Catch me game with Mini

Another fun session with Mini yesterday. He was in a smallish paddock when I arrived at the farm and so I decided to play with him there. As usual I started the plan as can be seen via the link on the right side of the blog. Item 1 : Have horse catch you.
Well Mini did come up to me, but then showed a reluctance to stay with me. Time to play the catch me game with him. I do not know if he has played this before so decided to assume that he hadn't. As my previous posts on the subject have explained the catch me game is designed to make it more comfortable for the horse to remain in your presence and give you attention than to ignore you and go his own way.
If Mini did not pay me attention then he got driven around the field, should he give me the attention of just and ear then the pressure was removed a fraction, if he gave me both eyes then I backed right off.
Mini showed a few right brain tendencies during this game so I had to carefully balance pressure with retreat to keep him thinking his way out of the pressure I was applying without putting on so much pressure that he just tried to escape. At times this meant very very little pressure, and at others I had to get relatively strong. I also employed a bit of mirroring towards the end of the game where I just matched his energy and movements, trying to create a harmony between us. I also took to kneeling down when he gave me two eyes to completely remove the pressure. The worked like magic, just as it had done with Salvadora.
When the game ended is was very very sudden. He turned to face me, and unlike previous times, where he just stood and stared, walked straight up to me with a confident look. We then played the "stick to me game" at liberty for around 20 minutes. Only once did he try to leave me, so back to catch me game and he was back by my side. I can only assume that he had done some liberty before because it was very smooth and responsive.
I guess because of my personality type I find liberty easily my best Savvy of the four, and certainly the most fun one. Looking forward to another session soon, just hope it stops raining long enough !

What is approach and retreat ?

An interesting session with Mini yesterday. The theme became "Friendly Game". On this occasion it was the very basic applied stimulus of rhythmically swinging the carrot stick and string with low body energy and looking for relaxation in Mini's demeanour.
The response was surprising, Mini was pretty upset about the practise. He started regularly, couldn't relax, backed all the way to the end of the 22 foot rope and stood staring at me. I had of course allowed him to back up trying to establish a distance threshold at which he would be happy. There didn't seem to be one, although the reaction was just unconfident staring when 22 feet away.
Now I would like to make the distinction that he was not right brained about this, which would have implied the instinctive "run away" response. He was blinking and therefore thinking throughout. But his thought process was "I am not sure I feel confident about this, I'll keep a very close eye on it in case it attacks", at which point I guess he would have gone right brained and run away.
Thus he demonstrated clearly for me the difference between right brain instinctual responses and left brain unconfident responses.
After a good long time and slightly sore arm muscles I decided that this was not going to improve any time soon and I needed a new tactic. I had tried approach and retreat with no difference at all except he stepped back quietly as I approached and stood still as I retreated. I tried walking backwards whilst facing him, which resulted in him following, but at the end of the rope. I tried walking facing away from him and he came almost to my shoulder. Interesting. (My arms were now getting seriously tired, but I was also fascinated to find a solution. Saved going to the gym !) In fact with my backed turned he even put his head down to eat. Being a bit slow on the uptake I thought that maybe we were getting there so turned to face again, to find him slowly but purposefully backing to the end of the rope.
Maybe the key was my body angle to him. I tried standing at 90 degrees to him, but still out ahead of zone one. He seemed to relax somewhat. I tried walking sideways as I approached him. Much better he stood still until I actually stood in front of his nose facing sideways, still swinging the stick. I moved away sideways and turned my belly more towards him, he started looking unconfident so I turned back. Eureka ! The answer was the angle of my belly button relative to him. Point the belly button at him and he felt pressure, turn it away and it released the pressure. Now I have heard of this many times before, the belly button acting as a laser of energy projecting from you, but I had never seen such a dramatic demonstration of it.
This also gave a new meaning to approach and retreat. It was not related to distance at all, nor to the intensity I swung the stick and string, it was related to body angle. All I had to do to approach was turn my belly button towards him and turn away to retreat.
With this key in place we made swift progress and soon I was standing very close to him with a relaxed Mini. In fact this seemed to improve his whole attitude towards me and we had a brief but fun travelling circle session before putting him to bed.

