The first day of the clinic had a lot of classroom time which was good because it gave us a change to understand the material before handling the horses.
The first concept we covered was the "I" and "We" topic. The person and the horse are each an "I" so how do you work together to become a "We". We talked about traits that made up a "I" person/horse and traits that made up a "we" type person/horse. In that topic it was also discussed that when working with your horse you shouldn't put all of your attention on the horse you should have 60% of your attention on you (meaning what are you doing to get the behavior you want) I find these concepts make complete sense, but it sure is hard to write it out to make sense :) There were so many more concepts that we covered that I can't figure out how to convey in writing this morning. Hopefully after the clinic I can go back over my notes and get them all down.
After learning the concepts we practice with each other in pairs of two. One person being the horse during role play. I always have a hard time with these things just because I am such a matter of fact kind of person. I have a hard time imagining things like this. But it was fun and proved to be a great learning experience...even if it meant I had to let loose a little bit.
About 3 pm we got our horses. There are three people who brought more than one horse to work. I almost at that point thought to alternate between Pixie and Navi also, but changed my mind. My original plan was just to work with Pixie in the clinic and that is what my final decision was. While it would be nice to have Aimee's help with Navi I feel this clinic can bring Pixie and I farther along in our journey if I can focus 100% on her. Plus I always have my trainer at the barn. Biggest perk of my horses living at my trainers barn. Weekly lessons are so easy! So Navi gets the four days off, but little does she know I have a three day weekend before heading back to work...so we get to practice our stuff then :)
After we worked with our horses freely for about 30 minutes we gathered around to cover what we had learned and answer questions. I was proud of Pixie, while she was distracted enough that going faster than a walk wasn't a fun idea for her so we kept things slow. That was good for both of us. I want her as light as possible and if that means we work at things like side passing for a month then so be it :) I found it was hard to stay in the "we" frame of mind. I tended to go back to thinking "I". As much as I thought I was always asking, I realized I would get frustrated and start telling. So I went back to square one and focused on what I was doing wrong. We got some of the lightest and best side passes down the wall to date :) Where they perfect...no of course not. But they were a great effect on her part so I will take it.
Off to get ready for day 2!
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