Revelations

Sierra is definitely a RBI; very willing to please, wants to do the right thing, gets upset when she is 'corrected', hides her nervousness inside (eyes big, head up, flanks tight).

Sarah had given me one 'nugget' of information from the 2012 Parelli Summit since I wasn't able to go. Linda was talking about her RBI horse, Hot Jazz, and she was saying that she walks him around the arena until he blows out...basically releasing all of his inner energy/adrenaline.

When a horse is on adrenaline, they are thinking with the right side of their brain, their prey/instinctual side. When put in a situation, they will fight or flight without thinking. There is no training when they are in this mindset....well, you can surely try but it won't go so well. This is when people get hurt, horses get hurt, and it doesn't end well for either one. Lose/lose.

However, when a horse is thinking when the left side, they are thinking through the situation, not being instinctual. They can problem solve. When humans are involved, they become a partner. This is when training is 'easy'.

I remembered this tidbit of information when I was working with Sierra a few days ago. I had used it with Spuds and it seemed to work really well. I had taken Sierra into the round pen, let her go and started working with her at liberty. She hardly wanted to move her feet, kept asking me to come in and was being difficult.

So, I decided to just walk her around until she blew out. I thought it was going to take a while, but I was prepared to put the time in. I knew it would reap rewards. About 5 minutes later, she blew out about 3 times in a row. Success!

Not even kidding, she was a different horse after that. More confident, yet still willing to learn. All attention on me. Being a partner.

I will do this before any session with her. I want her to be a partner when we are together, not a prey animal. This golden nugget of information reaps big rewards.

In the meantime, I am working with Spirit's feet. She is being fiesty about me picking them up. Seems she got away with not submitting her feet to people, so they just let it go and now she thinks she doesn't need to cooperate. It also doesn't help that she is acting very sore on her front left. I need to get her foot picked out to make sure she doesn't have anything in there that could be causing her lameness. I will keep taking my time, being assertive yet patient, and I know we will get there.

When my baby was just months old and I would be trying to get her to sleep, I had to have the attitude of "I'm going to try this first, but if it doesn't work, I am willing to do this." For example, I am going to try and rock her to sleep, but if it doesn't work, I will be okay with nursing her to sleep. Same with horses..."My goal is to pick her foot out...but if that doesn't work, I'm okay with just getting her to lift it and stand quietly for a few seconds."

I find this attitude very important when working with horses (and kids!), because it puts out an expectation, but you won't fall back to being disappointed if it doesn't work out the way you intended; disappointment leads to frustration which leads to anger which leads to nothing good. Just like horses don't act like a partner when they are acting out of fear/instinct, humans don't either. When we get angry/frustrated, we can't think through the situation and figure out how to solve the problem.

I choose to use patience and assertiveness, rather than anger, dominance and frustration. Everyone is better off for it :)