Great day with Salvadora

Another day of catch me game with Salvadora. What a contrast to the first few days. The actual catch me game took all of 5 minutes. We then spent a long time just walking and trotting around with the "stick to me" game. Very responsive. Transitions were a dream, up to trot anyway as I can't run fast enough to get her to canter !
However there was still this undercurrent of tension where I felt that she would leave me at the slightest disturbance. And so it happened. A few horses got loose in the yard outside the school and she immediately went right brain, left me, ran around and called to the other horses.
All I could do was redirect her feet from time to time to try and redirect her attention and emotions, and patiently wait for her emotions to subside. Once they did she was soon back at my side as though nothing had happened. This does show that the connection is not that strong yet, if it was she would have just stayed with me. That will come in time.
Interestingly I now find that putting the halter back on makes her a little more anxious and pushy. To ensure that I was upholding principle 2 (Don't make or teach assumptions) I made a point of opening the school doors and then walking two laps around the school with her.
Fortuitously Liz then turned up for a chat. This was a great opportunity to teach her patience (standstill). She kept trying to push past me to get out of the door, not aggressively but persistently. My response was that for every foot that came forward I moved two back. This really frustrated her and resulted in some pawing at the ground. I was not going to give in, or indeed respond to that. I just ignored the pawing, but attended to the two feet back if she moved forwards. Eventually she was at the end of the 12 foot rope, so I had to move back with her. I kept this up until she could stand still for just 15 seconds, then lead her back to her stable. Next time I'll ask for 30 seconds thus making a game out of it.
End of a very satisfying session.

Catch me game with Salvadora

I have been enjoying playing with Salvadora recently, and being on holiday I have had the time needed to play the "catch me game" again.
There are certain games that we play with horses that need time, they cannot be rushed and must be played to completion. The "catch me game" is one of these.
A quick description. The aim of the game is to get the horse to accept you as a leader and to follow you without question accepting that as leader you will provide them with "safety, comfort, play, water and food". To achieve this we borrow from natural behaviour of a herd in the wild. When a young horse joins a herd it will probably be driven around by the dominant mare of the herd for a considerable time, until it submits to her leadership. I have heard tales of this behaviour lasting for 5 days ! The basis of the game is that the mare will drive the new horse until it follows her. This leaves us with the odd situation that to achieve this connection with a horse we have to drive it from us. I have often seen video of this game played in a round pen, personally I feel this does not provide enough space, especially if the horse is predominantly right brain. I like a little space so that I can add and remove pressure on the horse just by varying my approach distance.
Salvadora, as recently noted, is currently displaying mostly right brain behaviour around humans. Possibly this is due to her past experiences with humans that keep re-emerging to haunt her. Thus a larger space is very beneficial and we are lucky at Shana to have a large indoor arena, with safe sides and a good surface.
I had not intended to play this game with her, but circumstances dictated it. On the first day I had taken off the lead rope to swap for a longer one and she left me. I had not kept hold of her on purpose using the brief period of liberty to "test" the connection. What connection ? :-( .
Salvadora is probably the most right brained horse I have ever played with and as such she is teaching me a huge amount. The first thing I learned, after driving her around for about 20 minutes with no sign of acceptance, was that merely holding the carrot stick was too much pressure on her. This was evidenced by the fact that as she past between me and the side wall of the arena she accelerated into a flat out "escape" gallop even if I was more than half the arena width from her. Now I don't want so much pressure that she is looking for escape that much, I just want to move her around and give her the opportunity to find comfort and leadership from me.
Abandoning the stick and just using my arms as "sticks" was a bit of a breakthrough. The escape gallops lessened and she started to throw glances in my direction, rewarded with me backing away further. I found that even in such a large arena I had to read her every second of the session and frequently back away to give her more space to think, whilst at the same time ensuring by driving her that being away from me was not a place of comfort and safety. This is where I personally learnt so much. On occasions I was the full length of the arena away from her juggling pressure with thinking time. I found that just a movement of my arm to block her would change her direction of circle. Again, it was hard to judge how often and when to change her direction.
I asked for two reasons. If she was galloping around in escape mode I asked to interrupt the pattern and make her think. If she was looking a bit too comfortable then I asked for direction changes just to remind her that I was still driving her and acting as the dominant mare. In this case I would make frequent changes after just a few seconds.
When she did eventually turn to look at me I walked off away from her with a "leaders" walk, just as I had seen at James Roberts and on various videos. Too much pressure for Salvadora so she took off again. On the next opportunity when she looked at me I knelt down. This resulted in her looking at me for longer, licking her lips and becoming more interested in me. I then did loads of approach and retreat, as long as her attention was on me. From kneeling I would approach and as soon as she thought about leaving, kneel again.
If she left me then of course I drove her away firmly with a clap of hands and a neck forward drive and we were back to driving again awaiting the next opportunity. Eventually in that first session she walked with me as I went past her nose, stopped with me next to the halter and that was the end of the session.
Since then I have played three more times and last night we had a breakthrough. The sessions had become quicker to achieve connection, but it had been difficult to maintain connection as we walked away from the entrance door to the arena, a fact I was using as a real test of the strength of bond. Last night after around 20 minutes of driving she came and stood next to me and then calmly and confidently walked at my side around the whole arena with me making turns away from her to test the draw. Turning into her, of course, slows down escape attempts if she has got little ahead of me and tended to keep her with me. Turning away opens the door for an escape and thus tests the connection.
I figure we probably need to play this game at least another 3 or 4 times to really create the bond I am after, and then play it regularly thereafter at the beginning of a play session to test the connection is still intact.
I love playing with many horses, they all have so much to offer and teach me. As I said before, Salvadora is the most nervous right brain horse I have played with, although she tries her heart out to please. I find I have great joy in trying to help her through her fears. We may not be doing "cool" things like standing on a pedestal or backing through a hanging tarpaulin but trying to get her confident and happy in the company of humans is for me the coolest thing I could be doing at the moment.

