Well I never!!!

Firstly I am going to tell you about our warm up and ride today, which was nothing short of marvelous and interesting.

The horse that showed up today was crabby, spooky and quite RB. I don't often see this in B these days but I am never surprised when she is like this. We had a challenging but interesting play and all thoughts of re visiting canter online went out of the window, especially when she kept turning her back to me and either going sideways or backing up to me. Whenever she does things like this I know she is feeling stressed and needs to do very little. I focussed on helping B be calm and play with things she enjoys and can feel good at. Half circles with me against the fence helped a lot. So did fig 8's and falling leaf. She couldn't go over a jump at all so I didn't ask again. Sideways was lovely too, some of the time. We also got to make progress on extreme friendly game, which has been a real challenge for B.

By the end of the play she was calm and happy and mirroring me so we left the arena. I gave her some time to rest after the hour we spent playing, then we got saddled up. I watched her closely after watching a session at the Celebration and to my dismay realised the tail swishing was quite obvious today. But as she stayed still I didn't worry about it too much. I will be spending some time on another day looking at this.

Getting on was marvelous and we stood and did nothing for a while. For the first time ever B had no thresholds leaving the yard. We turned left with Bert and Sandra in the lead and the horses spent the first bit of the ride eating and moving on. Lovely!

We trotted the whole of the mile and 1/4. B gave me the nicest, smoothest, relaxed trot I have felt to date. It was relaxed and seemingly effortless for both of us. The rest of the ride was great too. Both horses stopped on the viaduct part and despite lots of approach and retreat neither B or Bert could get unstuck. Luckily, Sam and Jewel (the yard stallion!) came towards us, stopped to say hello and get squealed at by B. Seeing another horse coming from the danger zone settled them both and we carried on up the straight and along the old woods. More delicious trotting, then weaving around trees and home. We were so relaxed I took a couple of videos on my phone! Might put them up on 'you tube' so they can be watched, sooner or later. They are not that interesting tho!

And now.......the incredible part of my post. Well not the only part. Our ride was incredibly good but this has been mind blowing for me. I got our Horsenality Report today and it was a big surprise. I have always believed B was RBI but lately as she has become more calm, she began to exhibit LB tendencies. How interesting! Because, it turns out she is on the cusp of RBE/LBE! At first I was horrified, shocked and then worried. I guess I have viewed these horsenalities as somewhat negative. Now that I have had time to read the report and read B today I have realised this is a real gift. It also explains why I have seen the changes in B and what I can do to further our partnership/relationship. It now feels like the sky's the limit!

My printer has had to work overtime to get all 117+ pages printed so that I can read the reports over and over again. Actually, I can hardly contain my excitement. Sadly there is no one I can turn to and talk it over with given that I am the only Parelli student at my yard. Looks like poor Claire will have to bear the brunt of my need for talking in our next lesson. Not very LBI of me, or is it? These are facts and ideas and stuff to follow. I am in Parelli heaven, again.