Introduction to the Blog

Although I've been doing PNH for three and a half years now, I've never formally recorded my journey. I've posted a lot on the Parelli Savvy Club Forum website but am starting to worry that I'll loose some of those posts and then I'll be left with no written traces of my journey, hence the creation of this blog!

I started PNH as a scared-out-of-my-mind, semi green, 15 year old kid. I had previously owned a teenaged OTTB gelding named Johnny Boy who was, in his way, a real sweetie. We did a lot of Dressage and Jumping and I loved my lessons and riding him. That is, until he started bucking. You see, we had done all that dressage and turned him into a real horse... super muscled... but we had forgotten to change out his saddle until it was too late. And by too late, I mean him throwing 5' bucks every time we trotted or cantered, with very little change. By the time we figured it out, his bucking had become habitual and I was getting more terrified every time I rode. Months went by, Johnny still bucking constantly, until the fateful day when I fell off. It was all in slow motion - going up a good 9' in the air and coming down, hard, on my back, not 10" from a wooden post. Like a good rider, I got right back on, but I never rode that horse again after that. Nothing was physically injured, but mentally I was a wreck. I was terrifed to even see Johnny - a fear that was compounded by his new habit of rearing on anyone who came near... a habit that nearly got me kicked out of my barn. We paid my trainer to go and lunge him frequently but I stayed very far away. Finally I agreed to sell him but after lots of advertising, we had no bites (gee, wonder why!). Months passed. While he was for sale, a team of horse people scheduled to come to a town not 10 minutes away and do what they called a "tour stop." I had heard of these people from a magazine I subscribed to and was interested in going. Their name was Parelli.

That was the day I realized there was a better way. Linda told her story and it was exactly like mine -- big crazy TB who scared her to death, now rendered perfectly gentle and docile just by following this program. It seemed like the perfect solution for someone at the end of her rope and willing to try ANYTHING so that I didn't have to quit horses. They were coming back in November for Equine Affaire and I decided I would go and see them then and buy a Savvy Club membership and my L1 pack.

Meanwhile, Johnny still hadn't sold. As great as I realized this Parelli stuff could be, I knew I couldn't do it with that horse. He was too challenging, too fast and too scary. He had to go. I ended up taking him to a large barn that bought and sold horses - the very same barn at which I learned to ride as a child. When I called them up and said I was looking for a horse, they said they had just the one for me. I went to visit and found this little grey paint with a lightning bolt on his nose and I knew he was absolutely perfect. He was the exact opposite of Johnny - instead of sleek, athletic, fast, English, Cloud (as I later called him) was built like a truck, slower than molassas and very western. He was exactly what I needed!

I bought him in June, a month before his 5th birthday. He was a moose. Johnny was uber sensitive; Cloud was uber dull! He very quickly earned the nickname "Bullwinkle" because he pushed his way around like a moose - but he was so cute about it. Cute or not, it was dangerous. I rode a little bit that summer; Cloud's dullness comforted me - at least I knew he wouldn't run away. And that he certainly wouldn't. But his dullness became a problem in and of itself. I could b a r e l y stop him with a Tom Thumb and curb -- and even then it was a fight -- and he had extremely few stearing abilities. He was deathly afraid of water and if we ran across a puddle on the trail he would not go through it without two horses in front pulling and two behind pushing. He would rather crash through the fence in the arena than turn the corner.. and he had a lot of opposition reflex. If I asked him to go right, he went left - to go, he stopped. But he kept me safe, and I appreciated that.

Equine Affaire came, finally, and I spent four days learning more about this Parelli stuff. We went to every session, and visited their booth after each one. Along with every other fan and person there, I put my name into the raffle, certain I wouldn't win anything - but I was going to try anyway! I didn't win the L3 mega pack, or the trip to Colorado, or even the L1 pack -- but much to my surprise I did win the very thing I had planned to sign up for... a Savvy Club membership for a full year! We took it as a sign and the moment the weekend ended, I called PNH HQ and bought my L2 pack along with all the equipment - plus an extra carrot stick just in case. I joined the Forum almost immediately - lurked far more than I posted - and started getting myself ingrained into this whole Parelli thing.

I was in for one hell of a ride!