James Roberts clinic (parelli) L2 day 1

[Admin]

Just back from watching James Roberts from the UK teach up in Offaly. Great day, sun shining, gorgeous horses & great owners. James was great - very nice & approachable, and a great teacher.. really got the students to think, which I REALLY liked

Will write up the exercises tomorrow. Thank you very much to Beth & Sarah for organising and giving me the heads up about it

[Elaine]

MORNING

In the arena: 6 horses and handlers. 3 coloureds, 1 gorgeous black fresian who'd talk to you and two lovely bays.

Type: This was day 1 of a 3 day clinic geared for level 2 students. Apologies if I've got anything wrong below

Whoever moves their feet the least is the leader. To work on this, all humans had to stand still with one foot on a paper plate, while doing the 7 games.

A good DVD to watch: Tom Dorrance's Feel, timing and balance.

Exercises part 1:

Rub with stick, scratched horse all over with your hand, pick all four feet from both sides.

Ask horse to put his nose to the floor.

Yo-yo: ask horse to backup from you then walk back towards you without using the rope. So use your energy instead. Drive & Draw should be equally good.

Sidepass 180 degrees around when human is standing. NO forward steps. Then do it the other way for a full circle.

Person stands in front of the horse. Horse to sidepass away from the human in a straight line, human to stay standing still. Horse then to sideways back towards the human.

Two circles in trot.

Then trot the other way, with a trot depart.

Then trot one circle, and change rein but keep trot throughout. Again you can't move your feet.

More exercises:

Put horses tail against fence.
Put horses nose on a tarp.
Put horses left back foot in a circle.

If your tasks have a purpose, if makes the tasks easier

At the end of this session, every did really well. It was a lovely sunny day and one lovely bay horse actually decided it would be nice to sit down, so he sat down and his owner sat down for a while beside him aaaawww ;D

Next exercises:

Horse to stand still, while human walks to them, away from them, back to them, around them, etc while they stand loose. Walk, limp, dance around your horse... very useful if you're waiting in a holding pen before a competition and your horse gets nervous from all the people bustling around... get him used to this kind of stuff at home

If your horse tends to move, hold the end of the lead rope, and make him move than he had planned to, eg ask him asp for a hindquarter yield, then once he stops let him rest again and go back to your walking about at a distance. DO NOT stop moving when your horse starts to move... if you do, they are training you.....................

What folks learned...

1. He realised his horse had taught him to keep his energy down. Didn't have to walk on eggshells as much.

2. Human had a habit of always reverting to lower energy. Realised this was a habit and she didn't have to do it.

3. Didn't realised horses could train people not to move.

4. Important to be consistent as you get better results then.

5. Its much better to do simple thing swell, than try to do messy advanced stuff.

[Elaine]

AFTERNOON

Right. Drape the rope over your arm instead of holding it in your hand. Rope to stay draped over your arm for all the 7 games. This is cos you need to learn to have an open hand and release quickly when needed, as humans we tend to grip stuff in our hands and not release quick enough. So this is good practise.

EXERCISES: (all with rope draped over one arm)

1. FQ yield (driving game): If you horse walks forward, you move more forward to block this forward mvt. Get creative as you can't pull on the rope any more

2. Leading and backup. Walk beside horses head and shoulder. Horse to stay up near you. If horse lags behind, with outside hand swish stick & string back near horses HQ to get him to move on. For backup, backup a little into your horse is he's not going back, like another horse would.

Remember to PREPARE! Don't just get off at a fast walk and let your horse get left behind. At the halt, prepare so your horse knows something is about to happen, then off you go. Same going from walk to halt.. prepare by slowing down and give your horse a god clue you're about to do something new (eg stop)

What was learned:

1. Horses can be unconfident on 1 side, if so work on this.
2. Uses different phases of energy.
3. Make it simple for horse - make it REALLY obvious at the start when your energy is up, and then when it's down.

_________________________________________________

Next up, horse football!

Version 1

No rules, 3 per team, to score a goal the big blue ball has to touch the end of the arena. Humans to kick the ball.

The result..... chaos... people chasing ball, horses got a bit messy and confused, James stopped it after about two minutes.

The handlers had forgot something during the excitement of playing football..... they had forgotten to put their horse 1st and put the competition first instead...

(Do we do this as well when we push our horses too far, perhaps too soon in competitions and put the competition first to our horses expense? )

Version 2

All horses and humans to be on the same team.
To score a valid goal, ball must touch end of arena AND all horses must be together, and all humans must be beside their horses. So basically if one of the 6 horse was nervous etc, the goal wouldn't count....

James then advised then maybe it'd be worth spending 5 mins getting all horse used to the big football before they recommenced the game of football...

OK, so once they started, TOTALLY different. Calm reigned in the arena All the horses moved together, all relaxed, calm, MUCH better. All horses moves in a line from one end of the arena to the other, with the humans kicking the ball ahead of the horses. Nice work

Then it got more difficult... everyone had to take off their lead rope & do the same thing back up to the top of the arena, with their horses beside them, but loose (at liberty).

This was more tricky but everyone did really well


What people learned:

1. Human one realised you should not be so focused on the tasks. Instead focus on the relationship you have with your horse

2. Always put your horse first.

3. Work on friendly stuff - desensitisation. Watch what energy you use as well - sometimes you might think you're being friendly but your horse might read it as asking him to yield away from you. Liberty is a nice place to check this stuff out.

4. Another human didn't realise how much her horse trusts her

5. Don't get task orientated (as Sean says to me too!). Instead think as a team.

6. Have a plan for the future. Its not just about what you do at the clinic, its more about what you do after the clinics.........

I learned how important it is for your horse to see you as somewhere comfortable to be. Also I really liked the way James taught the 'put your horse first' task, AKA the football task. He set it up so the humans had the oppertuity to make a mistake, and then had the oppertunity to think amongst themselves as to how they could fix the mistake, and restore their horses confidence. It was a nice example of how forgiving horses are. And most importantly, it demonstrated why its important that people THINK FOR THEMSELVES, and not just follow the herd...

I enjoyed it a lot

[sassfarm]

Elaine,
Great notes from the clinic. Just joined your forum and was delighted to see this post. Hope to have a few other clinics this fall. It was great that you could join us.
Cheers,
Beth

[Elaine]

Hi Beth, yup, let me know when they're on, I'd love to come down again I'm in the middle of horse camp in Clare at the minute, so it's just lovely to spend a few days just focused on my horse - yay! Thanks again for the lovely day & see you soon