The Power of Love

Hey there! Today was a great day! It was SO nice outside, 60 degress, sunny, but windy. I didn't have a chance to play with Eddie before 5, I groomed him, but I played with him at 5. First he didn't want to leave his stall. Oh boy! =-) "Me too!" So we played with the stall. I sent him in, then out all from the fence that it about 20 or 30 feet away. Then we would go into the other stall, sort of like a figure eight. Once he got connected, which wasn't long, we then went out to pasture. But, he didn't want to leave the paddock. "Me too!" So we played with the gate. Squeezing in and out, circle to the pedestal, go through the gate, turn around, go back to the pedestal. Then he was fine! It was a lot of fun and Eddie got really involved once I got inside his brain.
Oh, today's Daily Parelli Post was very good. I'm going to keep it handy since I can relate to it. Here it is:

Emotional Fitness, oh my!

"Being sure comes with no guarantees, but at least you're sure that you're sure...once you understand what 'sure' means and how to get sure, you'll develop good judgment. You get good judgment by experiencing and living through your own bad judgment. You learn from that and then you start learning to be sure." ~ Pat Parelli from "Natural Horse.Man.Ship"

Being sure that a horse is emotionally ready to ride would be a good thing to be sure of. But we can't ask our horses to be emotionally fit and not rise to meet our own emotional challenges. We constantly tell our horses, "Don't worry, don't be afraid," but are we able to say that to ourselves? The horse knows when we're nervous, anxious, bothered, or any of our whole range of emotions. We state it pretty clearly with our body language, most of the time without knowing it ourselves. The horse reads us and, being a herd animal who relies on reading the emotions of the other members of his herd, probably spends some time trying to figure out what we're so bothered about - "If my predator is bothered, this can't be good" - and then HE gets concerned.

Next time you're with your horse, check your OWN emotions - leave your worries outside the barn door or stall. Find ways to CHALLENGE your own emotional fitness; use lateral thinking to exercise your emotions, find out how much you can handle, give them a good workout and get them under control.As Pat says, he may have butterflies in his stomach sometimes, but at least he's got them trained to fly in formation.

I think I need to work on that... =-)
Never Ending Self Improvement!

I love Parelli!

Lea & Eddie