Friendly game with Salvadora

I have had the privilege of continuing to play with Salvadora, a six year old ex polo pony. Given the amount of rain in the last few days playing with Mini in an open field did not appeal. Out focussed by the weather !!
Salvadora has many issues it is fair to say. To start with she is extremely over-reactive to any movement the human might make. She tries her heart out to interpret what any movement means and what she should do, which means she cannot relax around any human that so much as twitches. I felt that this was the area which I would be best employed on trying to improve.
For a Parelli student the game to play is obvious, the Friendly game and lots of it. I interpret the friendly game as being anything I do around a horse when I don't expect a response. It is not just about waving sticks and strings around as many seem to think, it is about getting the horse confident with anything I might want to do. Saddling a horse is friendly game in my book. When you put a saddle on you are not expecting a response, just a calm, confident standstill. When you groom a horse you are not expecting a response which when you think about it is remarkable. For example if I push on a horses flanks I expect a hind quarter yield in response to the porcupine pressure, but if I groom or massage the area I expect a standstill. How is the horse expected to discriminate that pressure in the same spot has two different meanings ? The answer is our body energy and intention. If I have a strong energy and an intent focus then I am asking for the yield, if I am relaxed and have low energy with no intent I expect standstill. For this the horse has to read not only the pressure being applied, but also the overall body energy and intention of the human. After all I may apply considerable pressure to a muscle in order to do a deep massage, so the amount of applied pressure is not a signal, conversely I expect the horse to yield to just 4 ounces of porcupine pressure.
When looked at in these terms it is remarkable that we can ever groom or massage our horse, remarkable that they are in tune with us enough to discriminate the difference between friendly, porcupine or driving games.
This knowledge can also help us analyse what might be wrong in the case of Salvadora. She cannot make these distinctions properly yet and so gets anxious in her efforts to escape what she sees as pressure but are in fact just friendly games.
To get over this I have just been playing loads and loads of friendly games, which whilst being very active have been played with no intention to make her move and low body energy.
To start with she was very very head shy if I lifted my arms above shoulder level, so this needed to be fixed rapidly. Now it is very easy to make a horse head shy, it can be done in a matter of minutes. The way horses learn is to trial lots of different actions in response to perceived pressure and the action that causes the pressure to be removed is now the learned response to that pressure. Thus to make a horse head shy raise your hands towards the head and as soon as that horse moves its' head away drop you arms. Just a couple of trials at this and you are well on the way to a head shy horse.
To counter head shyness we must do the opposite. So with Salvadora I raised my arms and flapped them around (great for fitness !!) and she predictably shied away and ran backwards. I just stuck with it and gently followed her, but kept up the arm waving with one arm, whilst simultaneously putting pressure on the lead rope to ask the head to lower. As soon as she yielded to the pressure all the commotion stopped and we rested. Slowly she started to pull back less and I saw less of her belly and more of the top of her head which was a relief.
We got to the point that I could wave my arms around and she would stand still, but head shyness is not cured all at once. We went through several cycles of quietness, followed by extreme reaction as her old ways resurfaced. All we can do in these circumstances is to try and bury the old responses under layer upon layer of new desired responses. The old ways will still resurface from time to time, but with less and less frequency.
The lowering head response is desirable as it is a relaxed posture, so asking for a relaxed posture whilst commotion is happening at least gives a more desirable response to commotion than running backwards and rearing.
By the end of two sessions of this we have made good progress. I can now throw loops of ropes around her neck and then uncoil them again (good training for one rein riding). We can play the circling game whilst I rhythmically swing the stick and string around in the middle of the circle, thus reinforcing the friendly game even when she is moving. She is becoming happier to just stand still whilst I chat with folks at the yard, not perfect but much better.
All in all I am hoping that we can make live for her a little calmer and less stressful which is a desirable outcome in itself.

Feisty Mini

Another fun session with Mini. The good news is that Mini is now confident enough and interested enough in my presence that he came to me in the field. On approaching him he looked up when I was around 5 or 6 paces away. I immediately stopped, relaxed and waited. After a few seconds he walked up to me and was readily haltered.
I wanted to continue on the work of softening the yields, especially in zone 1. We started with the circling game, just checking that he was able to uphold his responsibilities when left alone. This was very good and so we moved on. To test "follow a feel" on zone 1 we worked on changes of direction. This was sticky at best. The phrase "isolate, separate and recombine" floated into my mind. So after a quick analysis of the problem I felt we needed to work on the draw towards me. After all that is one of the first moves in a change of direction. So as I asked for changes of direction I backed away from Mini and drew him to me. not releasing the pressure until he was coming willingly and with a relaxed expression in my direction. Then let him rest. After 10 minutes or so of this we had a nice draw with impulsion and enthusiasm.
We could now return to changes of direction on the circle. Hey presto we now had nice smooth changes at trot, something I had always struggled with with Filly.
I also made a point of doing some friendly game with the carrot and bag. Then something interesting happened. He sidled into my space as I continued to wave the stick, his nose sliding past my side. He then continued to pass me by and turned his hindquarters into me, clearly positioning for a nice pre-meditated kick to put me in my place in the herd. Fortunately Filly was a good teacher for these forms of surreptitious manoeuvring and he was easy to read. As he was clearly giving me phase 2 or 3 pressure I was justified in replying with phase 4 before he got a chance himself. A quick tap with the stick on the offending zone 4 and with a snort he turned his hindquarters away. He was not finished however and a short time later had another attempt at the same move (at least Filly tried different ones each time !), with the same result. This was of course an application of Principle number 5 "The attitude of justice is effective".  And it was effective, he did not make another attempt during the rest of the session.
A crack of thunder brought the session to an early end, but I feel we had progressed well in our relationship.
The more I play with other horses the more I am grateful to Filly. She was the perfect teacher for me in my early days of Natural Horsemanship, even though it felt difficult at the time. I still live in hope of re-uniting with her sometime in the future, in the meantime my memories of her help me play with other horses effectively.

