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I'm not entirely pleased with L3+ (perfectionist, I know!), but I take comfort in the fact that they're almost 3 months outdated, and I KNOW that Prin and I have improved far beyond that.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

Happy Holidays and an update

Happy holidays, everyone! Hope everyone has a wonderful day tomorrow, and finds lots of horsey goodness under the tree :)

Here's a little update on MY life, it's been an interesting week, to say the least. Richard is currently out of town for Christmas, and I'm in charge of the farm for a week. No big deal right? WRONG. Let me tell you about what's going on here. First of all, there are two feet of snow on the ground right now. No big deal for Richard, with his 4WD truck. Big deal for me--I have to walk in the 1/2 a mile, down and up a hill, in a full coverall suit, through the snow. It's way more exausting than it may sound. I'm doing this about 3x a day (sometimes 2x, sometimes 4 or 5, depending). The good thing is that I'm shedding fat like mad-haha.

Secondly, we have a compulsive eater on our farm. The majority of the herd could go on two large feedings a day, one around 8 am and one around 8 pm. But then we've got Belle. Belle is Richard's OBESE Morgan mare. Belle is a chronic founder case, and loves to eat, and will do anything TO eat when she's hungry. When she gets hungry, she doesn't think twice, she just bashes down the fence to get to the hay. Three mornings of the past four, we've come out to find Belle on the other side of a very crippled fence. The electricity (enough to knock me on my butt) doesn't even phase her!

Thirdly, Let's talk waterers. Automatic waterers are so fantastic...most of the time. They make doing chores much easier...most of the time. Until the winter when they freeze. ARGH. Ours has been frozen every day I've been out there recently. It's been pretty cold recently (High temps peaked yesterday, and it was 22). Keeping the dang thing open long enough for everyone to get a drink and to refill is tough. Then, two days ago, it wouldn't STOP filling. Fortunately my father, handy-man that he is, realized that the last time the thing had been taken apart, a piece had been put back on backwards, and that's what caused the problem. But since then, it's been off and on freeze. I swear I'm a fan of tank heaters, now.

OTHER THAN THIS, life is actually quite grand. Micky and I took Nugget and Prin out for a trail ride yesterday (Nugget's first!!) which went GREAT. Micky hopped on Nug on the way home, and commented immediately on how much she reminded her of Digger. All in all, a very successful outing. Today, we opened one present before dinner (family tradition) and I was very happy to receive a telephoto lens for my Canon Rebel digital camera. This equipment will all go to FL with me and be used like CRAZY, no worries :)

In other news, as well, one of my students passed her L1 last week, congratulations Jenifer and Mamma! I helped film and coach these two through their assessment, so it gives me a great sense of accomplishment, too. Well done, girls, now onto L2!

OH! Speaking of FL, I'm going to start a new blog and try to keep track of my journey as the course I'm attending progresses. I'll post a link to that as soon as I get it up and running :)

Finally, my two ponies got blankies for Xmas and boy do they look cute! Crest got a green and blue plaid Noreasta turnout, and Prin got a denim/navy Weatherbeeta Orican midweight turnout. They both look fantastic, and will keep nice and warm on these cold nights, now. I'll take pix soon.

I think that's all for now, folks :) Time for me to hit the hay, let Santa do his job, and prepare to get up early again tomorrow morning to go feed...again.

Savvy on and out!

QUICK!! I have a COOKIE!!

So today was one of those interesting reminders for what exactly WORKS for an LBI.

My dear darling friend Jessica is coming to visit in a couple weeks, and the main goal of her visit is to film the majority of my L3 assessment, because for the LOVE OF GOD, it's time for me to finish the dang thing! Anyway, in times past, I've had a hard time filming because I just tried to film without practicing first...well DUH, no wonder I'd get frustrated. I woke up at about 5:00 this morning thinking about it (you know you're obsessed with PNH when you actually DREAM the L3/L4 online patterns)and decided that from now until Jess gets here on the 11th, we're going to PRACTICE. Not in the task oriented sense of the phrase, like "We're going to work on these tasks until we can do them in our sleep." but more along the lines of we're just going to play around and do those tasks in with our playing every day.

Anyway, back to the interesting session. SO, we set out on the 45' line, I set up some barrels, a jump, and some cavalettis, and we started. And instantly, Prin started in with her old trick...she'd stick her nose to the outside of the circle and PULL. A constant, annoying contact, that said "You know, if I were at liberty, I'dve left already, you boring, stupid, rediculous person. You call yourself a leader?"

