Parelli Level 1: PASSED!!

The 3-day Level 1 Parelli clinic this past weekend was great. Gypsy did awesome, we passed the assessment with flying colors on Saturday night and started moving on to Level 2 stuff (here's the group I tested with, getting our red savvy strings from Don Halladay - 3-star licensed Parelli professional). The last photo shows Gypsy wearing the savvy string she helped earn. The weekend was really hot, but thankfully we were in an indoor arena, so shaded from the hot sun. We did a fair bit of riding in this clinic which we didn't do in the one last fall. So this was the first time Gypsy has been ridden with other horses. She's been in an arena with other horses (on the ground in halter) with me making sure the other horses stay out of her way (i.e. me being her leader), so there were never any issues. With me on her back though, she was constantly jockying for position in the pecking order with the other horses: lots of squeeling, ears back etc. So we had lots to work through there. No major incidents, just lots of effort to keep her attention on me. During the assessment on Saturday night, one of the tasks is to do "Pushing Passenger" at a trot for 21 minutes. She was constantly stopping or slowing to a walk to pin her ears back at a passing horse. I spent most of those 21 minutes asking her to trot. Which was OK, the point of the exercise is to show how to handle a transition in gait using the 4 phases (allow the horse to get wrong, before asking for the correction). Getting her back to a trot only needed a phase 2 (gradual increasing squeeze with legs). She just couldn't maintain the trot with all the other horses as distraction. At home she maintains gait without any problem.

The photos I've included were taken by a student auditing the clinic (many thanks to her). But because they were taken inside without a flash, many were blurry. So the ones I've included here are probably the clearest, but don't show a ton of activity. Rest assured, the clinic was very fun and interesting. 3 Full days of Parelli! What more could a person ask for? :-)