My Menorquin gelding Opus and I have already come long ways since with the help of the Parelli Horsenality-Humanility-Report (to learn more about the horsenality concept visit http://www.parellinaturalhorsetraining.com/horsenality-horses/) I learned to trust my own observations and conclusions about his horsenality and how to address it better, and that many of our issues like bracyness, tension, and even his spookyness where actually caused or at least made worse by me going too fast, being too task-oriented, too focussed on "getting the job done", and always looking at what we "should be doing" other than listening to him and his needs.
But it was actually until just last month, when Linda Parelli in her "Horsenality and Liberty" course in Switzerland talked about what we can learn from our horses (principle # 7 - Horses teach humans and humans teach horses!) that it really started to dawn on me, that was Opus is supposed to teach me is to SLOW DOWN!
You might think that ah, that's easy, just walk, act, respond more slowly, and the results will be there. Well, there might be some and even positive results, but they will never be as good as they could be and as they have to be for Opus to be able to relax as much as he needs to to be in a learning frame of mind, until I have also learned to slow down emotionally and most off all mentally.
For me being an RBE/RBI myself that's quite a hard one, and I really have to concentrate on relaxing myself and taking my mind off of my horse, the next task, the next thing to do or better not to do yet.
Not only with my horses but also in life I have a hard time concentrating on just one thing at a time, even now, as I am writing this blog, to keep my mind from drifting to emails that need to be answered, clients, lunch etc.
Not only with my horses but also in life I have a hard time concentrating on just one thing at a time, even now, as I am writing this blog, to keep my mind from drifting to emails that need to be answered, clients, lunch etc.
So after finally realising that Opus' and my journey together is about slowing down mentally, emotionally and physically I decided to use this blog as a tool to keep me on track and not get distracted by all the other projects there are, because without succeeding with this one, the others will always fail.
