>>Thanks to those of you (Mic and Trish) for recommending Sherri Tepper - I just finished Beauty and it was great.<<
Oooh, I envy you, just starting out on your Tepper journey! I just finished her latest, "The Margarets" - fantastic. Have you read it yet, Mic? Two of my friends in the area are super-duper into Parelli and just spent two weeks at the Ocala training center, taking part in the Liberty and Horse Behavior course. A group of 10 of us are meeting biweekly and our two friends are going to teach us what they learned. We get together in each other's homes, sans horses and have dessert and coffee afterwards. :-) One of their first lessons was to define savvy. I had not heard this quote before but loved it..."When to be, where to be, why to be and what to do when you get there." Today we did an exercise where we paired up. One of us was the horse and the other the trainer. Without talking or gesturing, we had to communicate to the horse what we wanted it to do. It was very illuminating! For instance, I had to have my "horse" walk sideways to the fireplace. Sit on the mantle, cross her arms and legs, tap her toe 3 times, stand up, turn around and put her nose on the mantle. I learned I need to be quicker in my release and sometimes I was thinking so hard how to get her to do something that when she didn't understand me, I lost my train of thought and wasn't sure what I was trying to communicate either! Others learned to be soft and give the "horse" time to try and to reward the try. Trish