One of my faults as a person is that I have a huge dignity complex. I cannot STAND to have anyone be downright RUDE to me, human, OR equine, especially if it's unprovoked, so this behavior out of Prin just ANNOYED me. Score one for Spotty. I could only think of one solution/idea off the top of my head, so I tried it. Every time she'd pull off, I would send her off harder/sideways, until she'd turn and ask me a question, then I'd bring her in and give her a rub. This is a friendly warning to all of you. DON'T DO THAT! It makes the situation WORSE. After trying this for a couple minutes, Prin was literally WHIPPING away from me, and trying to escape pressure. ARGH...time to reassess the situation.

I knew I wasn't getting anywhere continuing at that point, so I unsnapped the line, wound it up, put Prin loose in the west paddock and walked back to my car to have a good think. I got back to the car, sat down in my back seat, and remembered back to June, when I was having a similar problem, but it was only at 10 and 2 oclock on the circle. I was trying to remember what I had done then, and remembered what Linda had suggested; to bring Prin in when she drifted off and give her a cookie and some scratches...My thought was "That worked to a mediocre level...obviously the problem is reoccuring now...so it wasn't solved" or I did something to spark it again. So I'm thinking "What is not clicking here? She comes in, she gets a cookie. I'm the comfort spot..."

And then it hit me. I'm not making it UNCOMFORTABLE to pull off. I went back to the pasture, all excited to try my new idea. Prin, surprisingly enough, came RIGHT up to me, and allowed me to put the line back on her (she had this look on her face of "you gonna get it right this time?")

I sent her back out, and got the same drill, except, this time every time she'd pull off, I'd disengage her *almost* rudely, and DEMAND that she at least trot, maybe canter to me...with an urgency...like "COME HERE! QUICK! I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING!!!" and then, as soon as she got in to me, I'd drop my energy, give her a scratch, and pull out a cookie and give it to her.

I did this maybe a dozen or so times (I really should invest in Winnies Cookie stock...) and within 10 minutes, she was offering canter on a loose rope. So...ya think I might have done the right thing? Maybe? Score one for Franny. I'm VERY proud of myself, and I'm REALLY excited to see how this evolves and progresses...although I will need to get some more cookies...blah!

Savvy on!

More Forward Motion

I played with Prinny again tonight, and we had a pretty nice session. It's like someone flipped a switch in our relationship, and I guess that might have been the case kind of.

Tonight I got out there kind of late, so I didn't have too much time. Anyway, Princess, Crest and Cricket all came up at once, which was cool, because earlier, Crest was leading the cavalry charge around the north paddock, and my thought was "Oh dear lord, I'm glad I'm busy clearing for the arena and not trying to catch them!"

Prin was eager enough to be haltered, we snapped up to the 45' line, and off we went. I didn't want to jump right into the circling things we've been playing with because that's another really great way to build resentment in a LB horse...how boring can I be, really? So, for the first 5 minutes or so, we played around with getting our yo-yo game really snappy, and BOY did that go well. I only went out about 30 or so feet, and after the first go only, Prin was almost drawing to me at the canter (hard to do that close, really it is) with just my energy. There's a L3 task I'm pretty sure we can get a pass on-haha.

Next, we did move to circling,and it was just a totally different feel. Her transitions were snappy, she had a bright look in her eye and was really tuned in, We goofed around and had a great time. This may have been the first time I've ever seen my horse actually truly ENJOY circling. And the only time she pulled on me at all was when I oh-so-gracefully went to draw her into me, and fell backwards...She just planted her feet and STARED at me...like "You...FOOL! WOW!"

Also, just for fun, we're working on a super secret task. No one gets to know what it is, but lets just say it's going very well,and I might be able to unveil in Kansas City if I'm on the savvy team there. And also, Heidi, if you read this, the key was the savvy string! She totally gets it now!

Anyway, all's going really well, Prin and I are having a blasty blasty blast...thank you Dane Cook for that phrase. I'm just enjoying this so much, I can't believe how much of a L3 online breakthru we're having here (me especially, my attitude is a complete and total BFO!), I don't we've gone thru anything THIS BIG in a long time. I'll keep posting!

It's not about the ____, it's about the relationship.

If I were equine right now, I imagine my lips would be licking EXTREMELY hard.

