Onwards...

Things have been going really well with Starbuck for the past few weeks.  We've still got a little bit of work to do on stopping when I want to, but this is generally only an issue once in a long while when she's gotten excited after jumping or a spook.  And we're still struggling with tracking up, but I honestly think that it's something which can't be forced and that if we work towards that goal bit by bit and I'm careful to ride her responsibly, we'll eventually get there.  But she's much more consistent than she was even six months ago - I don't have to push her as hard to keep her going when she's feeling lazy, or work quite so hard to slow her down when she's in a tizzy.  And aside from a few highly controllable spooks, we've been able to join in all the lessons with the best of 'em and above all for a couple of weeks I've been really enjoying every single ride with her which sounds pretty basic but by no means is the norm for us - generally she makes me work pretty hard and fear for my life once or twice in return for a truly enjoyable session.

Here's a nice jump we made last week, I'm so glad this one was the one caught on camera because most of the others weren't nearly so pretty - heels up, weight too far forward, crooked arrivals and departures, Starbuck scattering all the practice rail/pad thingys Marina uses for these exercises all over the arena - you get the picture.  But as you can see we ended up doing it more or less well and ended with me being thoroughly satisfied with my little filly.

In other news, my friend Ivón saw a photo from last week's "Parelli session" on Facebook and commented "Whoa, Parelli already?! At this rate you'll be doing Spanish Walk next month!".  So I've accepted her challenge and yesterday started teaching Starbuck Spanish Walk.  My method is based on (well, pretty much copied from) this one and what I'm more or less planning is this:

1. With me standing on the ground beside her, teach Starbuck to lift her leg when it's tapped once with the crop (we did this yesterday).  1 week (5-10 minutes a day) of training working up to her lifting her leg when the crop is twirled in the air instead of her leg being tapped.
2. Teach Starbuck to extend her leg forward when she lifts it.  1 week of drills when warming up / cooling down.
3. Teach Starbuck to do this alternately with both legs - left, right, left, right.  1 week of drills.
4. Teach Starbuck to move forward with each lift-and-extend.  1 week of drills.
5. Teach Starbuck to do all this from the saddle - depending on how good a job I've done up until then this will be harder or easier.  Hopefully I'll be able to cue with the crop-twirl and away she'll go walking Spanish, but I have a feeling it won't be that simple.

So far, she finds this lifting her leg thing very boring, but I bet that'll change when I start factoring in treats next week.  It took us about 15-20 minutes to get to the point where she'd lift either leg consistently with one tap from the crop, and she still takes a few seconds to do it, but I decided it'd be best to quit while I was ahead and keep working on it a little bit every day.  This kind of ground training is the type of thing we did a lot when I first got her (standing tied, walking forward to a cue from a rope around her leg, head down cue, etc...) and I think it was good for my patience, her focus and our overall relationship, so I'm excited to get back to this kind of thing.  After Spanish Walk I want to teach her to lie down on cue, I think that'd be really neat too.

It's been a long journey to get to this point, but what I love most about having a young horse is that there's so many different things I want to do and this way we'll hopefully get to do all of them together.

Parelli!

Yesterday my barn next-door-neighbor Amanda and I ended up at the stable at the same time when no one else happened to be riding, so we decided to block off the non-scary half of the arena and to work on our new-found one rein Parelli skills.  And since Amanda's sister (also named Sara) was there, she was kind enough to take loads of photos and videos :D

What follows is pretty embarrassing as far as posture, seat and control of my horse goes - it's funny how when riding as soon as you have to start focussing on something new or different, everything you thought you had under control goes right out the window.  And for the first 15 minutes or so just getting Starbuck not to stop to eat the grass growing around the edges of the arena was a losing battle.  But we eventually got on the same page, especially after I remembered to look where I was going rather than at her, and before we knew it we were doing serpentines and figure eights and even a few mostly straight lines!  We ended with the thrill of a better connection and some nice cantering which was only punctuated once by a few bucks which I was able to stop short with a one-rein stop (yay me!).

It's not lost on me that when I'm riding her like this, we're effectively practicing her being able to say "No" whenever she wants to, and so I've got to be careful not to do it too often.  But I do feel like when she finally says "Yes" it means much more than when I'm riding her with a hackamore or a bit, and I know it will eventually do wonders for my riding position (the center of gravity is much farther back), leg and seat aids and for my dependence on the reins for balance, so until I see any nasty consequences I'm looking forward to riding her like this once every week or two.  In the meanwhile, enjoy the photos and video - at the very least they'll be great for "before and after" comparisons ;-P

When she was good...

Starbuck is a creature of extremes.  Remember the Longfellow poem about the little girl with the little curl?  Well Starbuck's about like that - when she's good she's just so damn good!  Here are some of the things we've been busy doing for the past couple of weeks instead of writing blog posts ;-)

• Using a neck rope / balance rein in combination with the regular reins for steering and stopping cues as well as trying to improve Starbuck's balance
• Riding (walk, trot and canter including figures of 8, backing up and turns on the haunches) in the round pen with only the neck rope and nothing at all on her head

• "No hands" downwards transitions and ever-sharper upwards transitions, even to a canter
• "Parelli class" using only a rope halter and one rein attached to the halter to steer relying on seat cues to stop

• "Parelli class" using no reins and only a carrot stick to steer relying on seat cues to stop

• Some lovely jumps entering with rhythm and impulsion and leaving at a nice steady canter without bucking
• No longer using the butterfly bit at all and back to using the hackamore 75% of the time with the snaffle only when it's windy or there's a lot of spooky stuff going on
• Actually tracking up!!!

I've been really having a blast lately, especially since Starbuck's performance is on a higher level than some of the newer horses and I can feel like instead of struggling to keep up with a mid-level class, we're actually up there with the leaders most of the time.  And of course riding bitless and bridleless is another huge thrill for me - I feel like the connection I have with Starbuck is much more honest and puts us on a more even playing field, which when she's amenable to my plans is wonderful.  When I ride with less tack I feel pretty confident that #1 I'm doing a pretty creditable job on her training and #2 she's really doing this because she wants to.

However Starbuck is, after all, a teenager and so like Longfellow's little girl, sometimes she's downright horrid.  At the start of the Parelli lesson she realized she had the freedom to put her head down and eat the grass growing at the edge of the arena, or bite other horses on the butt whenever she felt like it and it took me a good 10 - 15 minutes to get her to agree to what I wanted to do (ride around calmly in logical patterns without stopping for snacks, maiming or even threatening the other horses and their riders).  And last Monday I was working on activating her hindquarters and tracking up when a gust of wind blew over a jump standard which made a loud noise as it hit the ground, sending Starbuck off on her best rodeo bronc imitation to date.  I lost my stirrups but rode out the first three or four bucks pretty well, tried to turn her in a circle, lost my balance, got bucked into the air, landed hard with my pelvic bone on the pommel and with the next buck landed on the ground.  Boy was I pissed off that after such a major spook, when I got up I found her five feet away calmly munching on thistle flowers and looking at me like "Who, me?" - I know it's a blessing that she's able to instantly chill out after completely freaking out but just at that moment I wasn't amused.  Maybe it had something to do with all the arena sand in my panties.

Anyhow no harm, no foul - I got right back on sand and all and finished what I had planned to do for the day, and in the end I guess I got what I wanted - her hindquarters certainly had to be engaged to accomplish all that bucking.