Day 7

Continued with our progression. We are now able to direct our horses in the rodeer without upsetting them. Going from walk to a trot to a canter. Great progress with my horse. Played in the playground with the saddle on. She wasn't bothered by it at all. Jumping up and down, climbing, squeezing through etc. It seems like she has solved her issues with having something tied to her back. I try to keep up with her tempo in the playground and make each task more and more interesting for her. She is doing lot's of progression with it. By the end of the day some of us mounted up on the horses inside the round corral.

Be the minister of YES, not the ambassador of NO!

Day 6

Great demo's from Berin on hoof prep and how to use trees to your benefit. We moved further on the skeleton from accept the human to accept the saddle. We continued where we ended last friday with acceptance of the saddle. In order to establish a good pattern we again turned the horses loose with the saddles in the end. To my big surprise my horse didn't buck! Maybe the tarp exercise was exactly what that colt needed to solve the puzzle.

Time  Quality  Price

- pick any two

Sunday

Took it very easy to make sure to not bore my horse. Repeated the same patterns as before again with lot's of friendly game. It's good this game because it's the only one you can't over do and yet it's the one we don't do enough of. So lot's and lot's of friendly. Everytime I present an obstacle I challenge her with something new. This is appreciated by her busy mind and she's such a clever horse and can solve the puzzle very quickly. We had a big breakthrough with the tarp. She licked and chewed and finally turned loose. We'll see tomorrow if this helped her with the acceptance of the saddle or not.

Horses often forgives but never forgets.

Saturday

Day off but with horse time. Continued building with what we had played with last week. Pond, trailer, carwash, tarp etc. Everything starts to fall in place. I found my horse has problems with the tarp in zone 3 (how interesting!) so I tried to help her get her confidence back. Lot's of approach and retreat. It was better by the end of the session but she hasn't turned completely loose yet. I wonder if this can be the key to why she was bucking with the bareback pad.

You are preparing the horse for the customer, not for yourself

Day 5

Last day of the week. Friendly game is really paying off. My horse greats me at the gate and wants to go do something interesting. Slowly we can start to be more of a partner with leadership. We took out the saddles and just had them on and took them off again. Approach and retreat. We also jumped up and hanged on our horses. Everybody was doing very well. The colts will have a positive feeling of how the week ended and that's what they will remember on Monday morning when we go back to the saddles.

It's not what the horse does in his body, it's how he feels doing it that is important!

Day 4

Repeating the same pattern as before. Still emphasizing on Friendly game. Continued to explore the playground and help the colt wherever it had difficulties. We tried all kinds of obstacles such as the pond. It's amazing how much they are offering us if we just give them a little bit of time. And when they offer it, we need to take it right away otherwise they loose interest in us. We turned our horses loose in the round pen with bareback pads on and my horse bucked a lot! Gave me lots to think about how I can better prepare her for the saddle. This is going to be my horse for the rest of the course so if I don't want to be bucked off I better find a way for her to solve that puzzle. As seen on the photo below this horse has got more than one card to play up her sleeve. ;)

The better you are at the finish the better you are at the start.

Day 3

Another day of great learning. Continued playing with the herd and the colts are working as a unit more and more. They experiment to find their places to see what's working for them as a group. In the afternoon we headed out to the playground. From the rodeer it's the horse who did catch us so I got a colt I had never played with. We got more into the subject of playing the seven games without playing the seven games and had a strong focus on Friendly game. Rob had us put our bareback pads everywhere on the playground so we could stroll around and suddenly turn up by a pad and check it out. When playing with colts the window of opportunities can be very small in the beginning. We need to keep in mind that we need to get a start that we can build on and not try to perfect something right away.

The colt should not even know it has been started, it should just have happened to him.

Day 2

More playing with rodeer and catching game. The horses were much calmer today. We learnt the importance of being ready and go ahead directly when the colt gives a green signal. A colt can loose interest quickly so easily. We are starting to see all the fine signals the horses gives us. In the afternoon we got to play with the colt who had chose to be caught by us and progress the Friendly game with them. My colt was unsettled because she was looking for her buddy and felt lost in the big playground. After a while she started to connect with me and lower her head much more. Rob had us go through some checkpoints by the end of the session to see what we had got. We all had fine results!

Some horses need to find relaxation in motion before they can find relaxation in standstill.

Day 1

Was great! We had a lot of learning and got to handle the colts for the first time. We made a circle around all the colts (which is called Rodeer) and played the catching game with the colts. Our main instructor is Rob McAuliffe and assisting him is Berin McFarlain. They are doing a great job so far. We learnt the importance of looking at what the colt needs to build a strong relationship before asking him to learn stuff.

We are 15 students and there are 16 colts. 

During these three weeks we will go through Pat's colt start skeleton which is:

Accept the human

Accept the saddle

Accept the rider

Accept the bit

Check in Parelli Colt Start Course Australia

Getting excited, today is my first day of the Colt start course!
Everything is packed and I'm ready to go in my new sports car ;)
My saddle and other horse stuff got stuck in customs, hopefully I will get it delivered by next week.

Many new faces to get to know in a short time. We are 15 people in this course.

The surrounding is very beautiful.