You want to______? LET ME HELP YOU!

Oh yeah...and breath while you do it!

I had an adventuresome session with a VERY RBE Scoot this morning, and I thought my readers might like to hear about my handling my least "savvy" horsenality.

The RBE has always been kind of a rough area for me. I come from owning one EXTREMELY LB mare, and then a gelding who was RBE for about 6 months and then turned mostly LBE (He still has his RBE moments, but they're mild). Handling extreme fear in a horse is not something I'm particularly good at. I know what to do only from hearing Pat and Linda and other people's experiences, and I probably handle it fairly well in retrospect, being a L3 student, but compared to my imagination and creativity for the LB side, RB isn't fantastic.

Today, my plan with Scoot was to build his confidence a bit. I've played with him about 4 times previous to this session, teaching him the principle games and getting some purpose, and have basically found that he's that he's a very smart, sensitive horse, who is easily offended and bothered by too much of anything. My phases have to be perfect, etc. I anticipated him to be a bit like Crest to start out with, but little did I realize, he's almost IDENTICAL.

One of my greatest...erm...(I don't want to say "regrets", Linda's been training that word out of my vocabulary) Okay, one of the things I feel the worst about (and have since learned from) is the arrogance I went into starting Crest with. I was a cocky, arrogant 14 year old who thought she could handle way more than she could, and I've learned through the amount of times that horse has hurt me in one way or another, that I need to rely on the knowledge and information that others willingly have shared, and not think I know everything in the process. So anyway, to my story.

I started out today, feeling like Scoot was just being a bit TOO offended. I mean, there's a good reason when my phases aren't right, but after 4 sessions of earning his trust (Which I do have, he trots to me when he sees me coming)acting like a baby when I THINK about throwing the savvy string over his back in a friendly way, is a bit much.

Those of you who follow the program religiously know that Pat and Linda say to interrupt the pattern when a horse goes RB. Well, let me put it this way. Scoot was LEAPING around on the end of the line...not just prancing a little, he was LEAPING, and I wasn't even trying to get the savvy string on him. I wanted to see him stand still before I even tried that. Well the little Australian voice in the back of my head (yes, I do have Linda in there!) was shouting "INTERRUPT THE PATTERN!!" and I tried...as hard as I could...multiple times...and then, all of a sudden, That little voice started to talk again "Fran...if you can't shut it down, then what? Make it your idea!" and I FLEW into action...My energy came up, my intention came up, and my attitude shifted to exactly what my blog title is..."You want to go CRAZY?! LET ME HELP YOU!!!"

Now I was in an area where I have several obstacles...a log, several fence lines, a round corral, a jump, a pedestal, and water tubs and buckets. Well, we went FLYING. I sent Scoot over the jumps, into the fence, through the water trough, between things, over the pedestal, into the round pen. We circled, squeezed, sidewaysed (is that a WORD?!) crazy fast. We changed directions more times than I think Scoot could comprehend. We were basically insane. About 3/4 way through this entire episode, I started to realize how TIRED I was getting, I was really winded. And then another voice came into my head, and she'll be flattered to know it. Farrah Green started saying to me "Breath, Fran...Breath while you do it!" and I couldn't help but laugh. Go figure. I'm running around like a lunatic with my breath held. As soon as I started to breath, so did Scoot, and then all of a sudden, he just stopped and LOOKED at me. He started licking his lips like mad, and I realized something.

I handled a pretty extreme RBE fit CORRECTLY! I scored BIGTIME points with myself, and I'm REALLY proud! All that, and following the little voices of my mentors in my head, which are slowly but surely becoming my own voice.

The rest of my session was uninteresting in comparision. We did some things, yes, but that was what i wanted to share. Hope someone found that interesting, and please tell me what you thought!