Audition Results!!!

EVERYONE got their auditions back today, it seems. First of all, I'd love to give a huge shout-out to two of my students, first to Arianna Halverson and her pony Princess, they passed their Level 1 audition today! These two are the most awesome students ever, very focused and determined. YAY! Red String here you come!


Secondly, congrats to Sherri Anderson and her mare Cerra. These two just passed their L1 AND L2 today! I did the filming on their auditions, and am pleased to say the results and feedback were positive and useful. Can't wait to see those pretty colored strings on your belt either, girl! How exciting!



VERY proud of you both!


I'd also like to announce that I received my results on my Level 3 Online and Freestyle (still pending on the Liberty). I passed both those auditions with L3+ and FANTASTIC feedback. I'm not entirely pleased with L3+ (perfectionist, I know!), but I take comfort in the fact that they're almost 3 months outdated, and I KNOW that Prin and I have improved far beyond that. I'm also really happy to say that we received L4 on our relationship, rapport, and Level 4+ on mounting, friendly game, and one other (don't have the specs sitting right in front of me)...not to mention tons of L3++'s and a few L3+'s. I hope to hear about liberty next week perhaps :) I'm REALLY proud of my girl, and am very happy to have finally heard back. The feedback received was useful and wonderful.


So YAY!

Congrats to everyone!

CONGRATULATIONS FARRAH!

Okay, perhaps some of the more exciting news in recent times, I'd like to throw a big shout-out and congratulations to Ms Farrah Green, who totally passed her Level 4 yesterday!! She has been waiting for the result on her liberty, and jokingly been telling people for a week now that she has 4.5 feet of her black string. Well...now she's got all six! She passed her liberty L4++, which is AWESOME.

Congratulations, girl!

I'm off to go teach now.

F

PS--I'm through filming my L3 stuff, as well, I'll have those up soon!

Updates from Madison

Hi All,

Life has been crazy the past few days, and is liable to remain so for the next week or more, so I thought I would shoot you a quick update and let you know what's going on in the life of Fran.

Tuesday evening, Farrah arrive at my house to teach private lessons on Wednesday. Her horses stayed at Sherri's. We had a nice low-key evening and hit the hay relatively early. Wednesday morning started at 5:30am, and involved lots of running around setting things up, etc. We got everyone rounded up (including LB's second ride loading up in the back of my car!), the arena set, and all that jazz by 9:00am, and lessons began.

Long story short (I'm going to avoid posting details of people's lessons publicly, if you'd like to hear specifics, please shoot me an email) it was as fantastic day and fun was had by all. Farrah and I ended with an inspirational demo with the 4 of our big horses (LB watched). Crest made an AWESOME cameo, playing double online while I rode Prin bridless. Pictures of all this next week (you'll understand why in a moment)

For the rest of this week and all of next, I'll be traveling with Farrah. We headed out for Madison, WI, on Thursday morning, to spend time at the Midwest Horse Fair, and then teach a clinic next weekend. Our trip down was uneventful, thank goodness. We had a lovely sushi dinner that night, and then hit the hay.

Friday was day 1 of Horse Fair, and Farrah and I both woke up with the beginnings of a cold. Nonetheless, we spent the day handing out flyers, editing website stuff, talking to customers, and promoting Parelli and The Horse First (AWESOME new all-natural boarding facility built by some good friends of ours, check out the link!) After the fair was done for the day, we went out riding and we had a FANTASTIC ride. I rode Prin, of course, and Farrah rode Wesley and turned Caesar loose. We rode like crazy people for an hour and a half, trotting, cantering, galloping (I haven't done that in a year at least!!!!) and just generally enjoying the gorgeous evening. I think the particular highlight was Caesar, overall. He's not a very naturally round horse, and Farrah's poured a lot of energy into getting him to look good and carry himself better, and BOY did that show! He looked FANTASTIC! He and Prin were having "extended-trotathons", and he honestly looked like he'd blow them away in the high-level dressage arena. Awesome.

Saturday, I was super super sick. I could hardly breath, let alone do anything productive. I kind of stuck to myself for most of the day, did some website editing for Farrah, and then moseyed around watching presentations for the rest of the day. We hit "The Old-Fashioned", a restaurant owned by another friend of ours, for dinner, and then headed home and after doing chores, crashed (almost literally!) for the night.

Today is the last day of horse fair. After this is finished, Farrah and I plan to go for a ride and do some playing. This week is going to be fun, Farrah will be teaching private lessons on Thursday and Friday, and then a clinic on Saturday and Sunday, and I'll head home Sunday night.

