Day one and two Freestyle L3

Well it was rather a mammoth journey yet again, especially by yourself, but I made it after two delayed flights. One was delayed once we had boarded, so we sat in the plane at the gate for 45 minutes. Blah.

Check in was on Sunday which I was late for, but made the last half of orientation. Just as well I'd been to Parelli ranch before really. We have to take the horses temperatures every day and check for signs of VS, but all good so far.

Went to meet my horse and she's kind of like a milder version of Garbo. Lol.





She loves treats and grazing so those things have been our relationship builder. Every time I go see her I give her a piece of carrot. Now she's starting to look for me rather than just in the general direction of the feed container.

Day 1 started at 8.30am and we did some names games. Amazing how that helps. Then we revised the basics. If you have the basics good you have a good basis right. Lateral Flexion, indirect rein, 9 step back up, then we practised an active halt on the seat builders - as opposed to just flopping as you quit riding.

We went over the 8 responsibilities of the human and horse. Then we revised savvy saddling and savvy bridling. We saddled up before lunch just for practise then had lunch, well I had mine in the car as I realised I'd forgotten my helmet so needed to go collect it.

After lunch saddled up again and warmed our horses up. We'd played a little in the morning as well but Dixie was a little head high in canter, but she offered loads. Over jumps, down off the big jumps, on top of the seesaw and over, over the bridge.

Then we revised safe mounting and dismounting and checking for lateral flexion once in saddle, then disengaging the HQ. We had a brief ride, of which this was the first for me and Dixie. She was fairly LB and very responsive. Her sideways is like gliding.

Next day (today) we did the same thing after reviewing rising on the correct diagonal, and the beats per gait etc. Today riding we did walk trot transitions to get the phases light and then follow the rail at trot for a whole song. More transitions and then we did big figures of 8s to change the diagonal. Dixie found my double bounce too bouncy and went into canter so I needed to soften my bounce. I'm slowly getting used to her trot.








On the ground we practiced the phases for carrot stick riding from zone 3 online.


Happy Dixie grazing.


We are riding in Pats large round pen and playing in his playground.
This means our horses get to see all sorts of comings and goings like horses dragging metal cows on wheels. Lol.

Location:Pagosa Colorado USA