Velvet at Equitana -Velvet the Slow -Herd Breaker II

The 2nd Savvy Demonstration was held in Freedom Hall. That’s the ultimate facility. It was full to watch the much talked about Parelli demonstrations!This is the facility where the evening performance, the Mane Event, is held. You can be in the arena and look up at the seats that go to the sky.

The instructors came and wowed the crowd with the things that they can do with their horses. People were abuzz about this one and that one. Velvet seemed to be much more relaxed on this day. She stuck with Jenny until..well, that’s today’s story.

Pat came in and explained some of the concepts. He introduced all the instructors and their horses. He didn’t elaborate this day about Fox Trotters. Upon introducing Jenny, he told the crowd that she was riding a Missouri Fox Trotter.

Pat told us that he was going to do something different each day. Today, he was going to demonstrate how these horses are horses…but also bonded with their human. He is going to conduct an experiment. He proposed to turn all the horses loose and send them all out on the rail. We would see how long it would take before we could tell that each horse was seeking out it’s human.

One more thing…Pat’s horse is a Stallion…a black stallion. Pat had Casper right with him when he proposed this game. I’m thinking…is Velvet

in heat?

All at once the instructors sent their horse out on a gallop on the rail. There were eight horses that went out. The game was to keep the horses going the same direction at the same gait. The instructors stood lined up in the middle to prevent the horses from cutting through any part of the middle. Eight horses went to the rail and started galloping.

The black mare was galloping easy…going a steady pace. But, all the other horses were going a much faster pace. She never really tried to speed up and stay with the other horses. For 5 laps of this arena we had the 7 horses in a group and the black mare solo. It became apparent that the group of horses were catching up with the solo horse. On the 7th lap, the horses were all on the same side of the arena…with the large group in back steadily catching up with the one in front.

The slow, but beautiful black mare was about midway along the long end of the rail. The solo horse had started to become bothered that she was alone…she had started taking glances at the group behind her.

All at once, she turned and galloped wildly toward the group just coming around the corner. (This was against the rules of going the same direction, but no human was fast enough to react and stop her). She ran pell mell into the group of seven.

The group of seven became alarmed and slammed on their collective seven sets of brakes. It looked like a black mare “bowling ball” had made a strike. Horses went in all directions. Then, as if they had spoken to each other, all horses turned around and started running the opposite way, Velvet’s way. This was Linda Parelli’s end. She and a few other instructors ran down to the end of the arena to turn all the horses back the original direction and get them going into a canter again. This took several wild moments with horses going here and there. (Maybe bedlam is too harsh a word to describe this scene.) In short order, all the horses had turned and were running the original direction. Jenny and Tony (Jenny’s husband) were relaxing on the other end of the arena…ready to fly into action if such an event occurred on their end…it didn’t!

Velvet was in the middle of the herd. But not for long. Soon she had dropped to the back and then was left by the group again.

I thought this was a good ad for people who are afraid of horses that run off…Buy fox trotters…if they run off,  it will be s l o w e r than any other horse!!!

Eventually the horses tired of running around and started looking for their humans to save them. Several horses came running into their owner. The gallop had slowed down to a canter and the group had lapped Velvet. She teamed up with Sasha, Jenny’s own quarter horse who was being used by Tony. Velvet had ridden in the trailer from KC to Louisville with Sasha, so they had become good friends.

Velvet teamed up with Sasha and Pat started talking about them as the “married couple horses”. Pat asked, “Are the married couple’s horses ready to come in?” Jenny and Tony caught the eye of Velvet and Sasha and they came galloping in. Whoops, confusion occurred. Sasha wanted to come to Jenny too, but was confused about Tony standing there. Well, Velvet said the heck to this waiting, I’ll go to Tony! Sasha went to Jenny and Velvet went to Tony! The crowd murmured “they went to different people!”…after a few moments when none of the 3000 people were watching (ha), Jenny and Tony switched horses!

This is when it became clear to me that Velvet was going to do something Every Day to draw attention to herself. The personality of Velvet and her owner is more alike than I thought…HAMS! (By the way, the stallion did not cause one iota of trouble in the galloping herd.)

Pat talked for a while after that…and the horses rested. While Pat talked and the horses caught their breath, the instructors mounted the horses. Jenny mounted Velvet by jumping on her neck….about the last 1/4 of the neck. Velvet raised her head and Jenny slid down to her withers and got her legs on both sides of her…mounting bareback…no halter, bridle… nothing but the small 6′ rope around her neck. That’s how she rode the remainder of the demonstration.