A Brief Summary of the Last Two Practice Days

MONDAY  2nd September –  We used the course from the Working Equitation Day yesterday plus an open labyrinth, and practiced leading individually with Mimi, Zen and Sirocco.
Mimi went back out and I brought in Phantom (this was to help me
finally run all the horses together).  Quita did a great job with Zen, he
was very anxious about the ball I had put in for Mimi and Stewie to play
with at first, and not too sure about the new blue board.

After lunch Quita and I did some Flight of the Homing Pigeon followed by
Chest-line Driving with Stewie while Simone rode. I hope you can make it
next week, Quita had quite a battle keeping the lead out of Stewie’s mouth, or he would be grabbing at the wand.  She did come up with a workable solution (using the hand in Dingo position), but it would be heaps easier with two leaders!!  We took Stewie back in Homing Pigeon. Then did a tiny bit with Will and Phantom. (From a letter to a participant who was unable to come last week)

MONDAY 9th September. –  today Simone wanted to address Sirocco’s difficulties with grooming.  I have just finished reading Linda Tellington-Jones’ new book “Dressage with Heart, Mind & Soul” and there is a section in that on Grooming with Awareness, plus we checked in the “Ultimate Horse Behaviour and Training Book”.  As well as that we discussed Linda’s concept of The Empowerment Scale, where you ask your partner to rate how they liked your TTouches on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 = stepping away “DON’T TOUCH ME!”,   5 = “OK…..” and 10 = “WOW!!, Phenomenal!”, and how we could read the horse’s body language to have their equivalents.  There is a lot of emphasis on paying attention to your own breathing, and with those thoughts in mind Simone had a very successful session with Sirocco.  I worked with Joy, who had volunteered today, we just did simple flat hand explorations, grooming with hand and brush, followed up with stroking all over with the wand (which Joy previously wasn’t comfortable with).

We gave the horses a break and time to process, while we reviewed hand positions for TTOUCH circles, plus a couple of new ones or refinements of old ones, including Elephant Seal, Bear Claw, and the differences between Baby Chimp, Chimp, and Baby Orangutan, plus use of Owl on hips.

Heart Hugs, followed by Orca and Whale Breathing (which really had the horses intrigued and amused!)

After a late lunch, Stewie volunteered to join in, and as I briefly covered some grooming, picking up feet, and standing quietly, Simone was “leading the dance” with Sirocco.  They paused to watch as Stewie was working out a little bit of 4corners, using a ground pole for focus, and a very slow step, pause, step, pause in the direction of a side pass in front of the pole.

So if you missed today, but are keeping up with what we covered, I hope you can find most of the information in the books mentioned above.

Anyone interested in learning and practicing their TTEAM and Connected Riding skills are very welcome to join us, most Mondays 10 am – 3pm, please RSVP if you intend coming so I can confirm that I will be here.  The idea is to share what we remember from the clinics we have attended, $10 towards arena maintenance.

Hope your riding goes well this week

Sue