As I stood in the arena today, Breeze standing quietly behind me on the 22' line, throwing the coils of the 45' line and recoiling it, suddenly it occurred to me how comfortable this felt. In my peripheral vision I saw people going about their business at a distance. Four years ago I would have felt awkward and worried about what they might think of my fumbling attempts at rope savvy. Back then starting out on my Parelli journey with Lizzie the dominant extreme LBI my mind battled to understand the 7 games in the simplest terms. It was all about the games, pretty much in isolation.
Today I know the 7 games as well as any L2/3 student but I noticed my focus is on reading Breeze my sensitive RBI, how I ask and how she replies. Then how I need to ask the question differently to get the answer I was looking for or simply see what B needed to get it right.
Today we got 3 laps of circle game in walk in both directions although going clockwise she needed a little prompt with the c/s to maintain gait. Ages ago when She first came to me I was very intent on getting more laps but it was too much PRESSURE for her then. I feel it's time to re introduce that pres-shhhh-ure and see where we go with it.
I am starting to find it quite difficult to remember what exactly we do in our play these days because there's no longer a set definition between each game. They flow into each other and perhaps on the way to an obstacle we will do a little sideways or yo yo or travelling circles. Sometimes B will offer me something other than what I asked for which I take gladly. More often than not after that I will ask for whatever it was again and get it. Sometimes it's all I can do to remember the outstanding highlights lol.
So now we are focussed on more laps and maintaining a faster gait. She offered some canter today without blowing up. Nice! B forgot about turning around the cone in Fig 8. It maybe too much pressure so I slow it down and ask her to walk it and I think carefully about my body position and where I am looking then we wind it up to end with a trot round the cone and stop because she got it.
I swapped the 22' for the 45' and it was great. I think B likes the lightness and of course being farther away, although not right at the end of the line, lessens the pressure for her even more. We got nice trot on circle game and when we stopped B forgot she was still connected to me and tried to wander off lol.
I swapped the lines back and we wandered to the gate. Before going through the opening, B sniffed and pawed at the ground and I really thought she might roll. I mirrored her but in the end she didn't roll. One day I am hoping to ask her to roll or at least lie down. But that's for the future. She spent a lot of time with her head down just sniffing the ground. When she was ready to leave she did the same thing the other side of the gate. It seemed like ages before she was ready to be in the moment again and we could go back to her stable. Interesting.
It's funny. Today someone asked me if we were riding. I said no, sorry I don't have time but that wasn't strictly true. I actually wanted to spend as much time as I could playing with B online!
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