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. \u00a0(“Liberty” is the human on the ground with the horse loose…no halter or rope attaches to the horse.)<\/p>\n
This task is one that you have to sign your name and attest that your horse did this. \u00a0It is not a task to video. \u00a0Sadly, one has to attest with their signature that this has been done. \u00a0I could lie….sigh.<\/p>\n
You start this task with a halter and rope, it just doesn’t start out at liberty. \u00a0Doing it at liberty is an incredible feat. \u00a0Cisco did this for me last winter. \u00a0I can attest truthfully that he did it, and he did it at liberty (maybe twice). \u00a0But this summer, I have asked him to repeat this tremendous task and it has not happened. \u00a0What if someone important in the Parelli world came up to me and asked me to prove that Cisco could jump over an obstacle with his front legs…and then we failed to do it. \u00a0I believe this has to be accomplished so that Cisco understands what I want instead of \u00a0I got lucky and he did it a couple of times. \u00a0I hate having to be truthful!<\/p>\n
Here is how Cisco thinks: \u00a0Cisco is a “what do you want me to do?” \u00a0Move 5 steps, 10 steps, trot…what?” \u00a0Susan replies with her body language, “Cisco, I just want you to move three steps forward.” \u00a0 \u00a0 Cisco replies with his body, “Three steps? \u00a0Wouldn’t five steps be better. \u00a0I am anxious to please you.” \u00a0Susan, “sigh”.<\/p>\n
A jump obstacle that is too low is too insignificant to jump over. \u00a0Cisco walks over short obstacles.
\nCisco’s desire to please and his past development with me makes him think that a jump obstacle that is high enough, like a barrel, needs to be jumped over with both the front and back legs. \u00a0I have not found the perfect signal to get his body stopped when the front legs have jumped.<\/p>\n
I have placed my body in different places and given him the signal to jump. \u00a0Cisco’s front and back legs fly over the barrel. \u00a0Or he tries to step over a barrel with his front leg and then gets stuck. \u00a0It is difficult to step over a barrel. \u00a0We experiment with my “ask” until I get frustrated. \u00a0My dreams at night is how do I communicate. \u00a0I decide to collapse my upper body as he is going over with his front legs. \u00a0Nope. \u00a0That night in bed, we dream about it more. \u00a0Ok, we will start doing circles with my upper body collapsing so he will figure out that means stop. \u00a0And that is what we did for a couple of sessions before a trip, a summer cold and horrid heat intervened. \u00a0It has been nearly a month since I last played with and rode Cisco.<\/p>\n
In the arena during our warmup ground play, I asked Cisco to jump over barrels. \u00a0He jumped with his two front legs and stopped. \u00a0Good Lordy! \u00a0My body did nothing to tell him to stop. \u00a0The body was in the normal position to encourage Cisco’s traveling forward. \u00a0I was in shock! \u00a0Cisco looked at me with his ears pricked forward. Truly, he was very thrilled to have done this and awaited his praise. \u00a0I went to Cisco and praised him. \u00a0I rubbed him. \u00a0I told him “Good boy!” \u00a0Then I asked him to side pass to me over the barrels and he did.<\/p>\n
I’m fairly certain that Cisco has thought a lot about the barrel front leg jumping and figured out what I wanted. \u00a0It was nearly a month ago. \u00a0He tried his theory out this evening and I rewarded him.<\/p>\n
We did not jump over any obstacles after that. \u00a0I got on and rode him. \u00a0He was sensational. \u00a0I smiled during the entire ride. \u00a0(I might have cursed once when my leg illegally braced when asking for a canter, but that doesn’t count.) \u00a0Two amazing things he did this night. \u00a0He went from a walk to a very slow smooth fox trot. \u00a0Normally, he anxiously wants to please me and the anxiety makes him go faster. \u00a0A faster fox trot is a bumpy process and it might even be a real trot which we call “hard trot”. \u00a0It causes Susan’s body to be bumped up and down. \u00a0The other amazing thing he did was wait for me to give the canter signal instead of canter when my body was preparing to give the canter signal.<\/p>\n
I smiled and told Jenny during the lesson, “I love this horse! \u00a0He is the perfect horse for me!” \u00a0Jenny smiled too and agreed with me!<\/p>\n
I’m probably going to have a little trouble now telling Cisco that I want him to jump over the barrel with both front and back legs. \u00a0He probably now thinks that jumping over with the front legs is what I want. \u00a0I am still going to work on my upper body collapsing when I want him to stop. \u00a0No matter.<\/p>\n
Cisco is the perfect horse for me. \u00a0I love this non-verbal communication process between the predator human species and the prey animal horse species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. \u00a0(“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. \u00a0It is not a task to video. \u00a0Sadly, one has to attest with their signature that this has been done. \u00a0I could lie….sigh.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cisco","category-missouri-fox-trotter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3676,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/3676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}