Having a "concrete" goal and being in the moment

      This week I haven't been able to get any playing time in because we've been moving hay to our house from a place that is 1 1/2 hours away.  Although moving the hay has been a big part of not getting down there to play with them, I've also been hesitant about going out to play for awhile because I got a little confused about things.  So I've been taking some time to figure things in my head and I think I understand now.

        At this point your probably wondering what I mean by a "concrete" goal.  Well here it is: I'm having a little trouble deciding what I want to do with the horses when I get down there because I only know what I want in an abstract form.  I know I want connection, but I don't know whether to work on circles or trailer loading.  So I've decided that I need to have a short term, concrete goal, such as being able to take my horse away from the group on a trail ride, or getting my horse to canter calmly on the circle. 

         Now I'll tell you about the "being in the moment" part of my title.  As I said in my last paragraph, I've been lacking a reasonable goal for awhile, but I've also been lacking relaxation.  I think that's because I worry about things before they happen and I worry about things that have already happened.  Now as I'm beginning to form my short term, physical goals, I've begun to worry about what may come up as I work towards those things.  So I guess that heart of the issue is that I have to trust that when something unexpected happens I'll be able to work through it.  Knowing this it's easier to relax become excited about doing stuff with the horses instead of preparing for the worst!

          So what are my goals?  Well with Marsan I want to work on preparing her in every possible way for the trailer without going to the trailer.  I've made this my goal because I think that if I could get Marsan to walk over and in a lot of things, the trailer would become just one more thing to stand on.  If I also had Marsan walk between a lot of objects, it would seem as scarey to her to walk between the walls of the trailer.  Besides by preparing her in this way I can expose her to a lot of objects that we might encounter at other times.  With Gingy my goal is to help Gingy find rhythm and relaxation at the canter on the circle.  I want to work towards this mostly because Gingy needs to get in shape so that I can start riding him.  So I'll keep ya posted on how my short term, concrete goals go LOL.

A session gone wild...in a good way!

     I finally convinced myself to go down and play with Gingy and it was worth it.  Now your probably wondering why I had to "convince" myself to do that and it's because I have been to stressed out lately.  I guess doubt crept in and I began to think that maybe it wasn't okay to just have fun, heaven forbid not following the rules!  However, since yesterday I have recalled mind that wonderfully saying, "the rule is there are not rules."  For some this would be a bad montra, but for me being on the cautious tense end of the spectrum it's great!

       Once I let go of my rule phobia I felt ready to go have fun with Gingy.  I guess you could say we had fun and a lot more.  At first Gingy was just interested in grass, so I moved him around a lot until he wanted to come check in with me.  Yesterday dealing with the grass issue I saw something that I haven't noticed before, I saw that it's not about the grass it's about whether Gingy is listening or not.  I think that understanding is what impowered me to get to the heart of the issue.  Of course when you do get the heart of an issue things get crazy.  I figured he'd need some room, so we went out into the pasture.  I tried helping him focus by asking for precision, but he was too LBE* for that.  So I let him out on the circle and we worked on change of direction.  At first he didn't want to focus on that, but little by little he began to get interested.  I would ask for the change at phase 1* and give him a few seconds to figure it out, if he didn't get it then I made things even clearer with the carrot stick.  When he started responding at phase 1*(come out of neutral, walk backwards without pressure on the rope), I brought him in.  Then we faced a new challenge, he thought that coming in meant he didn't need to focus anymore LOL.  So he ended up having to go out a few more time before he finally came in and stayed focused.  Then we walked back to the barn. 

      On the way we did some z5 driving, lead by the tail, and lots of backing with me in z5.  I did all of that to equalize the amount of effort we were both putting in because sometimes I work harder than he does LOL.  All and all it was a really fun session, in fact my friend who watched part of it said I always had a smile on my face :)  Although I did learn a lot about connection and focus, the thing I enjoyed most was the pure joy of letting go of my fear and running with my horse.

Lots playing and lots of focus

      This morning I got up early and went down to the barn to play with Gingy.  We worked on circling which needed a lot of attention because he wasn't willing, he was quite dominant.  With some patience and persistance he found connection, relaxation, rhythm going both ways on the circle at the trot.  We also tried a new pattern to help him with the figure eight.  I want him to realize that changing direction is okay and I wanted to be willing to do that without a grudge!  So I'm just trying to brake things down for him a little bit.

        Later on today one of my friends came over and we went down to the horses again.  It was really hot so we gave Gingy a bath.  This is second time and I must say he did a lot better.  For some reason he really dislikes being sprayed on his right side, but on the left he doesn't care.  I've found that the thing that really helps Gingy accept the spraying water is to use rhythm(I.E. on, off.  Up, down.).  So we used rhythm, plus approach and retreat and he had a good lick about it all. 

