out. Not so when it came to Finesse, so many little demons got inside my head and were telling me so many things to ruin my self-confidence.

Through support from my friends, and an eventual commitment to truly TRUST THE PROCESS I was able to get through these feelings and believe that I deserved the opportunity of learning from Linda. I was able to really say, its ok that it feels uncomfortable, Im just learning! And once I said that to myself it was totally liberating :)

Of course parts of me wishes I didn't have to go there and feel those feeligns, but I am also profoundly grateful. Now I have such a stronger grasp on what students in this program must feel as they push themselves to learn more and more. I know that this emotional exerience, AS WELL as everything I learned during the amazing 8 weeks I got to ride with Linda have made me a stronger horsewoman, teacher, and woman :) And now I can't wait to go back!!

Horsenality and Not creating DUST

Hi all-

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

Asking Questions

In Parelli we are always focusing on putting the relationship first; and in many ways this comes down to figuring out how to really have a conversation with your horse... a two way street. Hearing and taking on board their opinions, and expressing your own. As Pat would say, "Cause your idea to become your horses idea, but understand their idea first." One of the best ways to promote your relationship with your horse, to understand their idea, and to really promote that idea of having a conversation is to teach and encourage your horse to ask questions. Alright. That makes sense... but how do we do that?

First of all I want you to think about your own life. Think about when, why, what, and how you ask questions in your daily life. In my opinion there are usually about 4 main reasons as people that we DON'T ask questions... I think if we understand the reasons why we as humans DON'T ask questions... we can begin to apply the same logic to our horses and start to understand why they might tend not to, as well.

So, for humans, and from my observations it seems to me that people don't ask questions for these 4 main reasons. First of all we don't ask because we are overly confident that we know all the answers; or to put it another way, we don't ask questions when we are extremely Left Brain. I also think we don't ask questions when we are the opposite... extremely Right Brain. I know as a Right Brain Extravert, I often find myself not asking a question because I’m scared someone else will think its a stupid question, or something along those lines. I’m sure many of you can now see where I'm going with this ;)... I also think as humans we don't ask questions if we are feeling overly introverted or overly extraverted. When someone is overly extraverted whether LB or RB, we often find it hard to slow down, and listen enough to actually ask a question... OR, even more often is the case, we ask the question and then don't take the time to actually HEAR the answer. And of course the converse... Introverts often would rather listen then step up and ask a question. So, what does this teach us? The answer to successfully asking questions, lies, like almost everything, at the heart of our goal to become more centred.

Alright, so without getting direct line, lets MORE directly apply this to our horsemanship. As with us, when our horse is too extreme in any one of the 4 directions, it will be extremely hard for them to ask a question... we have to help them come more to the center ... to the learning zone... so they can start to think about how to ask a question.

For Left Brain horses; often the answer here is being more provocative, more particular, and generally more interesting. When a left Brain horse makes an assumption, "oh... i know this ... this is the 7 jobs" ... there won't be any questioning or communication. Or if there is, it won't be on a level that satisfies either our personal or our horses need for connection. For Right brain horses, if they are TOO right brain, obviously here flight mechanisms are kicking in and they are reacting instead of responding. No chance of a horse connecting and asking a question there. So first off we have to get a Right brain horse thinking and responding, and also make sure we are not applying TOO much pressure. With these Right Brain horses, often we can be "inside their bubble" without even realizing it, and the best thing we can do to cause a question is to back up and wait. Of course this is when we feel we’ve got that moment of connection, and they have stopped fleeing.

With the introvert/extravert part of the puzzle its all about energy levels. When an introvert or "short horse" is moving like molasses you are unlikely to have them motivated and connected enough to get a question. The reverse is true with an extravert being too high energy moving their feet TOO much to stop and ask a question. Of course it also has to do with MATCHING that energy. An introvert that feels you are rushing them, or just TOO high energy for them won’t be able to ask a question, because you are not “understanding their idea first.” With students I often compare this to thinking about if you were planning a nice lazy Sunday afternoon watching TV and eating popcorn and your best friend came RUNNING in the door saying its time for a jog!

So with this background theory in mind, think of your horse, and how you can best encourage them to ask questions. The most important thing to think of is that it is about your horse being in the learning zone... not in the deep end, but not doing the same thing they can do every day!