Step 1: The Friendly Game

Well, our lesson was cancelled on Saturday, but we got it today! We're learning the Parelli style of natural horsemanship, and the first step was mastering the friendly game, which basically involved getting Dee to be ok with having a big orange stick rubbed all over her. She pretty much passed that with flying colors, since she could care less, for the most part.






We also worked on something called the Porcupine Game, which is basically teaching her to move away from pressure (either with a hand or the stick). That one wasn't so easy to master, and in fact, we have some homework to do. When Diane first put pressure on her by pushing Dee's shoulder, Dee's response was to try biting Diane. It did get better from there, though. By the time I took the lead, Dee was at least semi-understanding the concept of going AWAY from pressure rather than pushing AGAINST it.





That was most of what we worked on. Diane also worked on trying to get her to back up (by flicking the lead), but that's got a LONG way to go. Mostly, Dee would either put her head up as high as it could go or try to run off. Eventually she'd try to head backwards, but she never figured out that going backwards was what we really WANTED. Oh well. I plan on working on these games through the week and hopefully we'll get to some new ones at out next lesson!