Cisco the Teacher

July 12, 2016Posted inCISCO, Missouri Fox Trotter
I learned a lot from Cisco today.  The big lesson is how to get really high stacked hay bales down on the ground.  I've got hay stacked in my barn.  Stalls are on one side and hay is on about half of the other side.  The hay is stacked about four bales over my head.  So it takes about four bales to equal my height and then add four bales on top of that and you picture the hay tower.  I've misplaced my gadget to drag a bale off the…

Saddling Rules

July 2, 2016Posted inAmazon book, Parelli, Sage
In the Parelli world, a people training program, we learn many rules that keep us safe with horses; rules that might save our lives or from injury. There are many safety basic rules for saddling a horse and mounting a horse.. In the original Level 1 test, saddling and mounting were tasks included in the test. In my first book, Susan FoxTrotter, I told the story about my sad, unsuccessful mounting task. There I lie in the dirt looking up at a very concerned David Lichman. I said, "Did I…

Fox Trotter Rough Fox Trot-Smooth it Out

June 29, 2016Posted inMissouri Fox Trotter
A Missosuri Fox Trotter has a lot of options on where to place his feet while moving forward. There might be as many as 12-15 different names for the two forward gaits that are unique to "gaited"horses. Cisco was born with a bouncy 2nd gait. He was born with a tendency to hard trot. This is the normal trot that non-gaited horses have. We gaited people don't like that suspension bouncy gait. We gaited people want smooth, non-bouncy. Bouncy fox trot vs hard trot Discription: If you bounce out of…

Trust Replaces Fear

June 25, 2016Posted inCISCO, Country Frank's Lucky Star, Missouri Fox Trotter
It was quite a long time ago.  This might have been five or six years ago.  There was this horse, a fruit loop horse.  She is a sensitive horse and the wrong people bought her.  After six months, she was scared of anything human.  If anything human moved, she was scared of it. She is what Pat Parelli calls a "Hey Bob! Horse.  You are riding this horse.  You wave your arm to say hi to Bob and the horse bolts. Human arms to this horse are things that beat…

Cisco and the Two-Legged Jump

June 25, 2016Posted inCISCO, Missouri Fox Trotter
This is a task for the horse in the Level 4 Liberty Test: Jump Over an Obstacle with the Two Front Legs and then Sidepass Over the Obstacle Toward the Human.  ("Liberty" is the human on the ground with the horse loose...no halter or rope attaches to the horse.) This task is one that you have to sign your name and attest that your horse did this.  It is not a task to video.  Sadly, one has to attest with their signature that this has been done.  I could lie....sigh.…

Phoenix and Let Me Ride Your Horse

June 17, 2016Posted inCountry Frank's Lucky Star, Miscellaneous, Velvet
I was like this!!  I rode other people's horses in my young adult formative years. Long long ago in the 70's, visiting in Walsenburg, Colorado, I paid a cowboy to ride his horse. This wasn't a rental horse situation.  This guy rode horses as part of his job, probably cows.  I got on his horse and rode out into the dessert, just me and the horse. I came back and rode around his property, because it was just a little boring out there in the dessert scrub. The cowboy seemed…