Have horse catch you ??!!

Second session with Mini and Ritchie came to watch. On arriving at the yard we found we were short of a halter of the correct size to fit Mini. So we took the halter I used to use on Billy, a 17.1 thoroughbred and with a few well placed extra knots we had a nice halter that was Mini size.
Mini is a bit of an escape artist, so he was not found in his expected field, but grazing happily with a couple of mares. On entering the field it was obvious he did not wish to be caught. I eventually worked my way close enough and was about to place the halter on when Mini showed a new trick and lifted the electrified tape with his nose and ducked under to the next field. I assumed that electric must be off so ducked through myself. Wrong, the electric was on and I got a nice shock. Having showed me his trick he was happy to be caught.
We moved to a different field to play which gave me the opportunity to establish a forward walk, achieved by walking briskly and with focus.
Having spent much of the last session just asking for forwards I decided it was time to establish some of the other gaits, in particular backup. He was not at all happy to be pushed in this direction and made it very apparent. Patience and mixing driving with wiggles on the rope and driving with the carrot stick and bag finally got a few steps of backup with impulsion. Key to this was the timing of the phases. I suggested with a gentle wiggle on the rope and then when there was no response, or defiance, quickly brought my energy up and drove with more body energy, walking into his space and driving with the stick and bag. I want him to respond to the start of the suggestion, not 30 seconds into it, so I want him to connect the start of the suggestion with a strong aversive stimuli following soon after. In this way he'll eventually think "I know what comes after the suggestion, so I had better go now". This timing of phases of pressure is something I really work on within myself so get it more effective.
We then moved onto some circling exercises. I found he was rather heavy on the head-collar with probably around 2 or 3 pounds of pressure in my hand. To counter this I could just pull on the rope, but he would probably just push even harder. Much better is to influence the other zones so that the head naturally bends around towards the center of the circle. Proved very effective and soon the pressure was at least halved. Not the 4 ounces I eventually would wish for, but well on the way.

As this is Grand National Day I thought I would add a link to an interesting website http://www.horsedeathwatch.com/. If that number of jockeys were dying in pursuit of the sport would the sport be tolerated. Are we being a little chauvinistic to think that the death of the horse is somehow less worthy of feelings of sadness and guilt than that of the jockey. Just a thought.

