Precious cantered!

So, first, for my Oregon friends, I am NOT going to the Parelli tour stop in Redmond next weekend. My brother Anders is graduating from High School on Monday the 12th in Anchorage, Alaska so I will be there instead. I'm super sad, but really glad to see the last of my 5 siblings graduate from high school, now if they could all just get through college. . .

Today I did two more Parelli workshops, Level 1 and 2 Tasking Online and Level 2 Freestyle. I did the first with Phaedre and the changes she is going through is AMAZING! I am getting her with her head almost on the ground. Ann taught us how to teach the horse to turn off the friendly game by dropping their head. Phaedre figrued it out quickly, so I finshed every task that way. She easily comes up into forward/right brained/fear based, and I want her to learn to go down just as quickly. I am DEFINATELY going to teach this to all my horses ASAP. We also sidepassed a pole, put her feet on a plastic bag, drive from zone 3 (middle of the horse for those who are not familiar with Parelli) through cones and some other stuff that I can't believe we accomplished so quickly and easily.

In the afternoon we did riding and Precious kept stalling out, so I had to work on her maintaining gait. I finally got the message through when we were about to stop and do 1 at a time cantering. Part of the way to ask your horse to canter is to use your hands to mimic the canter in a BIG motion which gets your body moving the right way. So, when my turn came I though-yeah, right, I really doubt this is going to work. I spent a year working on the canter and never had any luck without rushing, crossfiring or just not getting it. I NEVER got the left lead before-maybe twice, it was so frustrating and I knew I was mostly to blame, my lack of cantering being the biggest problem.

But I have done some great cantering with Lily the last couple of weeks and finally found the balance point that made it easy and fluid. I had really built my confidence, so when I went out on the rail to get the canter, I brought her up into gait, starting moving my hands and VIOLA! I got the canter. Correct lead, instantly, both directions. AMAZING. I can't wait until tomorrow.