Thoughts from Janice Dulak

Dear Friends,

As you know, Janice Dulak of Pilates for Dressage has been visiting with me for the last few weeks. For today’s blog entry, I thought it would be neat for her to share some of her impressions of the time we’ve spent together. Enjoy!

-Linda

As Linda said, we have had a great couple of weeks playing, riding, learning! I am so sorry to have to leave! In recent years for me, Parelli has been on the back burner, then on the front burner, and then on the back burner…as dressage would ramp up, Parelli would ramp down. But after an incident with my Right-Brain Introvert last fall, I decided Parelli must be up, front and center if I am ever to be successful in any realm with my horse.

As a youngster showing oodles of talent for dressage, my horse Rubaiyat has been trained and ridden with contact that I have “taken.” However, I have had the comments from some good dressage instructors that his neck needed to be longer and his back more up. From time to time, we would achieve that, but never consistently.

When I arrived in Florida, Linda was on to her new "game of contact.” I will have to admit, I wasn’t sure about it. However, after watching her ride Remmer, I was completely impressed by how much more forward and “through” he was than the last time I saw them go. I immediately asked her to hop on Rubaiyat and play the game. Watching her play the game with Ruby, it became clear what she was doing. She was using not only psychology, but also physiology to teach the horse how to take responsibility for contact. This was impressive! After three days of Linda riding Ruby, it was my turn to learn how to do this. It was amazing at really how simple the game needed to be. Under Linda’s guidance, I continued playing the game daily at all gaits, and yesterday, we both agreed I had a new horse. Not only in his confidence, which was building by the day (Linda made me ride past wild turkeys flapping their wings!) but even more so in Rubaiyat’s understanding of how to flow his energy through his body into my hand. Wow. This is huge!

As sad as I am to have to leave, I am excited to get home and continue with all the new strategies I have for teaching my horse to be confident and learning how to be a better leader for him. I think the game of contact will contribute significantly to his confidence under saddle as he learns his responsibility and understands how good it feels to connect!

One of our conversations this past two weeks has been about which comes first: the horse training or our own body training? We are going to continue to explore this and as we do, I am sure Linda will share our insights with you. This is fascinating stuff and I love it! Onward!

-Janice Dulak, Pilates for Dressage