Getting to know Mini

Today was a very interesting horsemanship day. My first meeting with Mini. Aptly named as he is a small but feisty pony. He belongs to Larisa Tasker who was kind enough when she heard that I had lost my playtime with Filly to allow me to start playing with one of her horses. The pain of Fillys' loss has dulled a little now, although I still miss her terribly. It is now more of a background ache than a sharp pain. I felt ready to take on a new challenge.
We arranged to meet at Larisa's yard at 11am this morning and after a chat went to look at the horses she has there. There were several beautiful horses large enough for me to ride, but I was drawn to the little pony, small enough to ride me !
I gathered from Larisa's hints that he was a challenging little lad and that is what I like. She is savvy enough to know not to fill my mind with preconceptions as to the character of Mini beyond saying he was full of character. An overload of such well intentioned information can make us less effective in dealing with the horse. Always play with the horse that turns up. I suspect she knew what would get me interested and gave just enough information to pique my curiosity.
I find endless fascination in trying to understand challenging horses, what makes them tick, what motivates them, how to communicate in an effective and polite manner.
Larisa mentioned that she would like to be able give him a purpose in life and that would be driving and also pulling hay around the farm in winter. This adding purpose to training is something that James Roberts emphasises all the time, and with this little lad there was a clear purpose already laid out for me to follow. Of course horses don't understand that we are playing the seven games with them in order to eventually harness them up and give them a job, but we do. That makes our interaction with the horse more purposeful in our own body language and more progressive in the play. We are less likely to get stuck wondering what to do next now that we have the perfect sideways game. We play the games with intention in our actions and the horses can sense that and will respond more positively to our energy. We also have a plan and therefore will act as a more effective leader worthy of being followed. They may not know what that plan is but will sense one exists.
So how did this first encounter go ? Very good fun. Like many small ponies this one does havea oodles of character and a sense of mischief and fun.
I started with just a general check out as laid down in the plan. Touch all over, first done with the carrot stick. He may be small and regularly handled but I was not going to make the mistake of getting any delicate body parts too near too soon. He may be fine with Larisa, but does that also hold true for a 6 foot man he has never met ? As expected no problems at all.
I then zoomed in on the feet as in "Place feet down". Of course I did not go straight to grabbing a foot and trying to place it. I started with playing the porcupine game with the carrot stick and string and a little lead by the leg. Some resistance to start with, but slowly he got the idea and after some nice yields we could move onto using the hands. As I found with the lead by the leg the front right foot was a little sticky and it took a while to get a nice placement. To get him to think to the feet as I was placing the front right I just nudged with my shoulder to throw him a little of balance as I held the hoof up. This did the trick and a nice placement ensued.
We then played with a little bit of circling game, just to get him used to the idea that not all motion had to be at trot, walk would be fine thank-you. I also used changes of direction to quietly check out his follow a feel on zone one, not bad but his character popped up a few times and challenged my authority, not badly but just testing the water with his hoof.
