Went to Parelli Play Day in Bandera (lots of pics!)

[KarinUS]

A fellow NR member invited me to attend their Parelli Play Day to give me a better idea about his technique and philosophy. I had previously been a little turned off by Parelli because the only time I had seen it, it was applied a little to drastically, but watching all the different handlers today it became clear that -just as anything- even with the same basic techniques different people will have a different approach.

I went there with the idea that we'd all be watching Karen, the instructor, but as it turns out our fellow NR member Janet and her horse 'Sir' seem to be the on-site experts there as well! :D

Here is 'Sir' all pro:

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli1.JPG

Not everybody took the tarp that easily...

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli2.JPG

Scarey things were lurking everywhere:

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli3.JPG

including noisy cowboys...

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli4.JPG

Janet was working with the handler and this baby to make quite some progress on the tarp business:

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli5.JPG

And here is Janet working the wiggly branch:

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli6.JPG

Here's pic to give you an idea what all was going on at the same time:

http://www.karincuda.com/Parelli7.JPG

Afterwards we had lunch under a tree and just when I was starting to get withdrawal (too many Arabs and Quarterhorses) Janet finally got us a 'real horse' (Thoroughbred X) to try the 7 games with! :)

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures, but Que is a very cute horse and she has a ?-mark for a blaze. I kept wondering how DJ would respond to the different games. He would probably be good at the friendly and the porcupine game, but I am not so sure about the driving game.

I can't believe Janet spend so much time on showing me everything. I felt real guilty on imposing on her in such a manner but she was absolutely great! Everything made sense and looked very fluid. At no time did I feel uncomfortable as I had before. I will have to think of a nice thing to do for her. Suggestions are welcome.
I especially loved watching Sir be send out and touch the targets with his nose.

And of course the next thing will be to scrape some pennies together and get the carrot stick and halter so I can take the DJ-pooh into the round pen... :)

[Dizzy]

Brilliant photo's, and I love that youngster with the spot on its forehead.

I must say though, these feats aren't just down to parrelli, in the UK, we have fertiliser/chemi bags. As a 2 yr old, with no whip or head collar pressure Breeze would march over them, she just followed me. When that came so easy, I plumped them up so they had air in them then asked her to follow me, she did snort a little, then happily stomped them down and crossed them. Shortly after I backed her I rode her over them - first time a little tense, after that she enjoyed marching over them.

Now crossing a beck is a different kettle of fish totally, water is for drinking or cat leaping - we're still working on that one:D

[KarinUS]

I absolutely agree. Getting a horse to trust its handler/ rider is most certainly something anybody regardless of their training philosophy will want to accomplish. The truly Parelli specific part of my visit today was the '7 games' but by that time I had run out of disk space, so no pics... :(

[TrotaLot]

Thanks for the kind words, Karin. But I'm really not an expert. I just realized that I'm competent at Level 1 (working mid level 2) on this play day, at least Que seemed to get it pretty easily.

Just FYI: We hold the play days every third Saturday and it is a loosely organized group. All I do is set up the challenges (or at least the idea for the day) and we work our way through them, helping each other. Karen Brown (level 3) is there to help us out and give advice. This day just happened to be catastrophe (or scary-potential horse-eating) challenge day.

Dizzy: I love that idea. I think I'll incorporate that into one of the play days. How did you keep her from jumping the bags. (And I'm thinking the chem bags are the same size as feedbags?)