Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Externship–DAY 36–Never Better Ever!

Today was a much better day for myself and my horse. I once again got up early enough to get quite a bit of work done, both inside and outside. I had the opportunity to take care of Sundance, clean up, work on a project here on the PC and get some paperwork done! We once again met up across the road (boy do I wish our football and soccer in the morning) with Berin and split in half for driving and horsemanship, our group did horsemanship first. We met at the foundation station and we received a wonderful surprise from Berin! He took the time to print out all of the Parelli Patterns on single sheets, front and back of all four savvies for all of the externs. THANK YOU, Berin!

We also received the self-assessment sheets and he wanted us to fill them out. I am so beyond excited as we can do everything except for like 3 or 4 Finesse tasks such as 10 flying changes in a row between cones. Ha ha… I plan on being able to do that with Sundance by the end of this externship, if not I will after I work with Marc de Champlain. We have been able to do some flying changes freestyle, which is VERY beyond excited. Back on track, after Berin gave out the sheets he had us meet him at the farthest round pen for an inspirational liberty performance with his horse Jasmine (Casper X Nova), gave us all great ideas to play with for a while. I got a couple of ideas from it…

- Refresh my zone 5 driving at liberty, Sundance gets tense and confused sometimes so we need to scrape the rust off! Which we did today, we had some of the best driving rapport I have ever had with him, we played in a 180 foot round pen so it was really big! He got over a good bit of his tensity, which I am very excited about. I have a good bit to add onto after this session, and it’s something very solid to build onto, so I can’t wait to play with it tomorrow.

- Close range circles, I played with that in the 180 round pen and he was STUCK to me which I am very happy about. There is still some respect to work on and maintain gait but that will come as I continue to play with increasing our rapport. The session ended on me a VERY happy mommy as he did very close range canter circles, close enough to where I could take a hold of his mane and keep a hold of it and put my arm over my head and around as I follow with him with a soft feel… Wow, I am SO proud of him!

- Back by tail, refine into backing the pattern of a figure eight. I played a bit with that today, that will be fun to actually get consistently!

- Canter to halt transitions, getting this good online and will start transferring it to a 50 foot round pen at liberty.

There is a good bit more of things we need to refine, which is the exciting thing! After his demo we went and played at liberty and had a great session which I explained above. After our session we went across the street and met with Nate where we once again got a WHOLE LOT more information, we also had the chance to play with a good bit of hands on with the team harnesses, single harnesses, and rope tying. It was a lot of fun, kudos to the VERY well behaved horses and wonderful teacher. They moved the test up to Thursday as there is more that Nate wants us to learn tomorrow before he tests us Thursday, no problem! We can ace a test on things we learned only the day before! No problem! Actually, we have a great and determined group and I do believe we can DO it, and we will get it done with a little FUN too!

We broke for lunch then my group and I worked in the kitchen until about 2:30 pm to make sure it was cleaned up. We had rotations this afternoon from 3:00 to 6:00 pm, we had a chance to observe all that went on from the instructors view of the Fast Track. It was very interesting seeing the different students, how they handle horses and situations, how they ask questions and how they take the answers. I also see how much guts an instructor has to have to do the right thing for the student. Great learning afternoon, great job John and Kristi! Thanks for the opportunity to learn.

We had dinner and now I am back filling out the patterns sheet and getting some good ideas for our sessions. I am working on my Paso Fino report for a speech we will be doing sometime this week or next week. We also will be studying like crazy people for the driving test! Wish us luck! I am not as emotional about the test results at the end of this week, what happens happens and all I can do is try my hardest and see what happens. I just have to remember if and when I fall short that I am not stupid or wrong, that will be a hard thing but I am determined to make it constructive, not destructive! Please keep your fingers crossed for me, I would really appreciate it. Thank you! :)

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