friday night

[caption id="attachment_376" align="aligncenter" width="640"] we camped out in the back of the truck parked right beside billy's pen. he slept crammed into the end of his pen beside the truck. we were so cozy in our little nest sleeping under the moon and stars. bliss.[/caption]

we arrived in absarokee montana after a long hot drive across western montana.  it was a very hot day, therefor hot in the horse trailer, but billy handled the whole thing like a pro!  he was eager to get in the trailer and very calm and quiet about unloading after nearly 5 hours IN the trailer.  i was thrilled.

we settled him into his little pen with cold water, which he drank right away, and a feeder full of soaked hay.  then we went and looked around.

we met some of the others that came for the clinic, looked at david lichman's horses in the stalls.  unfortunately 13 was injured just after their arrival in absarokee and was sidelined for the demonstration.  scotty and julio worked hard and pulled it off with style!

[caption id="attachment_377" align="aligncenter" width="640"] photo by Heather[/caption]

david did the demonstration to music, showing some of the fun things his horses can do.  showing how parelli can make your relationship stronger.

then he took some time to talk to the crowd, answer questions and do a little teaching.

"we are helping our horses learn to learn."  this one really resonated with me.  it's the first thing i wrote down in my notebook.

another was,

"what do we want horses to do when they are scared?

NOTHING.

it's very hard to teach nothing."

at the end of the demonstration he talked about using music in our training.  it "takes us out of our head space and puts us in our heart space" and helps us school the horse.  we can use the tempo to maintain gait and know that the horse is in rhythm.  he went over how to use the beats per minute to encourage the horse to speed up it's walk, or slow it down.  once the horse understands that the tempo (beat of the music) is important it will seek it out and walk, trot or canter in time to the music.  that was amazing.  he talked about this on the first night and we played around with it on the last day.