I had a bit of an...erm...session with Princess on Thursday night. Enough to get both of us pretty worked up and frustrated. I very rarely get frustrated with MYSELF anymore, let alone my horse, thanks to Parelli, and particularly Linda. But everything was working against that on Thursday and long story short, we were certainly having some issues. See Princess is a very LB confident horse. VERRRYYYY LB. So LB, in fact, that because a lot of people are used to confidence being the root of the problem in most cases, they're having trouble wrapping their brains around this issue that we're having being a LB thing. Here's what was up:

*Please note that I don't need advice anymore, I realize what's up now and a lot of this is outdated, I just thought it would make an interesting post*

I'm trying to tune up our Level 3 stuff so we can start filming for assessment (I'm facing my phobia, yay me!). Princess is anything but fond of online in general. She'd much rather be doing liberty, and since reading the aptitude article in the savvy times, it makes sense, she's ANYTHING but RBE, and is somewhat LBE. Anyway, as we get to our circling on the 45' line, and I'm paying attention to perfection, I've suddenly realized that Princess leans on the halter and pulls so there's not much slack in the rope. It's generally between 10:00-2:00 on a circle, doesn't matter where I'm facing.

The reason I'm so confused about this is because I'm not reading it as unconfident. If she were always pulling off towards the gate, or towards the pasture, or towards the barn, or towards the other horses, I'd think it was a pressure/unconfidence thing, and I'd know what to do, but its always at the one spot on the circle, no matter what direction I'm facing, so that seems less likely.

I thought at first it might be having the pressure of me facing her was too great, but if that was the case, what would I do about that, and why isn't it so at liberty?

I've been experimenting a little bit, but it's really tough to do for too long, because my LB horse HATES circling for long periods of time. Tonight we had a little success taking in the slack to about 20-25 feet, and putting the spot between 10:00 and 2:00 on a fence line so she literally COULDN'T pull off...and it seemed to translate a little when I took it away from the fence. But really, I'm still at a loss

The response I got when I emailed a friend:

UMMMM, I think I have some ideas.
1. Stop trying to be perfect.
2. Do a lot of transitions, preferably before 10 or 2.
3. Ask her to go real slow. Slower than slow. Slower and slower than slow. She'll get fascinated. And that's what you want. It sure is the opposite to bored or evasive.
4. Smile a lot. Exhibit glee when she does something kookie or different than what you expected... "hah! I didn't think you'd do that! Come here... let me give you some scratches, a cookie...." I can hear you now. WHAAAAA??? You are not rewarding the wrong thing. Remember, it's not about the.... What it is about is the relationship. She needs to know that you love her no matter what. Give her approval and she'll want to be with you more. Hmmm. No parallels anywhere ;)

5. How can you get her to feel successful on that circle? You can trick her, sure... shorten the rope as she comes through 4 or 8 for a couple of laps and she'll put more slack in there, but in the end it doesn't improve the relationship. And THAT'S WHERE IT'S AT! She's trying to teach you something Fran. What do you think it is?


All I can say is DUH. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, and by the way, how about some more DUH!!!! Argh. Of course I realize all this after the fact. It makes perfect sense! My goals have been coming before my principles and relationship with my horse, and she's getting way resentful. OF COURSE! She's not RB, so she isn't frightened by it, she's LB and she's getting annoyed by it. She had absolutely no reason TO cooperate with me! You've gotta LOVE savvy. It's very humbling, always learning, always reading, always absorbing information. And sometimes a bit of a pain in the ass.



So, my first session applying this obvious brilliance went VERY well. I've come to a point as a budding horseman where I never expect things to instantly get better. And I wouldn't say that they did today necessarily. But there certainly was a marked improvement. Princess and I started putting things into practice in the pouring rain. Man was it wet.

Anyway, it's not about the _____, its about the relationship. Princess picked up on that shift in my attitude right away. She had a much larger "smile" on her face the entire time. That, and she really picked up quickly on the concept that the center of the circle is where Fran, goddess of cookies and scratches resides, and it is best to be close(r) to her than away. While the entire problem was not solved in one session (I certainly wasn't expecting it to be anyway) after about 15 or 20 minutes, instead of pulling out/leaning, she was pretty loose in her movements, and even though the belly of the rope wasn't totally dragging yet, there was great improvement. I'm absolutely thrilled with that! Yay progress :)

We also goofed around a little with slowing the circles way down and doing some transitions/getting them snappy, mainly just to keep her motivated and interested on the circle. Like I said, things weren't perfect, but I certainly saw a change. I'm over the moon about it!

Savvy on, and out! Will keep logging as progress continues, PLEASE comment and let me know what you thought of this!