After two weeks at James Roberts we are back home to reality. To be honest I need a rest. The amount of information that he gave us is having trouble staying in my head. Bits of it keep trying to leave and I have to force it back in again. I now have several days work to organise my notes and try to give them some structure, when they are done I will use them to update the Training Plan website.
The most important theme was to keep the horse thinking forward and to make each gait a forward gait. Many people get into the Parelli programme because they have a problem horse and spend lots of time in levels 1 to 4 learning how to shut the horse down and disengage it. This is done for good reason, to make the horse safe to ride. Moving beyond this however we need the horse to be forward thinking and engaged, so whilst keeping the option to disengage if required in an emergency we now need to work more on engagement of the hind quarters. This will enable us to prepare the horse for whatever purpose we are aiming to put the horse to, whether it be hacking out or competing at the Grand National.
Interestingly a forward thinking horse is not more likely to run off than a backward thinking one. In fact a backward thinking horse is more likely to bolt as it gets frightened by a stimulus behind it ! Thus we are not making the horse more dangerous to ride by getting it to think forwards, quite the opposite. To think forwards it has to engage the left brain (where the thinking takes place) rather than the right brain (where instinctual survival happens).
I will expand on this theme as I continue to digest the course and post my thoughts as the emerge.
Of course I have already played with Filly since our return and started to put my new knowledge into practise, much to her disgust. She hates it when I come back from James as her old tricks start to fail !! Yesterday we just worked on the circling game at walk, but rather than just letting her amble around I was asking for a good forward walk. Not only that I was asking her to maintain her responsibility to "maintain gait" by getting her to keep the forward walk going. I am no longer content with just the gait, I want a particular speed and foot fall within that gait. If she failed to keep the foot fall I was asking for she was reminded what her responsibility was with phases of pressure to keep her going. A forward walk can be defined as the one you would make if walking to the pub. Nice long purposeful strides. In this case I am also looking for her inside hind foot to contact the ground at least on the spot that her forward inside foot has just left, and preferably one or two hoof prints in front. This is easy to see if you are in a sand school, but harder on say grass. I will be discussing foot fall a lot in the coming weeks as it was impressed upon me how important it is to be aware of the pattern of your horse.
Just to end, this is a nice video description of the gaits of a horse http://www.extension.org/pages/12480/horse-natural-gaits
The most important theme was to keep the horse thinking forward and to make each gait a forward gait. Many people get into the Parelli programme because they have a problem horse and spend lots of time in levels 1 to 4 learning how to shut the horse down and disengage it. This is done for good reason, to make the horse safe to ride. Moving beyond this however we need the horse to be forward thinking and engaged, so whilst keeping the option to disengage if required in an emergency we now need to work more on engagement of the hind quarters. This will enable us to prepare the horse for whatever purpose we are aiming to put the horse to, whether it be hacking out or competing at the Grand National.
Interestingly a forward thinking horse is not more likely to run off than a backward thinking one. In fact a backward thinking horse is more likely to bolt as it gets frightened by a stimulus behind it ! Thus we are not making the horse more dangerous to ride by getting it to think forwards, quite the opposite. To think forwards it has to engage the left brain (where the thinking takes place) rather than the right brain (where instinctual survival happens).
I will expand on this theme as I continue to digest the course and post my thoughts as the emerge.
Of course I have already played with Filly since our return and started to put my new knowledge into practise, much to her disgust. She hates it when I come back from James as her old tricks start to fail !! Yesterday we just worked on the circling game at walk, but rather than just letting her amble around I was asking for a good forward walk. Not only that I was asking her to maintain her responsibility to "maintain gait" by getting her to keep the forward walk going. I am no longer content with just the gait, I want a particular speed and foot fall within that gait. If she failed to keep the foot fall I was asking for she was reminded what her responsibility was with phases of pressure to keep her going. A forward walk can be defined as the one you would make if walking to the pub. Nice long purposeful strides. In this case I am also looking for her inside hind foot to contact the ground at least on the spot that her forward inside foot has just left, and preferably one or two hoof prints in front. This is easy to see if you are in a sand school, but harder on say grass. I will be discussing foot fall a lot in the coming weeks as it was impressed upon me how important it is to be aware of the pattern of your horse.
Just to end, this is a nice video description of the gaits of a horse http://www.extension.org/pages/12480/horse-natural-gaits
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