Magic moment

Had one of those magic moments tonight. The ground was white from snow, the air was crispy, the sky was clear with lots of sparkling stars and Nalle was just brilliant. He was really with me, with a nice gaspedal, a perfect five. He did sideways from me, towards me, around me moving with pressure, around me moving away from pressure. I can definatly agree with my trainer today, Nalle is going to be an amasing horse!

Not very savvy with the snow yet....

Today I was supposed to have a lesson but the snow got in the way, it was hard to travel safely with the trailer so we decided to wait for the weather to get abit better. And just when we were about to hang up it started to snow again. Got some homework to do instead, today we were supposed to test some of the things from old level 1-2 so we can leave that behind and go all in on the next levels. We've been doing a few things from the higher levels but now my trainer think we're done with level 1-2 and that feels really nice! He's from the old school and been doing Parelli since the very begining, so he's teaching us after the very first level-system. The homework I got was to check of my list with level 1-2 things and see if I've got my phases right. If I've got that my horse will answer in phases 1-2, it's not about what we do it's how we do it. Like he said, everyone can make their horse go sideways, the difference is how they do it. So until next time im gonna work on "getting my good better and my better best", im really looking forward on moving on! But it's not the moving on part that makes me happy, it's the fact that my trainer thinks we're ready to do it! Apparently I've got a "good" horse that's gonna be "unbelivable good", that warmed me standing outside in -7'C with the snow blowing!

Another trailride in the snow

Had another nice trailride in the snow today. Nalle is abit scared of stones and now when everything is covered in snow it looks alot different than it usually do, so there was alot of "oh what's that"-moments. But, and this makes me really happy, we have moved on in our relationship. Today when he saw something weird/scary/monster he stopped, looked for abit, turned is head and looked at me and asked if it was safe, then he relaxed and moved on. That feels like a giant step for a leftbrain horse, instead of turning to mother nature when it gets scary he turned to me. It feels like he's really starting to accept me as his leader and someone he can trust.

You get the horse you deserve

I really do belive that you get the horse you deserve, everything comes back to you one way or the other. If you use all the right tools we get in PNH and invest time in our horses we get awesome horses in return.
And I must do something right bcoz everything works like a dream, today Nalle was really awesome when we played. We did some online to check the gaspedal and work on the things we learned yesterday, I didnt have to go further than phase 1 and he looked happy doing the games. Did some finesse and freestyle after that, he's starting to really get what we're doing during finesse and the freestyle is finally back to where it was before he got injured. Oh gosh, I love my horse!

Oh btw

The reason I havent written any blogposts for a while is that my horse has been injured, havent had the energy to write anything and when I have I've been doing it in swedish so I dont have to think that hard ;) But now he's back on track as so am I!

Dressage Naturally

Today I had a preparing miniclinic on the topic Dressage Naturally. It's the first time I've had a lesson with focus on dressage since I started doing PNH and my brain is overloaded! So much new things to take in and new ways to look at old things. We had most of the lesson online to get the gaspedal right and to get the horse to relax and get "long and low". Did a great exercise where we moved the shoulders sideways one step while walking, Nalle got it after a while and started to lick and chew. When we moved up into the saddle I had no idea how to do it, my body didnt know "the Parelli-way" to do it and I felt like a newbie. I've noticed before that as soon as I pick the reins up for connection I tend to use my legs, bad! Today I learned how do it in a way that I already knew but didnt think of, typical PNH-student-behavior I guess ;) "Aaaah ofc that's how I should do it! It's exactly the way I would do it on the ground!". I set my mind on what energy I wanned in the walk and when he got under it I asked him to trot and then relax and slow down do that energy. Instead of nagging about get the energy up to that level I got way over it and the energylevel I wanned from the beining became the treat. Did that with long reins until he could keep the energy for a while, then I shorted my reins and asked for connection. The connection I got was everything I could ask for and more, he transformed his body in the right way and after doing the same thing as I did on long reins he could keep a good energylevel and the connection. He's brilliant! The gaspedal online worked as a dream aswell, we agreed on skipping phase 2-3, I give him a loooooong phase 1 and a short snappy phase 4. My instructor made me aware of that my very clever horse got 100% focus on me so just grabbing the stick the way to lift it is his phase 3. I have to start see for real how good he has become, he's really awesome. A LBI with explosive snappy departures and a will do do things with me as long as he gets to think and use his brain, the harder the better.