Excercises in Futility and Frustration

OK, so where was I.. oh, yeah, "agonizing struggle" - that about describes our relationship with the Circling Game. It was terrible!! I actually did get a couple of nice circles the first day or two, but then it soon deteriorated into a game of "how can Cloud frustrate Sarah enough to make her run away sobbing"? Really fun game for him - terrible game for me. We were stuck on the Circling Game for FAR too long because I thought I had to get it "perfect" in order to move on. Yeah, that made it far more challenging than it needed to be and definately contributed to the problems I had much later on in my journey.

I should say a little something about my emotional journey at this stage. Well, to put it bluntly, emotional fittness was absolutely non-existant. If I was frustrated, I was very glad to take out all my frustrations on Cloud - and that carrot stick became quite a ferocious weapon. If I had a RB horse, that would have been bad but with a LB horse it wasn't so terrible - he bore it with heart-melting patience and then found another way to annoy me the next day. Really, not fun! And the Circling Game brought out the worst in both of us - my frustration and his schemes.

Parelli is not a horse training program. People get into it to fix their horse problems - I certainly did - but it's not about the horses. All these challenges - all these games - they're not really for the horses. They're ways to teach you to be a better horse person. Horses already know these games - they don't need us to teach them. But by OUR learning the games, we begin to understand where horses are coming from, and how to fix problems as they come up. It's a way of catagorizing horse behaviour and breaking it down into managable ways to solve it. By the time you get to L3 you have the tools to solve most every problem you'll encounter, but it all begins by first changing yourSELF. That is the frustrating part! The first level of Parelli says it's about getting people safe - and to some extent it is - but really what it does is find ways to dig up every single problem you and your horses have and make you deal with them. Horses suddenly become conniving devils - humans suddenly become predatory monkeys and it makes you really resentful and bitter and angry - at least it does on your lowest of days.

Some people get to this stage and quit - saying that it didn't help their horse at all. That's very understandable and - believe me - I thought about quitting more than a couple of times along the way. But if you press on, things start to slowly change for the better. It's sort of like that saying - where you have to completely destroy something in order to fix it again. Parelli does that to people. It takes you down to your lowest of lows - exposes all your problems and emotional weaknesses - and then it starts to help you heal. At least, that's how it worked for me.

Parelli Level One, and especially the circling game, broke me down entirely. I became the worst person I have ever been. I became verbally and physically abusive to my horse, myself and those who suffered to be around me in those dark days. My horse became defiant and dominating. He struck out at me or kicked at me, he absolutely refused to be caught (more on that later), he made being around him a living hell -- at least on the dark days!

Level one is about 70% dark days and 30% bright days - especially if you make it L1 pergatory and stay in it far too long, like I did. Those dark days were terrible and terrifying, but those light days were pure heaven. On those days things just clicked. The sun shone, the birds laughed and my horse and I got along perfectly. He would, all of a sudden, as if in a flash of lightning, "get" what I was asking and we'd have a major breakthrough that left me walking on air for a week! Those moments when he just stood over me, begging for a scratch or a cookie, even when his herd was down the hill and far away. Those moments when he'd hear my whistle, raise his head, and whinny -- I'd never felt that before.

Non-natural riding doesn't really care what the horse is thinking. They have a job, they must do it. Simple as that. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing - it's just the way it is, and it's the way I was used to. I didn't notice, and didn't care if my horse wanted to be with me, or didn't. I wasn't even looking at that when I rode. But the second I started paying attention and WANTING his approval, I started getting feedback - both good and bad - and that feedback was what my emotional journey - and my sanity - was ultimately based upon. It's sort of like high school in the beginning, isn't it?! If he liked me, I was thrilled and I'd go away singing the praises of PNH. If he didn't like me, I was depressed and I'd be in a very low place.

At first I thought his approval was constant - that he always loved me and always would. Then I smartened up and realized it wasn't like that - but I thought it was slightly random, that he just had "good days" and "bad days" and on the good days he liked me and on the bad days he didn't. A bit later in the journey, I realized that I have a big part to play in his attitude towards me - but I didn't quite grasp the full extent of my roll until the first day he stopped letting me catch him in pasture.