No riding yesterday. I had got up at 0330 to fly to Madrid and back, didn't feel sharp enough to ride her.
However that is no excuse not to do something, so I thought I would revisit the previous days exercise crossing from the road onto the grass verge and back.
We started where there was a nice gentle ramp from the grass onto the road to get her confident to move from the grass/mud to the tarmac. Again the obvious "tool" to use was the squeeze game. This involved asking her to gently walk from the grass onto the road and then turn and face the grass again to contemplate the "scary" verge she had just crossed. Technically this is just to modify her natural flight distance until it is nothing. She found that standing on the road placed the grass at a more convenient height to eat, so this became a popular game.
She still tended to rush a bit so I combined the squeeze game with a little rope wriggling learned in the YoYo game to slow her down a bit as she crossed this verge. This worked, but I felt it was not the best solution to the problem and continued to figure the solution out.
As she got better we moved onto a more challenging bank. Only about six inches to a foot high, but with a very soft insecure feeling edge. Again I used the rope wriggling to modify her pace as she made the transition from road to verge, but could feel James gently shaking his head in a mildly disapproving way.
That image of James suddenly provided the answer. He always said "make them think to their feet". He blamed himself for having a colt slip on the road and fall on James leg breaking it in many places. "I should have been putting in little sideways steps and hind quarter yields to make him think to his feet on the slippery road. Then he would not have slipped" he said to me once.
I had to get Filly thinking to her feet before she crossed the verge. The obvious answer was not rope wriggling and YoYo, that made her think to her face, but sideways game. So on the next crossing I brought her up to the verge, then stopped her and asked for a few steps of sideways. Once this was soft and easy then I asked her to go forwards over the verge. She managed it with careful feet placement and no rushing. Her mind was already aware of her feet and it helped her find the answer to a graceful crossing of the verge.
James was very strong on ensuring that any game or pattern we performed with our horses was done with a purpose, not just because the program said "do it now for your next levels audition". Each pattern and game has to be learned in isolation, particularly for the human, but once mastered it should then be used for a purpose. What is more there should be pattern and game integration, as in this case, where patterns are mixed up in a constructive way to achieve a desired result.
In fact he ensured everything was done with a known purpose. He was very scathing of folks who played at Liberty with their horses just to look cool in front of friends for example. The purpose may be to learn Liberty to be able to use it in a spotlights demo in the future, that has a purpose. But just doing it randomly with no end goal, he reckoned, just looked ugly.
The same goes for the games. Once learned they should have a reason to be revisited, not just to "do Parelli".
I use a lot of porcupine game at the moment to get Filly more responsive off my leg when riding her, so that bridle-less riding can happen in the future. I want to do bridle-less so that I can use her as my saddle horse one day, playing with other online horses from off her back, opening gates, maybe even some roping for fun. Thus I have a strong reason for playing porcupine game with her and that sense of purpose translates into a different body language when I play the game. It gives it more intention on my part which Filly can read and is less likely to be resentful at being moved around.
Remember "Principles, PURPOSE, and time are the tools of teaching". The 8 principles are making more and more sense to me as time goes on. Hope you are listening up their James. I'm finally "getting it".
However that is no excuse not to do something, so I thought I would revisit the previous days exercise crossing from the road onto the grass verge and back.
We started where there was a nice gentle ramp from the grass onto the road to get her confident to move from the grass/mud to the tarmac. Again the obvious "tool" to use was the squeeze game. This involved asking her to gently walk from the grass onto the road and then turn and face the grass again to contemplate the "scary" verge she had just crossed. Technically this is just to modify her natural flight distance until it is nothing. She found that standing on the road placed the grass at a more convenient height to eat, so this became a popular game.
She still tended to rush a bit so I combined the squeeze game with a little rope wriggling learned in the YoYo game to slow her down a bit as she crossed this verge. This worked, but I felt it was not the best solution to the problem and continued to figure the solution out.
As she got better we moved onto a more challenging bank. Only about six inches to a foot high, but with a very soft insecure feeling edge. Again I used the rope wriggling to modify her pace as she made the transition from road to verge, but could feel James gently shaking his head in a mildly disapproving way.
That image of James suddenly provided the answer. He always said "make them think to their feet". He blamed himself for having a colt slip on the road and fall on James leg breaking it in many places. "I should have been putting in little sideways steps and hind quarter yields to make him think to his feet on the slippery road. Then he would not have slipped" he said to me once.
I had to get Filly thinking to her feet before she crossed the verge. The obvious answer was not rope wriggling and YoYo, that made her think to her face, but sideways game. So on the next crossing I brought her up to the verge, then stopped her and asked for a few steps of sideways. Once this was soft and easy then I asked her to go forwards over the verge. She managed it with careful feet placement and no rushing. Her mind was already aware of her feet and it helped her find the answer to a graceful crossing of the verge.
James was very strong on ensuring that any game or pattern we performed with our horses was done with a purpose, not just because the program said "do it now for your next levels audition". Each pattern and game has to be learned in isolation, particularly for the human, but once mastered it should then be used for a purpose. What is more there should be pattern and game integration, as in this case, where patterns are mixed up in a constructive way to achieve a desired result.
In fact he ensured everything was done with a known purpose. He was very scathing of folks who played at Liberty with their horses just to look cool in front of friends for example. The purpose may be to learn Liberty to be able to use it in a spotlights demo in the future, that has a purpose. But just doing it randomly with no end goal, he reckoned, just looked ugly.
The same goes for the games. Once learned they should have a reason to be revisited, not just to "do Parelli".
I use a lot of porcupine game at the moment to get Filly more responsive off my leg when riding her, so that bridle-less riding can happen in the future. I want to do bridle-less so that I can use her as my saddle horse one day, playing with other online horses from off her back, opening gates, maybe even some roping for fun. Thus I have a strong reason for playing porcupine game with her and that sense of purpose translates into a different body language when I play the game. It gives it more intention on my part which Filly can read and is less likely to be resentful at being moved around.
Remember "Principles, PURPOSE, and time are the tools of teaching". The 8 principles are making more and more sense to me as time goes on. Hope you are listening up their James. I'm finally "getting it".
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