Dignity

I read a Parelli Natural Horsemanship quote the other day, that stuck with me. Of course, I cannot find it or determine who specifically said it. If this is your quote I promise I'm not trying to steal credit! The quote was something along the lines of, "When you have control and you have exuberance, you have dignity." Except it sounded way better than that . . . I'm going to have to take the time to re-read a bunch of Parelli articles and find it again.

The point is, Gambler and I are seeking dignity. We have the control sometimes and the exuberance most of the time. Now the key is to put them together, so that together we will have dignity.

Today was another play day with Gambler. I've been reading a lot of Parelli material lately and it always fires me up to play. All the pressure to ride disappears in the light of just hanging out with my horse and playing games like I would with a friend. There is so much to learn and so much you can do. We all ready know the alphabet, so now we are putting the pieces together to make words and even sentences.

I played the Touch It game with Gambler. He loves to bite and paw at new items already, so he picked up this new game on the first or second try. Sadly, I don't have a really good picture of it.

Since I don't give Gambler treats, I reward him with scratches.

This picture was taken just as he was lifting his foot to touch the bucket.

This one is timed right, but Gambler's head is cut off. :P He just kept moving too fast for the camera.

Playing the friendly game with the 12' rope.

Playing the friendly game with the stick and string.

Playing the driving game to ask for a hindquarter yield.

Switching up the circling game by doing figure-eights around buckets.

Playing an easy version of the squeeze game between cavaletti poles.

More fun with the circling game and obstacles!

Playing the yo-yo game to ask Gambler to back out onto the circle.

Check out how shiny his coat is!

Circling at the trot.

Take a moment to check that out. 

Gambler still has a hard time maintaining the canter. The easiest way to keep him cantering is to canter beside him. 

Here I am "trotting" beside him. You can see that his front legs are mimicking mine.

Again with the legs.

I had a stitch in my side from all the cantering. Gambler is gonna have to learn to canter on his own - I'm not fit enough for this! 

Using the yo-yo game to draw Gambler to me.

I led Gambler over by the trees and played with half-circles. At each end of the half circle I asked him to canter or trot quickly as his switched directions. This pushed him back onto his haunches, improving his self-carriage and transitions. 

Then I attempted some liberty work. Gambler and I haven't played at liberty (or much at all) for several months, so I wasn't expecting much. I just wanted to see where we are to look back on as we improve. 

Asking Gambler to yield his hindquarters to "hook" him onto me.

Checking to see if he was still following.

Sending Gambler out onto the figure-eight pattern.

But he was more interested in performing the touch-it trick.

Then he left me to trot over the dissembled jump (of course).

And try to eat my raincoat.

I sent him over the cavelletti poles.

Asked him to switch directions and do it again.

I asked him to trot beside me. A mistake since he doesn't even do that on a line. At the same time someone shut a car door so Gambler took off running and bucking for the other end of the arena. 

I went out to bring him back.

And he deserted me again.

So I clipped the 12' line back on and groomed him instead.

Popping Gambler on the nose to keep him from biting me while I picked out his front hoof.

Asking Gambler to pick up his back leg.

Well that post was a little long due to all the pictures, but I think it accurately sums up the wonderful session we had. Gambler is much happier when we are playing high-energy games. I wish I had tried playing this way sooner. Of course, it would have been more difficult in the winter when the footing was bad.