The reason I wanted walk is that we then moved onto follow the rail around the field with  zone 5 driving game and I did not want to have to run. For this I switched to a carrot stick and bag so that I could create some commotion above zone 4 to get forward movement and still reach zone 1 to ask for a halt. In fact even a small pony is too long for this so I soon switched to my 3m long pole and flag. After about 15 minutes of driving we were getting nice directional control, following my focus, and reasonable transitions.
My first impressions. A fun little pony which I only really saw left brain in. Probably cusp introvert, extrovert (it did not take long to explain I only wanted walk, but walk to halt was harder than halt to walk). Quite a bit of character, but keen to play and seemed to take pleasure in it. All in all a really enjoyable little fellow to be around. I did not push too many buttons on a first encounter and so subsequent sessions may change my assessment of him, time will tell and I'll report back what I find. With a 2 star Parelli professional looking over my shoulder you can be assured of a very honest appraisal of progress, otherwise I am sure she will correct me in the comments section of the blog !!

Quick, overdue update

I have actually been on leave for quite a while now and you would think that would give me more time to write. Quite the opposite has happened. More time off has meant more opportunities to play with horses. My motto is that "you can never play with too many horse". If you think of the number Pat has interacted over the years it runs into the many thousands.
So what have I actually been up to.
Bonitao.
Lots of riding, obviously. I have still been doing a fair bit of one rein and halter riding, but also indulging in looping the lead rope back to the halter to have a second rein. The good news is that all that one rein riding seems to have paid off. We did loads of walk and trot to canter transitions the other evening and I actually had trouble getting him from canter back to trot he was so forward going. Now I am sure that without the one rein practise old habits would have kicked in and I would have pulled on both reins. In practise I found that even on a few occasions when I really really wanted to slow him down my new muscle memories of relaxing in the saddle, adopting a power position and bending him to a halt came to the fore and we "gracefully" transitioned back down. I don't know what got into him that night, the transitions to canter where amazing, lifting the reins and a squeeze with my buttocks was more than enough. Great fun.
We had also heard that the yard manager had trouble catching him one day. So I went to see the problem for myself, and sure enough he did not want to come in. "Have horse catch you" came to mind and so the "catch me game" was utilised. The snag was that I arrived just before a big rainstorm in the hopes of getting him in before it hit and failed. As a result the catch me game was played during very heavy rain, which turned to hail. I did not feel I could stop the game having started for fear of teaching him how not to be caught. Eventually I got two eyes from him so I could turn and walk away and he came with me to the gate. This was then followed by playing the game in the indoor school which at least served to dry us both off a bit. In the school I was better prepared and had the 45 foot rope with me. Whenever he looked to comfortable on the circle around me I could throw the end of the rope out towards him. The first evening this took around 30 minutes, the second 15 minutes and last night two laps of the school !
Last night we also played in the savvy park field at liberty, which was some of the best fun I've had with a horse. We tried out nearly all the obstacles and wound up climbing the big cross country bank at liberty, one of the first times he has been on it.
I am also trying to get fitter myself so I now have the habit of taking him for a short run through the woods which he seems to really enjoy. People take dogs for a run who aren't as good at "heel work" at Bonitao, so why not ?

