We are Parelli because ........

I have just entered the competition to win a day with Pat and Linda Parelli! I've joined sixty-three other hopefuls to demonstrate, in three minutes, why "We are Parelli."

I knew exactly what I wanted my video to show from the start - just didn't realise just how short a time three minutes is! Filming the bits I needed took a fraction of the time the actual editing took - it's true what they say about your" best bits ending up on the cutting room floor!"

By the time the video was submitted, lets say I was very familiar with it and, just like audition video submissions, you always think of it as a bit flawed,- "I could have done that bit better" or "I wish I had included something else."

What I wasn't prepared for was other people's reactions to it. I had seen it so many times that it seemed a bit ordinary to me. I knew my Parelli friends would be supportive because Parelli people are the most emotionally fit, encouraging, and warm and cuddly people in the world! And they didn't let me down. Their immediate reaction was to repost on their own page and ask their friends to vote fo me too. The amazing friendship gained from a shared interest in Parelli was one of the things I had wanted to include in the video but I ran out of minutes!. What was really surprising were the comments of non-Parelli people.

For a long time I have been the lone Parelli student at our yard, affably tolerated as the "orange stick waving, rope wiggling mad woman." I usually get an arena to myself as other peoples horses are scared of my stick! and, if I accidentally leave ropes or carrots sticks around the yard they always get returned to me because nobody else either knows what to do with them or would want to be seen dead using them anyway!

If this is a ten level programme, we're only one fifth of the way through so I'm always looking ahead to all those very clever things that other students can do that we can't do yet. I'm also the sort of person who thinks that if I can do something then it can't be that difficult or clever. So when I started getting comments like "...amazing ... speechless" and "brought a tear to my eye ... love the loading" I had to remind myself that most people can't load their horse from the front of the lorry, not everybody can have their horse catch them without a bucket of feed, and some people can't stop their horses dragging them to the grass without roping their horse's nose! As Pat says "It's simple, but it's just not always easy!" I have been taking for granted some of the amazing things Liquorice and I have achieved together.

So, whoever wins, what I'm most proud of about the video is that some non-Parelli people have seen a litttle of what Parellli is really about at the individual level. This wasn't a well rehearsed top level demonstration. An ordinary five foot nothing grandma, who came late in life into horses, showed that it is possible do what many people think of as, some extraodinary things with her horse.

Level 2 Online Audition At Last!

Study Group Task # 2

We've got two tasks this month. the one I picked out of my envelope this time was to go ride sideways without something in front of us, - more of that in the next post. the second task for this month was to think about what we have achieved over the past year.
The best way I can think of it is by describing where we were this time last year.

So this time last year we had not even submitted our level one audition and now we are ready to film our level two audition. Looking back at this video and thinking about what we can do better now I am most struck by the changes in me. My confidence when playing with Liquorice has increased and, with that, his confidence in me. One of the feedback comments the audition team made was that they "noticed your horses expression and ears were cranky. Improving this now will excel your relationship and growth for the future." and I have struggled with this for a long time. I think I have come to realise that I don't have to work at asking him for less but to ask him for more. He seems to look at me more often with ears forward if I have been more of a leader and more assertive.
One of the big achievements of the last year was to actually take him off the yard. This was achieved when we booked on a level two clinic at Wisborough Green in early December. This was a huge breakthrough in MY emotional fitness and led to us buying our own lorry. This, in turn, has helped me begin to realise another dream which is to ride Liquorice safely on the beach. We have taken him to the beach several times now to just walk about in hand, have a bit a of a paddle in the sea, and generally hang out. About three weeks ago he was calm enough for Kevin to get on him and walk about.

Parelli Study Group Task #1

The lovely Jo has got us all organised! As part of our study group she has encouraged us to set ourselves 12 challenges (one per month) to complete by the end of the year .... That way if nothing else we can all say we can do 12 more things than we could do before! Each month we pick one out of our own envelopes and have to do that - it's quite exciting now because, two months on, I have forgotten what challenges I put in my envelope!
So, this video shows my first challenge which was to load Liquorice from outside the lorry. He had been very good at loading ME up to this point! since we had the new van we have been getting him used to it by feeding him his tea in there (LBI highly motivated by food) and taking him on short trips. He then had a very long trip to Wiltshire (see previous posts) and this made him much more relaxed about being in there. However I had a little bit of difficulty getting him on on my own because he would get on if I was already in there but then, of course, I had to get past him to get to the partition to close it.
Anyway, on the day of our study group meeting I asked a friend to video me attempting the task and he was on the lorry in less then a minute! I think that says something about the power of focus!