Somewhere in there, we plan to film all the L3 auditions for Prin and me, and see if we can attempt some Level 4 stuff (we'll see how that goes, I think I may be able to do online and freestyle, but like I said, we'll see). I'll get those videos up ASAP. So anyway, just keeping busy for now. I'm going to finish up editing Farrah's calendar, and then head out to lunch with a Parelli friend of mine.

So, I'll try to keep updated, but if I don't, it's only because life is crazy good :)

Savvy on!

Fran

Lovely Liberty

Sherri and I rode the ponies down to her place today so that they can be "readily available" for Lesson Day with Farrah. The ride went pretty well, I rode Crest, Sherri rode Prin. Crest was a bit riled up, but anyway, another story for another time.

I debated going back out for a while this evening. I had a migraine earlier, and was really lethargic, but a bite to eat and some homemade Gatorade did the trick, and at about 7:00, I decided that I wanted to go back out and play a bit.

I decided to take advantage of Sherri's gorgeous play pen, and play with Prin at liberty. Our liberty has been sorely lacking recently, simply because #1, the footing in our round corral was terrible up until last week, #2, I've been too chicken to relive my last liberty session at the Parelli center and #3, with regard to #2, I've wanted to develop a more solid L4 online relationship before taking the line off.

Anyway, in the round pen, Prin was kind of un-responsive at first, but after a brief "Hello? It's ME!" discussion, she was flying, and on a whole new level of liberty I'd not gotten from her in quite some time. Very snappy transitions upward and downward, as well as some GORGEOUS sideways toward (trot/canter at phase 1 and 2!), and a couple of nice spins, and a flying change of direction.

Our draw is a little sticky, so I need to play a bit more with getting "come to me" worth it :) Cookies will help immensely, I imagine :)

Anyway, I'm off to play with the finishing touches on my stupid tax sheets. Gotta get those sent off tomorrow, weeeee! (I sound enthused, but on the inside, I'm gagging).

Savvy on!

Fran

It Started as "Touch It"...

...and then got bigger...much much bigger. Muahahaha.

I had another really awesome playday with Prin today. She's been in a very naughty, playful mood recently (ah spring, I love you!) and so we've had a ton of fun PLAYING!

Today started out in what could have been a bad way. Prin pulled the "you can't catch me!" card, and took off (at the speed of a slug on steroids...ooh the trot!). I ran with her instead of after her, and she thought that was pretty funny, so she joined up and we haltered. Almost immediately, Prin revealed that she wanted to play touch it (she pulls off circle toward obstacles), and so I obliged. It looked fun enough. So, I sent her to a barrel from about 40 feet away. Prin trotted over to it enthusiastically, and put her nose on it. She nuzzled the barrel, then got a sassy look about her, and pushed it over. She turned and checked in. I had no idea what she had in store, so I just shrugged and allowed her to proceed.

Prin proceeded to shove the now-sideways barrel with her nose. It rolled. She seemed very satisfied with the result, and did it again...and again...and again...This lasted for 5 minutes, until I had an idea. I decided that we should put it to a purpose. So, I sent Prin to get her barrel, and guided her through the motions, until she brought the barrel to me. When it got to me, I relaxed, gave her a good rub, and a cookie.

*Prin pauses* "Wait...You mean...I get a cookie if I bring you barrels? I'll be right back!" Prin leaves, and takes me to the other barrel. Which she proceeds to knock over, and start to push, this time, bringing it right up to the other one, and setting it almost perfectly next to it. She turns, questions, with the unmistakable look of "See? I did it!" I gave her another cookie, and cracked up laughing. Prin loves it when I laugh, and so she went and started pushing the barrels again. Oh my horse, the comedian. The continued for another 10 minutes. Moral of the story? I think I need to bring my big green ball back into action, my horse is getting cow-y again!

After all that commotion (I've not seen my horse that genuinely amused in a while), we played with zone 5 driving again, which was splendid again. Love my horse! Love spring!

More tomorrow :)

Fran

PS--One week to lesson day with Farrah. One spot open still, anyone interested? Auditors welcome, too! SOOO Excited!

Awesome times THREE!

I had a busy busy day today, and of the three real sessions I had (I played with a 4th, but only to keep him occupied while the others ate their grain) were absolutely FANTASTIC. I haven't felt that productive with my herd in a VERY long time. I played with Crest, Cricket, and Prin, and I think the easiest way to summarize will be to just go down the list.


Crest:
I've been trying really hard to get into a consistent schedule with Crest, since he thrives best when he's played with often. So, since the last time I blogged, we've actually played twice, not including today. Anyway, we've been playing with really progressing in the patterns. The ground was too hard by the time I got them last fall, so I only got to introduce them to him.