Dodger
I have also continued helping Gary and Helen with Dodger who I always love to play with. The last session was preparation for the hoof trimmer. For this I decided that we needed him to be thinking to his feet and so utilised exercises that would emphasise this. We played in a field with a considerable slope which immediately aids us in this. To start with it took some time to just get a nice circle at walk using the stick and bag as a cue. Once this was achieved we could switch to the indirect / direct rein pattern. In this pattern we ask for the hind quarters to yield away whilst circling to get the hind legs to cross through, then when they are facing us ask for the fore quarters to yield away into an opposite direction circle to get the front legs to cross through. This is a great exercise to get the mind thinking about the foot placement.
Having got this tolerably smooth we moved onto lead by the leg where a loop of soft rope is placed just below the fetlock joint and then pressure applied to ask that leg to pick up and move forwards. This helps soften up the porcupine response to the leg and again "mind to the feet". We then used the rope to pick up each leg as though to pick out the hooves. The advantage of using a rope for this is partially safety (no delicate human bits near the hoof) and partially to save our backs. Once lifted we increased the time it was held up to a maximum of 1 minute.
The result? The farrier said that he was much improved over the last time his hooves were trimmed 6 weeks ago. I am sure that this is also due to the fact that Helen and Gary never drop his hooves these days when picking them out. These little things are little but they do add up to something bigger than even I would have believed possible when I started this program.

Salvadora
I have not mentioned this little horse before. She is an ex-polo pony housed at Shana and doted on by Patryck. She has of course been ridden before, but not maybe in the most savvy of styles. As a result we have been playing lots and lots of friendly game with her to build her trust in us. Not that friendly is all we play as this would be a mistake. Once her confidence is up she can become quite pushy. In fact we have played all the seven games at various times, but not necessarily in the normal order. One thing I have found as I have progressed in my own knowledge is that now the seven games are almost instinctual I tend to pull the right game for the moment out of the tool bag as I need it. I try to keep in mind what game I am playing at each moment, but the order has become less important.
I'll write more about her in the future, but right now I want to stop writing and start playing !!

Parelli Techniques

Here is a copy of my latest post to the Parelli forum as I think it may be of interest here.

A few comments on a different thread (Patience Pole) set me thinking about this topic. What is and what is not a "Parelli Technique" ?
My take on it is that anything you do with a horse, so long as you are honouring the 8 principles is a Parelli Technique.
For example "place the feet down" where you ensure that everytime you pick a horses hoof up you are able to place it down in a relaxed way and rest it on the tip of its toe, the horse only moving the foot after the conversation is ended by you removing your hand. This simple task, when you think deeply about it, upholds all the principles but I have never seen it demonstrated on any DVD (please correct me if I am wrong).
The point is that whilst Pat has furnished us with many "techniques" to use I believe he is only selecting some of his obviously enormous repertoire to share with us and the main purpose of the selected ones is to demonstrate how to use the principles in context not to suggest that they are the only techniques that are valid.
I would point out that one of the 7 keys to success is Imagination. Surely this would not be mentioned if we were not to use our imagination to generate new techniques that will help us achieve our goals in any specific situation. I for one study many other clinicians ideas and techniques to further my own savvy but always try to apply such knowledge within the framework of the Principles, Qualities, etc etc. (For those who want a handy view of all the structures within PNH take a look at the link to Parelli Framework on the right side of my blog FillyBilly.blogspot.com ). Surely if such techniques work and comply with the ethos of Parelli they are by definition Parelli techniques even if they have not been explicitly demonstrated by Pat or Linda themselves.