:) Did you guys hear? I was accepted as a heartland intern! Heartland is a parelli center in the making in South Dakota. So yesterday morning, we packed up Chase and left. It was quite interesting coming here-I was really proud to show off my buddy. :D Yesterday was pretty interesting-Farrah had us do a couple of chores, and then first order of business was-you guessed it-pool party! Ha. Bet you didn't see that one coming, didja. LOL. So today was pretty interesting. first off-the chores aren't all that bad. :D Cleaning stalls only takes an hour. And from then on-you play with horses until the day is done. It's pretty sweet.
First lesson was with Chase. :) I was pretty happy about how Farrah commented on how 'beautiful' he was. And then she took him first to play with. I told her about some of our partnershpi issues-predominantly, the trailer loading problem, and how fast he switches from right brain to left brain again. She was brilliant-just from hearing that she figured out he was unconfident in zones 3, 4, and 5. So she demonstrated the driving game from those zones. His unconfidence showed up while she was doing this, and it was interesting to watch them play together. When she handed him back to me, the change was already phenomenal. I had to drive zone 1 away from me a couple of times, but other than that he was pretty confident, and then he was going out on his own for a good 10 feet in front of me. It was just amazing to watch the progress just go SWOOSH. Lol. Anyways, we even trotted a bit. The third time I asked him to trot, he gave me an 'are you kidding me?' look, and when I asked again, he bucked a bit. Guess I asked for too much. Lol-so that was pretty much it for Chase's lesson.
Next we had a mounting lesson, which turned out to be a confidence lesson for me. Anyways, they gave me this lovely arabian gelding to ride. His name is Silver Chief, he is seventeen years old, and apparently in his youth he was a regional champion. He's such a sweetie to play with. We played together on the ground for about an hour and a half, before we started mounting. By then Chief and I were more comfortable with each other, so it was pretty much no big deal. Man was it nice to have a horse that stepped up to the fence to let you on. Lol. Riding again was wonderful-but Í did notice that I grew unconfident at the trot. So we just rode around together on one rein and just kinda had fun. We had a few arguments about where to go, but it was alright in the end. And also-my roomate's horse bolted with her. She had to do an emergency dismount because she couldn't grab hold of the reins. It made me pretty nervous-made me wonder if my mount was going to take off like that.
Last and final lesson of the day was once again with Chief. He was pretty awesome-Farrah set us circling a tree and a walk and trot for quite some time. After about an hour of this, I found myself almost completely loose, and really enjoying myself. :) Chief also decided he absolutely didn't want to circle a tree anymore, so after looking to Farrah for direction, we were set circling a piece of grass. This lesson was really fun for me-although Chief (who prefers being called Oka-the name his original mom gave him) kept complaining about me tearing away his mane. Oops. Sry boy. So that was pretty much that lesson, and afterwards we discussed what we learned as usual.
After all the lessons were done, Chase called me to play-he was jealous that I got to play with Chief twice and him only once. So afterwards I haltered him up and took him to the round pen for a fun liberty session. And it was brilliant at first, he was just THERE. There was no boredom in his eyes at all, he was just there, and responding to phase one, and it was just wonderful! I even got some canter draws-with ears FORWARD and expression eager. I was SO happy about that-those moments make you remember why you started parelli in the first place. But then he tripped going around the round pen at top speed-I warned him to be careful, but he was just too hyper. LOL. But then, a couple of laps later, he slipped and fell. Thank goodness he was okay. I was so worried he was going to come up with a broken leg or something.
That's all for this post-I have to go do chores again, and then get ready to play.
Until tonight-
Jessi
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