All I can really say is HOLY CRAP, this horse is a speed-demon learner. I knew that about him from the start, but he's now blowing my mind more and more. I started playing with these patterns at L2 two days ago, and today, he was consistently offering me L4 with everything. He kept pulling flying changes out of NOWHERE, he was cantering like I've never seen before, and his circles were GORGEOUS, and amazingly rhythmic!

After being thoroughly mind-boggled by Crest's ground play, I decided to hop on and do some stuff. We started out just walking around and playing with walk-halt transitions, which he did flawlessly. We toddled around the playground a bit, w/t/c and playing with obstacles, and then I somehow got the idea that we should play with turns on the haunches. It started out a little bit rocky, being that it's physically challenging for him, but we played through it slowly and persistently, and by the end, I was getting some LOVELY pivots, and twice got what I think were pretty high-quality spins. He's truly a very athletic horse, he just needs proper guidance, etc.

Cricket:
Poor Cricket is going through some difficult things right now. I'm just starting to get her back into riding, something that hasn't been kind on her in the past. She's basically been taught nothing but to resist, and unfortunately, has been punished for a lack of understanding. The result is a very skeptical, very unsure, very unconfident horse in all aspects of riding. I've spent the past couple weeks getting her friendly to the concept of being saddled. I pulled out Prin's original saddle for the job. It's a cute little general purpose Trainer's brand saddle, pretty narrow, but has decent weight distribution throughout the panels, which is why I chose it. Coupled with the Theraflex, it does fairly well.

Anyway, today, for the 3rd day in a row, we've played with bridling. Cricket must have evaded bridling really well in her days prior to my riding, because she knows practically every trick in the book to get away from it now. Today went fairly well though, we only had to "discuss" yielding to poll pressure for about 3 minutes, as opposed to the 15 and 5 we spent the past two days.

Once we got bridled, I hopped on, and proceeded to play with fluid rein. I've got her in the confidence snaffle because of the rough handling she's had in her mouth previously. Three days ago, When I'd get on, she'd turn her neck inside-out to get away from any sort of pressure on her mouth. Today, we made HUGE strides with fluid rein. Though a bit skeptical (and astounded!) that I really wanted her to stretch into the bit, Cricket finally got the idea, and we spend a half an hour walking and trotting around with Cricket's nose barely above the grass, exhaling and blowing almost every stride. Talk about a pressure release! It's going to be a long road, but she's going to make a LOVELY riding horse. I'll be continuing this journey, so keep checking back :)


Prin:
Today's session with Prin will be dubbed successful simply because it was short, sweet, and I totally blew my horse's mind. I had originally planned to tack up and take her out for a long trot up the road, but after I heard gunshots coming from Dusek's, our neighbors up the road (the 3 brothers shooting pigeons, no doubt), I decided that we'd better not. So, I hopped on bareback, and took her for literally a 5 minute ride. We cantered up the driveway, to the top of the hill, stopped, backed up, did a roll back, and cantered home. Once I got back, I took her to the tackroom and I groomed her from head to tail, gave her a cookie, and put her back. The look of astonishment on my horse's face was fantastic, and I know I left her wanting more because she followed me along the fence line as I walked out.


So. All in all, a VERY productive day. I love spring, I love my horses, and my life is going very well. I'll hopefully get the camera out this week sometime if it's not too nasty (they're predicting freezing rain/snow on Tuesday), and will keep progressing along.

Keep it natural, and I'll post again soon :)

Life's a Dance...

Especially when you're riding Crest out for the first time all year :)

I had a VERY successful horsey afternoon with my kids. First of all, I did a practice-film of my L3/4 online audition. It was really good quality as far as play went, but the footing was so terrible that I could hardly ask her to canter, and thus could not submit it for L3/4 had I wanted to. But that's okay with me for now. The intention was not to ace it, but to get a feel for what needed doing, and how I might go about it when the footing was good. And honestly, I LOVED it. I was disappointed when my camera-person called the 8 minute warning ("I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO SHOW!" was my thought)and I feel really confident in filming when the ground hardens (a week or two, yay) So I'm really glad I got that taken care of :)

After that, I went out on a really lovely ride with Micky and our mutual friend Sarah. Sarah took Prin, who was a gem, Micky rode Amigo (she's decided to do this more often, we could tell he missed being out), and I took Crest, which brings me to my title line. Today was our first "real" ride out this year, and Crest was...well...a total LBE-on-adrenaline dancing queen. I had saddled him up in the fluidity (MAN I MISSED MY SADDLE!) and had a new bit I wanted to try with him. He was fantastic, behavior wise, but totally high on life and thus very hard to ride because of his perpetual bounce tendencies, that were magnified by 10. The result? A passaging, dressaging, haunches-inning Warmblood-wanna-be who had ALL the moves.

