Parelli's blog

Dear Friends,

Gosh Pagosa is beautiful in the winter, and given the unusually cold winter in Ocala, it actually felt warmer! There’s a lot of snow, up to the top rail of the buck fences on the ranch, and it’s been sunny every day – just gorgeous. We’re here for a week to touch base with our team at headquarters and focus on plans for the future – very exciting, but I can’t tell you anything yet!

Dear Friends,

Every time Walter comes to teach us I make huge improvements and great discoveries on all kinds of levels – mental, emotional, physical. Last time was especially pivotal for me because during one of the lessons I felt Remmer was ‘heavy’ and when I said this to Walter he looked confused. I could see why when we watched the video – Remmer looked better than ever! I decided that it was just a different feeling for me and approached it with more confidence the next day with great results.

Dear Friends,

Pat and I were sad to leave Vinny behind when we headed off to Fort Worth for the Ray Hunt Memorial last weekend. After the Memorial, we were headed to Pagosa for a week (which is where we are now, of course) and we keep wanting to take him with us when we go there, but I get all practical and think about how we’re involved in meetings all day every day and that I’d have to leave him at home or have the rest of the staff distracted by his antics!

Dear Friends,

As you read in last Thursday’s blog, Janice (Pilates for Dressage) and I had a great visit, and I just wanted to share a few final thoughts on it with you. Janice is such a master of the body, understanding it at a deep level and really knowing what a horse has to do in order to achieve collection, engagement…and for horse and rider to achieve that feeling of harmony and unity when performing. She’s a great teacher too, that’s almost more important to me because she can effectively pass it on.

Question: I need some advice about my mare and the FreeStyle patterns. I’ve been trying to work on them with her for at least 2-3 months and had to take a break from riding for a week because we were both getting frustrated. She will NOT hold up her side of the responsibility as the horse. I have to correct her every 2 seconds it seems like. Say with following the rail…she will either get WAY too close to the wall and I swear try and kill my leg, or continuously walk away from it! I’ve tried to break it down by going to Point-to-Point, with and/or without treats at every stop. That works…until we try to put it together! On the Figure 8, she tries to duck the carrot stick or will lean on the halter. I’ve tried breaking that down as well! She LOVES the weave and will do that at walk and trot. She also loves the Question Box. Those are no problem. She’s a LBE/LBI with very minor RBI tendencies. I’ve tried doing a lot of stuff like backing up, changes of direction with direct and indirect reins, circles, etc. while following the rail to keep it interesting, but even that doesn’t help. – Michele

Dear Friends,

I was excited to visit with the Fast Track students last week. It was kind of impromptu because I made a mistake in thinking that we were having a Photonic Health demonstration that day, when in fact it was the following Monday! So I told them they had the booby prize instead – me! – and I opened up to questions. I love being able to say, “You can ask me anything you want…well, ALMOST anything." I’ve learned my lesson on that one, so I have a caveat now!