         I did a few things with Marsan too.  We mainly worked on sideways, which went well.  Marsan's big challeng in sideways is that she has a hard time staying focused and relaxing.  We did both sides just going down the fence and eventually she began to relax a little.  I did a few HQ* disengagements with her, but those are a lot easier for her now.  She is also getting a lot better about letting me be on either side of her, before she used to kind of shut me out on one side.

          I drove my our car down the driveway today on the way to town and I learned something about focus.  As I was driving my mom kept reminding me to keep my focus on where I wanted to go, not on where I was.  This helped tremendously in my ability to turn and feel comfortable.  It occured to me that this is how you want to use focus with your horse.  When you know where you want to go, your horse will feel it, plus when we focus on the destination our bodies naturally make all of the tiny adjustments that are necesary to our goal.  So ultimately using focus sets everything up for success naturally :)

A whirl wind of activity!

      Hey everyone!

      For the past few weeks I've been busyier than I have ever been in my life!  It seemed for awhile that no matter when I sat down to write a post something would happen!  Here in CO we've had some pretty big storms, so for awhile we didn't dare to turn the computers on!  Then I had get together with my friend and after that we were gone pretty much from eight in the morning until eight at night ack!  It shouldn't be any wonder to me that directly following all of this excitement, I got sick.  I was happy because it gave me some time to think, but that sad because I missed my ponies!

       While I was laying on the couch with a fever comtemplating life, I thought about lot about Gingy.  For awhile Gingy and I were kind of sync and I couldn't figure it out.  It seemed like it could be that I was too expressive, but I think it went deeper than that.  I was trying to follow the rules again and do things right(ha!).  When I get busy being a perfectionist, I become tense and rigid.  Trying to be perfect instead of being yourself is a futile cause you can't dance, you can't flow and your partners know that.  Once I figured this out I found connection with Gingy again.

        Gingy and I are currently playing with the figure eight and the weave.  I'm thinking now that the problem we are having is that Gingy is still very dominant and he doesn't want to accept being redirected.  Now it's just going to take some time with the program to see if I'm right and to see if balancing out the drive and draw will help.

          I'm been spending some undemanding time with Marsan whenever I can.  She is so cute, she likes to come up behind you and give you a little nudge with her nose LOL.  These days she feels confident enough to walk sideways up to the front of you which is improvement.  With Marsan the big challenge of late had been catching.  She tends to like to wander off when she sees us coming out to bring them in from pasture.  Then her wondering turns into cantering and pretty soon she's on adrenaline.  I try to approach in a straight forward manner, while not being direct line.  I said "straight forward" because sometimes in attempts to sooth her as I approached I would sneak and that pretty much defeated the purpose!

          I'm going to make a great effort to post at least a small post everyday.  Enjoy your ponies :)

Another recap

      I've been staying on track with my goal of spending a little time with the horses everyday, so that has kept me quite busy.  Plus this weekend was the fourth of July!  Now I finally have a little time to bring everybody up to date.

       On Saturday we took Marsan and Cherroke to the gymkhanas and I'm happy to say that they both did great.  Last year gymkhanas with Cherroke and Marsan as a pair did not go well at all!  This year I was able to ride Marsan around by herself in the ring and she was really calm.  We also got to do some loping in the arena which was a lot of fun too.  Trailer loading was the only thing that we had a lot of trouble with.  I was so exhausted that first I got angry and then I got introverted, but we made it home eventually.  So I guess next time we want to travel we need to do a little more preparation with trailering.  The strangest thing was that when got home and unloaded, we asked Marsan and Cherroke to get in again and they both did, as calm as could be.  I guess it must have been the enviroment that made them nervous.  I didn't have enough time to put Gingy online that night so I just said "hi" to him :)

         On Sunday I went for a ride with my friend and that was actually quite enjoyable.  We mostly rode in the corral, but at the end we took the horses over to an adjacent valley and had a couple of nice canters :)  Then came the big storm.  We had a hail, lightning, and thunder for most of the night.  I was quite worried about the horses because they went up in the trees and I didn't want them to get fried!  Thankfully they were all okay and they didn't colic from eating to much grass either(whew!).  Again Gingy sort of got slighted on time and I determined to play with him more the next day.

          Monday we went on an early morning ride since the horses had been out eating all night.  Once again we had a lot of fun and Marsan was very calm.  Lately I've been trying really hard to do in my body what I want Marsan to do in hers and I'm noticing a good change.  When I ask her for lateral flexion sometimes she thinks about drifting off then it's like she realizes that my energy isn't up so she stops.  I also did some intense playing with Gingy on Monday, however it wasn't quite what I expected.  Gingy was quite distance and I didn't feel like I was really in sync with him.  We did a lot of different things, but nothing seemed to really interest either of us.  I was really struggling to figure out why I felt so out of harmony with Gingy and here's my theory: although I took pains to match his energy, and not micromanage him both of which have been problems in the past, I didn't match his expression or level of expressiveness.  I'm hoping to play with Gingy today while keeping my theory in mind and I guess we'll see what happens.

           All and all it's been a big horsey weekend with lots of dissapointments and lots of fun too.