I kept track, and Crest performed like 4 grand-prix level dressage maneuvers when asked, simply because it involved being fancy. I got like 150 yards of lovely passage, a hilarious set of VERY collected tempi-changes, and about 3/4 of a canter pirouette. How funny *eye roll*

So all in all, a very nice ride. Fun was had by all, and I'm really looking forward to progressing with Crest, now that his TRUE athletic ability has been revealed-LOL.

Savvy on, I'm off to bed EARLY tonight :D

Behold the Powers of an Attitude Adjustment!

I want to just comment on this:



This girl is probably the most talented young PNHer I know. Every time she puts a video out, I watch and my jaw drops. She's more consistent in drawing that effect in me than Pat and Linda are.

Anyway, more than being an awesome girl (She's 14, and that little chestnut with the star is a 2 year old!) with awesome relationship-building skills, Hannah's also a fantastic reminder of what I need to do for myself. She put up a post a couple days ago on her blog in which she talked about a question I had asked her. She had been struggling with her horse Blaze's attitude, even in undemanding sessions, and I asked her "Are you doing the undemanding time for him, or are you doing it because you feel like it's necessary to change him?" This is a question they asked us OVER AND OVER AND OVER at the center. Not specifically that, but more "Are you doing it for the horse, or TO the horse?". By the same token, we're constantly reminded that "It's not about the ___, it's about the relationship."

I suppose this is the first "growth" from the seeds planted in my head at the center, but this video, combined with that blog post, combined with what's happened at our farm the past few days REALLY got me thinking. I apologize if you have trouble following--I'm thinking in segues tonight, and have A LOT on my mind.

I digress (I promise I'll get back to it in a minute) I've been to the farm every day for hours at a time since I've been home, and I've been really hesitant to DO anything. Not entirely sure why, I'm still trying to figure it out, but I think it's because I'm honestly trying to acclimate and introduce my little piece of "Parelli bubble" to my "home bubble". I have all these thoughts and things I did at the center with my horse that I want to do at home, but I don't know HOW to do it. The Parelli Center is magical like that. People ask me "What'd you learn?", and I don't know! Or rather, I don't know how to express it! But it shows in the relationship with my horses. Prin has left the herd and whatever she was doing and come trotting and whinnying to me every day since I've been home. She's been BEGGING for me to play with her. And this behavior is starting to catch on Crest, too.

So, how does this connect with Hannah? I've seen a lot of task-orientedness since I've gotten home. Auditions being submitted only for a string, a list of tasks being checked off, a person asking what new "Things" I learned to "DO" with my horse, hell, even a fantastic young horse woman asking me "What can I do to make my horse do this?" Hannah's stuff represents to me someone making a conscious effort to be with her horse for the sake of a relationship (and from something I SAID!) and since being home, I'm seeing how much MY attitude has changed in the same way. My horse NEVER used to RUN to me (she's an LBI!) and talk like that! I want that so much more and appreciate that so much more. I'm really learning what it's like to truly "walk my talk", as the faculty would phrase it, and it feels so good!

I've been asked a dozen times "When are you submitting your audition?"...Audition? Oh yeah, that. Um...whenever I guess? Make no mistake, I'm still intent on passing my L3, and L4, but more important than that right now is establishing that relationship right now. I've realized that I don't want to look back on my L3 journey and go "My God, where did it go? I put my horse through hell for the sake of a string, and WHY?!"

Tying in a little, Kristi Smith, an instructor on the faculty, and a newly-found personal mentor of mine, gave me some fantastic advice in one of a couple really great conversations we had. She said (and this is the gist, not verbatim) "Fran, I look at you and I see a huge drive, talent, and lots of dedication, but you've got to slow down and just LIVE YOUR LIFE, lady! You have MAYBE 2 years of your 'childhood' left, if you STRETCH it. The fact that you are who you are is awesome, you've found your passion, but slow down and appreciate it a little! Go play with your horse! Have some fun!" Have some fu---WHAT?! No, no time for that! It's about my goals and my future! It's about the stri--NO IT'S NOT!

So. Fran is no longer going to be on a quest for a damn green string. Farrah made her point quite clearly "I have two, want to borrow one?" No, I don't, I want to earn my own. The string represents a great relationship, not a bunch of well-performed tasks. That's the green string I want.

