Sarah tries 7 games on Jake

A couple days after the Parelli clinic Sarah (friend visiting from England) and I took Gypsy and Jake out of the pasture for some Parelli fun. After watching 3 days of L2 clinic in Redwater, Sarah was raring to go with trying some of what she'd learned on Jake.

I gave her some pointers for starting the Friendly game with him, starting with rubbing him with the carrot stick, then flipping the string over him, then rhythmically flapping the ground near him. This last always makes Jake start trotting around. So I encouraged her to walk away from him, but that didn't work as he just kept going around her. Then I suggested she back up against the fence and if he stopped to look at her, to stop moving the string around. This eventually worked and she quit on that and moved on to porcupine and driving games and then went back to the friendly game later (which went lots better the second time).

Jake was very much a chair that day. A heavy recliner actually. So it took phase 4 of the porcupine game for him to budge. Last year he was easily moved with phase 1. Just goes to show you that if you don't keep it up, the horses easily regress! Sarah's fingers were getting tired, so she switched to the carrot stick.

At this point I wasn't paying too much attention since I was playing with Gypsy. I started just playing the driving game around some pylons, and then a figure-8 around 2 barrels (one of which I was standing on). Then I decided to hop on while she was standing so nicely beside my barrel. With just the halter on, I tried to get her to change direction just with leg pressure. Unfortunately, she still thinks that means move faster. So with only one rein, we did lots of circles. Eventually I gave up on the one rein and went and got the cradle bridle. It was really hard to correct her with one rein because by the time I got it on the right side to turn her in the direction my leg was asking, she'd forgotten what I was asking in the first place. So supporting her with the reins needs to be quicker.

With the cradle bridle I worked on softening her feel, and collecting her trot a bit. Definitely WAY better since the clinic. Then I spread out the pylons a bit more and asked her to sidepass through them back and forth. She managed to stay soft through the first two, but got heavier and picked up speed through the last two and almost trotted through them. We repeated until she was able to walk slowly and calmly through all of them, then disengage at the end. Then I tried weaving through them again just using my body and leg pressure to direct her. Again, she picked up speed again and I used the suspension rein to slow her. After about 5 or 6 turns through the cones (using very exaggerated body movements), she seemed to be responding to my turn cues. Cool! We didn't try the trot. That's too much for today.

Then I let her wander while I helped Sarah some more with Jake. By this time she was ready to try the circle game. So I suggested she start with the close circle game (resting the carrot stick in neutral on his back, but ready to encourage him to move if he stopped). They did well with that, so I showed her how to incorporate the yoyo into the larger circle game. Jake had a tendency to leave as soon as he was yoyo'd back, so I encouraged her just to do a couple more yoyo's to get him to wait for her. He did and she asked for the send. He did several lazy circles around her and I showed her how to disengage him. His disengage was pretty half-hearted and lazy, so then I showed her how to play "hide the hiney" after which Jake started to disengage rather smartly! :-)

I left her to play with that a bit more and I went to play the catching game with Gypsy. She didn't move away from me when I started walking toward her. When she looked up I stopped. Then she did move away, so I followed. When she turned away from me again, I added some pressure in zone 5 and she trotted off a few steps then changed her mind and came back. I backed away and she followed. So I swung my savvy string over her back, backed away some more and she sidepassed toward me!! So cool! Then I just draped the string over her neck and asked her to follow me and she did!

Unfortunately Sarah had to head back to England last week, so now I'm on my own again (sniff, sniff). But I think she really enjoyed playing with the horses and is hoping to find a horse back home to play with.

Hopefully I'll get Indy and Skittles up to speed again this week. Stay tuned!