J R Foundation Station Epilogue

This is what I'm taking away from my week here at JRFS - in no particular order -

• "doing Parelli" is a means to an end, not an end in itself. My goal is to have a horse that I can ride anywhere safely - a good riding horse. Isn't that what most people want?
• do simple things well.
• have a plan.
• rate the success of your actions from minus ten to ten and don't go on to the next thing until you've got to at least zero.
• focus - no. I mean really focus
• everything you do with your horse matters
• either you think you can, or you think you can't - either way you're right.
• look where you want to go, not where you are going.
• don't stop doing something that bothers your horse until your horse stops being bothered .
• watch the Level Four DVDs so you know what you are heading towards.
• take another look at the patterns - I think I get them now.

Lynne and Liquorice arrive home safely from the JR Foundation Station

So it's goodbye to all the folks at JRFS. It was another beautiful frosty morning and I mustered an army of two helpers to help me get the lorry out of the field. I soon discovered that we should have bought a scraper for the front windscreen of the lorry as a credit card doesn't reach far enough when you are only five feet nothing, standing on a sloping field and I can only reach the very edges of the windscreen even when you are standing in the cab and trying to lean out. Fortunately the hot air blower was very efficient and that, with the help of the friction of the windscreen wipers on XXX fast speed the window was clear enough to at least get out of the field. Except, the ground was so frosty the wheels kept slipping and I kept stalling and I was beginning to wish I hadn't asked for helpers so that I didn't have to do all this with an audience!

I fully expected Liquorice to not want to get on the lorry as he was dead keen to get back out in the field with his new chums but I remembered that James said "either you think you can. or you think you can't and either way you're right," so I thought I could and he loaded just fine, and I did it all by myself (my helpers had melted away after the fiasco with frosted up windscreen, the slippery field and the stalling and everything).

The damn TomTom's battery had discharged itself - as I predicted, but thanks to Victoria's excellent directions I found my way back to the M3. Who says women don't know their left from their right! Well I don't apparently. I must have taken a left, instead of a right at the end of the A303 and I eventually ran out of M3 and found myself avec half a ton of horse, heading straight for central London!

I noted, with interest, that I was entering a low emission zone and, funnily enough, I had been having a conversation with a woman this very morning about how her horse box was too old to drive on the M25 because it did not conform to low emission zone regulations, and I remember thinking (rather smugly as it happens) that my swanky new lorry would be able to drive anywhere in London, and here I was - how lucky was that!

Anyway I didn't cry, I just did a U turn, got back on the M3 going the opposite way and rang Kevin to ask him where I was! I should have known better. I told him that the sun was on my left so was I going in the right direction, but he just said that it depended on where I was coming from! Men are such useless individuals when it comes to finding things. Anyway, just then I saw a sign for Southampton so, as usual, If you want a job done, do it yourself! The extra bit added about a hour to the journey but as James says "the longer a horse is on a horse box, the more time he has to get relaxed and will be less worried the next time he gets on." So that all worked out all right then.

JR Foundation Station Day Five

Well today the sun came out. I've been carrying my camera around with me all week and the first time I have something decent to take a picture of the battery runs out!

Today we went for a trail ride with the colts. I wasn't nervous. Trail riding is what Liquorice is very good at. Then the other students started talking about their horses. One has a history of bolting, another bolts when other horses do and the the other horse had never been hacked out before, so she didn't know if it bolted or not, but it was an ex racehorse. So then I was nervous.

It was a spectacular ride along one of the ridges of Salisbury Plain. We must have been able to see at least three other counties. Liquorice loves riding in new places and he walked along at a fair old lick. I did get a bit scared coming down a steep muddy track when Liquorice kept breaking into trot to catch up with the horses in the front. The more I tried to bring him back to walk, the more he tried to trot again. until James told me to just let him catch up because the more I tried to stop him the more he would worry about losing touch with the horses in front. After that he was ok and then he didn't mind getting behind while he kept stopping to eat - now there's the Liquorice I know!

And then it was all over and it was time to pack and get ready to come home. The shower of snow that I hoped would snow me in didn't come to anything but if the battery hasn't lasted in the TomTom I won't be able to find my way out of Devizes so I'll have to stay.