Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Not like the Parelli horse training video

Pat Parelli is a well-known horse trainer and horse trainer trainer. He does workshops and has a bunch of videos about his training. I have a couple of his beginner videos and watch  them to (hopefully) get better with our horses. This seems even more important in Elaine's absence.

One of the things Parelli talks about is going out and just sitting with your horse. No agenda, no treats, no feeding, just sit and see what the horse does. Let your horse approach you. Don't touch the horse until he touches you.

The other day I decided  to go sit with our horses. I've done this before, but not with three horses in the corral.

First Zip, our friend Marie's horse, kinda sauntered up and sniffed me from toe to head and back again. Then he just stood there by me. Chocolate wandered up. He's the alpha horse so he put his ears back and pushed Zip away. Then he proceeded to sniff me from foot to head and back. Then he put his nose right in front of my face, waiting for me to blow in his nose, a kind of greeting he and I have. Then he just stood there in front of me.

Pretty soon Zip wandered back over and he and Chocolate stood nose-to-nose with each other literally at the end of my nose. This is definitely not how it looked in the video!

I just sat still waiting to see what was going to happen next.

Chocolate gave a little nudge with his nose and Zip backed off, only to walk around the outside of the corral and stick his head in over my shoulder. So there I sat with Chocolate right in front of my face and Zip breathing in my ear.

KTJ meanwhile just stood at the far end of the corral through this whole thing with a kind of quizzical expression like, "what are y'all doing?"

We stayed that way for about 10 minutes before I finally got up and moved out. I repeat - this is not how it looked in the video!


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