And this is not to say I'm not concerned with my future anymore. No, that's still really important to me. But I have a much renewed faith in that if I build a strong relationship base now (and not just with horses, but with the people surrounding and influencing me too!) when I'm 21 years old, I won't have to work my tail off to get where i need to, because it will have falling into place as I went along.

Savvy on. I'm going to do something with my horses tomorrow, I think. Lord knows they've been begging!

Thanks for reading, and again, sorry to be so scattered. As I said earlier, one of the planted seeds in my head just burst into full growth.

Leader vs. Boss

I lay awake a long time last night thinking about this, and came up with some interesting thoughts I'd like to share. But first let me explain kind of why I was thinking about this.

I had a WEIRD session with Crest yesterday. My usually confident-in-his-leader-and-self LBE had complete and total RBI meltdown, literally. I was out riding with my friend Renee, who was on Prin. We had cut across a corn field to avoid icy roads, and we're about to meet up with the road again, and there was a small patch of ice that we'd have to cross (it was either that, or an almost 4-foot-deep snow drift) to get to where we needed to go. We opted to take the ice. It wasn't a glare sheet, just a patchy spot (ice, dirt, ice, dirt melt pattern). Prin tiptoed across it without so much as a second glance, and Crest easily followed suit...until he realized what he was standing on. Crest's mind went into COMPLETE PANIC mode. But, being that he was on ice, he realized (Thank GOODNESS) that he couldn't scramble, or he'd hurt himself. At this point, I thought it best to get off, and I'm REALLY GLAD I did, because what happened next scared the ever-living out of me. Crest's entire body got tense, and then, he basically collapsed in on himself. I watched him as he did it, he was very careful, and folded his legs up and lay down in a way that wouldn't hurt himself, but then he just stayed there, on the ground, totally tense, and WOULD NOT move.

That's all I'm going to share for now (fear not, Crest is fine save a few surface abrasions from the gravel) because I want to get onto my point. This was such a bizarre experience, because number one, I've never seen a horse get so scared they'd lie down, and number two, I've NEVER seen Crest go catatonic before, so I emailed a couple instructors, wondering what I could have done, and bluntly put, one response really sent me for a loop. I'll let you make the judgment call on it (I'm not at all offended, but am fascinated by how to progress, now)

"You're going to hate (or love) my answer. As his leader you should never have put him in that position. You need to assess the situation and know if it's something you should ask him to do that won't compromise his self confidence or confidence in you.

You handled it well, but in the future savvy means never having to create the problem in the first place. Okay... that's Level 3+, so it's not a judgement but as you are studying that level it is important you know. If you could have done it better you would have... chalk it up to a learning experience and the key then is not to relive it... you'll know better next time. Otherwise it was not a learning experience :)"

Anyway, that sent me into a frenzy of thought (yes, sounds dangerous, I know!) especially since that little skeptic in me said "So wait, how is being a good leader any different than 'showing the horse who's boss'?" So that got me thinking about how I might explain that to a traditional rider who asked that question. Here's what I came up with. A "boss" pushes without an allow. The persona is "I'm in charge, and you'll do what I say, deal with it." Whereas a good leader guides without pressure unless it is appropriate, and causes other to WANT to follow.

It was kind of a strange train of thought, my brain tends to segue a lot, so if you didn't get that, I apologize.

Anyway, That's that for now.

FINALLY!!!

Hehehe...www.pnhsavvy.com check out the "New L2 Graduates" list.

It's a VERY long story, and I actually graduated L2 a LONG time ago (Lets try June 07) but thru a series of very bogus twists and turns, it never became official.

See, I was on the Savvy Team in Madison in June of 2007. I was not an L2 graduate officially, but when Pat was announcing/introducing the Savvy Team, he announced that I was one. Of course I was curious about this, so I asked him afterwards (at the end of the day) and he shrugged it off, and said "I've seen your videos, I saw you ride last night...you're L2." and that was that. But unfortunately, that never went into the computer system, so I never got an awards pack, just Pat's word saying I was L2 (which is lovely, don't get me wrong, but kind of hard to explain)

So anyway, fast forward to Savvy Conference. Farrah has amazing powers of persuasion, and managed to talk me into approaching Linda about this whole thing, to get it official. That didn't get me anywhere really (other than a big ego boost, because Linda thinks I should go for green/black NOW) and so I left, still a bit uneasy. Interestingly enough, during lunch right after that conversation, I ran into one of my long-time instructors, Nita Jo Rush. After some discussion, Nita Jo and I came up with a plan, and what you see on her site is the product of her brilliance, and I owe her a lot. I will have a blue string in about 3-4 weeks...FINALLY :) So happy!