A few days ago I had my first Parelli riding lesson on Bonitao. Nervous times. The good news was that having moved it could now take place in the enormous Shana indoor school.
I wanted to concentrate on one rein and freestyle riding. As I have mentioned before I am going right back to basics to re-program some of those old muscle memories to become more effective and automatically encode the principle of Natural Horsemanship.
First of course we had to get Bonitao ready to ride. I still religiously follow the framework invented by Pat Parelli and as set out for me by James Roberts (see Training Plan Website link on right). These days, with Bonitao, and depending on what the riding goal is the plan does not take too long to finish. In fact it only takes around ten minutes more than a more traditional "saddle up and get on" approach. The difference is that each preparatory stage is graded for quality, all the way down to picking out the hooves in the "Place Feet Down" section. If the quality is too low then it is fixed prior to moving on.
Once on board we went straight into one rein riding. Again the plan was followed so we started with "Lateral Flexion" This is still a little sticky with Bonitao, especially to the right. I had been softening it up by asking for right lateral flexion with a nice porcupine with my right hand (steady pressure to the right on the halter) and then if needed backing it up with a driving pressure with the end of the rein on the left side of his neck. Larisa said this was "OKish" but wanted to see more porcupine to get the response. If necessary I was to "bump" the rope to get more response. This did seem to soften up the response a bit and it will be interesting to see how this will progress. So far I would give him 6 out of 10 for a lateral flexion to the right.
We then moved onto indirect rein to check out my body posture and timing. This got quite technical with my having to time the ask with the phase of movement of inside hind leg. This goes to the heart of negative reinforcement again. Apply the pressure and at the moment the response is offered (in this case the correct swing of the inside hind leg) release the pressure. We were also working hard on isolating the hind legs so that there was no drift forwards or backwards of the front legs. Thus not only was I having to time the cues for the indirect rein but also be aware and correct any forward or back drift. Tough, but then fortunately Larisa is a tough instructor (just what I like).
Having got the lateral flexion and indirect rein working to a reasonable level we now proved I had some brakes avaialable and so could start forward walk. This time the task was to improve my muscle memory for a bend to the halt stop. The principle here is that to stop a horse it is not wise to pull on both reins (part of the reason I am riding with just the one). Much better is to relax all ones body energy and using just one rein bend the horse into a lateral flexion and slowly drift to a halt. To really ensure compliance we did this whilst following the rail around the school and bent towards the wall. At the same time I hunkered down, grabbed the horn on the western saddle and adopted a relaxed power position. The aim of this exercise is to develop muscle memory in me to stop a runaway horse. It is good to have a set of automatic responses to deal with such a situation rather than have to think it through whist in a panic !
To describe the whole lesson in one would be a rather long post, so I'll leave this one here. There was a nice touch from Larisa at the end however. When I got off after 1 1/2 hours I mentioned that this was my first riding lesson for around 32 years. She then announced that she was not born when I had had it. Thanks Larisa.
I wanted to concentrate on one rein and freestyle riding. As I have mentioned before I am going right back to basics to re-program some of those old muscle memories to become more effective and automatically encode the principle of Natural Horsemanship.
First of course we had to get Bonitao ready to ride. I still religiously follow the framework invented by Pat Parelli and as set out for me by James Roberts (see Training Plan Website link on right). These days, with Bonitao, and depending on what the riding goal is the plan does not take too long to finish. In fact it only takes around ten minutes more than a more traditional "saddle up and get on" approach. The difference is that each preparatory stage is graded for quality, all the way down to picking out the hooves in the "Place Feet Down" section. If the quality is too low then it is fixed prior to moving on.
Once on board we went straight into one rein riding. Again the plan was followed so we started with "Lateral Flexion" This is still a little sticky with Bonitao, especially to the right. I had been softening it up by asking for right lateral flexion with a nice porcupine with my right hand (steady pressure to the right on the halter) and then if needed backing it up with a driving pressure with the end of the rein on the left side of his neck. Larisa said this was "OKish" but wanted to see more porcupine to get the response. If necessary I was to "bump" the rope to get more response. This did seem to soften up the response a bit and it will be interesting to see how this will progress. So far I would give him 6 out of 10 for a lateral flexion to the right.
We then moved onto indirect rein to check out my body posture and timing. This got quite technical with my having to time the ask with the phase of movement of inside hind leg. This goes to the heart of negative reinforcement again. Apply the pressure and at the moment the response is offered (in this case the correct swing of the inside hind leg) release the pressure. We were also working hard on isolating the hind legs so that there was no drift forwards or backwards of the front legs. Thus not only was I having to time the cues for the indirect rein but also be aware and correct any forward or back drift. Tough, but then fortunately Larisa is a tough instructor (just what I like).
Having got the lateral flexion and indirect rein working to a reasonable level we now proved I had some brakes avaialable and so could start forward walk. This time the task was to improve my muscle memory for a bend to the halt stop. The principle here is that to stop a horse it is not wise to pull on both reins (part of the reason I am riding with just the one). Much better is to relax all ones body energy and using just one rein bend the horse into a lateral flexion and slowly drift to a halt. To really ensure compliance we did this whilst following the rail around the school and bent towards the wall. At the same time I hunkered down, grabbed the horn on the western saddle and adopted a relaxed power position. The aim of this exercise is to develop muscle memory in me to stop a runaway horse. It is good to have a set of automatic responses to deal with such a situation rather than have to think it through whist in a panic !
To describe the whole lesson in one would be a rather long post, so I'll leave this one here. There was a nice touch from Larisa at the end however. When I got off after 1 1/2 hours I mentioned that this was my first riding lesson for around 32 years. She then announced that she was not born when I had had it. Thanks Larisa.
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