I'm beginning to understand

      I had a trailer loading session with Marsan the other night in preparation to go to the gymkhanas.  At first I was almost ready to just forget about loading her, but I stayed at it for awhile and things changed.  I guess the scariest thing to me was that I had to ask her quite firmly to at least try.  Now I see that asking firmly is not making as long let the horse be in charge of the response, it took awhile for this to sink in though. 

       I started the session trying to do some preparation for trailer loading, but it was more like procrastination.  What I mean is that I was doing things that really wouldn't change how Marsan loaded(or didn't load) because I hadn't been consistently preparing over a longer period of time.  I decided to just go to the trailer instead of messing around, but I didn't open it.  I had Marsan do some squeezes between the closed trailer doors and myself.  I also had her stop a few times with z3 beside the trailer doors, she was fine with this too.  After I opened the doors she was a little less keen on doing any squeezes and she kept trying to go around the trailer.  This is when I wanted to drop the session, but at the same time I wanted to keep trying.  My persistant side won out and we kept working on it.  I finally came to the conclusion that I was ready so she could trust in my leadership. 

        As we worked a pattern came about.  I would ask her until she tried, then we'd go away from the trailer and do circles, figure eights, etc.  The closer we got to the trailer the less she would have to do and when were finally arrived before it I would bring her in.  After bringing her in, I'd ask her to try a little more.  So by and by she gave a little more each time and she also got a little calmer.  At this point we had to go to bible study, so I only had ten minutes.  Instead of rushing her so we could meet my timeline I decided to to accept however much she gave me the next time I asked her to try.  Guess she got in stood there on the next try!

        I think I would have been happy even if she hadn't gotten in all the way because I knew I had done the right thing.  I knew that I had helped her to calmly load even though we both started out a little nervous, and that made me feel good.

My new goal :)

       Since that not-so-great trail ride I've been doing a lot of thinking.  I've decided that I want to put some extra focus into being with the horses at least this month.  Sometimes I find it hard having two horses(especially since one isn't ridable) because you get going with one, but when you come back to the other they're a little rusty.  So I've decided that for the next three weeks I will try to spend time with both Gingy and Marsan every day.  I'm not setting myself any tasks to complete and I'm not going to set myself a certain amount of time I have to spend with them everyday.  The only thing I'm committing to is getting out there with each of them each day. 

        Yesterday was my first day with this new goal in mind.  Since we were gone all day I only did a fifteen minute session with each of them, but is was fun.  Marsan and I played with HQ* disengagement which is actually improving quite a bit and as a result she is starting to throw off some of her habits of hesitancy and tension.  Gingy and are experimenting with how to keep the emotional connection strong, I'm starting to see that sometimes I break it and sometime he does, nice to know that it goes both ways.

         Today I had an assortment of sessions with Gingy and Marsan.  As is our costom Mom and I took the horses for a short ride up to close the pasture gate.  That was nice although I was a little sore on the behind afterward!  I almost got sucked into becoming frustrated with Marsan again because she didn't want to leave the pasture, but I decided it wasn't worth it so when she offered something we moved on.  With Gingy I was a little uncertain as to what to do today, but I settled on exploring connection some more.  He did some really nice stuff at twenty two feet with me sitting down, so we went to liberty.  At liberty everything was about twice as hard and we did lose the connection several times, so we'll have to keep playing with that.  Then later on I took him out to pasture.  He was very unfocused and I think that is the thing about horses that really grates on my nerves, so I did get a little mad, but this time I got on the right track by just bringing in and standing for awhile.  I had him do some circle on the road until he put slack in the line, then we did it the other way.  After that he was about 80 percent connected, which was a big improvement.

Until tomorrow,

Sometimes we struggle....

     
       I've debated with myself for awhile about writing this post, because honestly, it's hard to write about the times when your struggling.  Ultimately, I've decided to anyway, because then I'll be able to look back on this some day and see how far I've come. 

       ~June 29th~      

       Today I really struggled with Marsan.  We went on a trail ride with my mom and her friend, but it wasn't exactly your dream trail ride.  For awhile things went well, but then Marsan started to get a little resistant and bracey.  This got me frustrated because I thought we'd worked through these things!  Now I had a choice, I could try to work through the challenge then and there or I could just let Marsan have her way to a certain extent and enjoy rest of the trail.  The second option would have been easy enough, all it required was for me to not fight with Marsan about walking in front the group instead of in the middle like she wanted too.  All the same I thought I could "fix" her resistance so I chose the first option.  That's when things didn't go very well.  In the end I felt like a complete failure.  To make matter worse I took a little tumble when the horse in front of us spooked.  Now I felt worthless.

       On walking back the barn, I began to think about things in a more calm, reasonable manner.  I started to realize how futile it is to choose to take on every little challenge in order to perfect it over just having fun.  I guess now my plan is to try to have fun with the horses and if we are able to make some progress then that is a bonus.