Pat Parelli's Horse and Soul Tour: Lextington!

I know, I know! You guys are all excited for a new post right? Maybe you thought we'd gotten bored and given up on Mizmanagement? Well! How dare you put so little faith in us! I just needed a little time to recover from my Preakness disappointment. Forgive me for wanting to see a Triple Crown Winner! I couldn't even bring myself to post about it.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand! Parelli and his team visited the Alltech Arena at the Kentucky Horse Park May 25-26 as apart of his Horse and Soul Tour. We got free tickets thanks to a few fellow Equine students who also happened to be ambassadors for the event! Tickets sold for $25 and were good for both days.

For those of you unfamiliar with Parelli, it's a natural horsemanship program that builds a relationship between horse and human using communication techniques similar to those used by horses themselves (and that right there is just about all I know about it). Most famous are Parelli's 7 Games. I've posted links since I have no experience with them personally and don't feel like I can really tell you all about them. I can say that I have ridden a horse trained under the Parelli methods and was quite amazed by how she handled.

So there are various levels in the Parelli program. Each has a certain set of skills to master and each level builds on the last. Trainers representing Levels 1-4 would showcase their skills between major acts.

My favorite part was watching Parelli start a 4 year Friesian mare. She had been orphaned as a foal and had issues with kicking, biting and being pushy. Her owners were hoping to turn her into a dressage horse, and she was certainly built for it.

Her owner introduces the mare to the crowd

She was very nervous at first and Parelli asked her to remove the halter

He begins to work on a game called "Hide Your Hiney"

Brings the Halter back after she's gotten rid of some nerves

Teaching her to respect his personal space.

He started with allowing the mare to relax a little and stare down the crowd. He then put her back in a halter to teach her respect. Over the years she'd gotten used to pushing passed her handlers or invading their personal space. Parelli explained that many orphaned foals get this way because they aren't taught better by their mothers. On that note, he advises never bottle feeding an orphaned foal. It teaches them to push on humans to get food. It's best, he explains, to let them drink it out of a bucket.

Linda Parelli also shared some of her expertise on horseanality and the differences between right and left brain horses. After listening to Linda, my mother who attended with me, became convinced that I own one of each, I'm not quite sure I'd really call Oz a right brained horse though, he's a little laid back for that.

She brought with her Hot Jazz, her Oldenburg gelding, a right brain introvert.

At first Jazz did not want to leave the gate

 This is one of Jazz's first times on tour. He wasn't too sure about the crowd. He really didn't even want to enter the arena. Linda walked over to offer him safety in numbers.

As Jazz starts to trust Linda he follows her farther away from the gate than he'll go by himself

Jazz's comfort threshold has expanded to most of the arena at this point.

 Linda works to explain the difference between predators (humans) and prey (horses) thought process. The prey likes to weave and wander to check out an area. Predators take a direct approach. To demonstrate, when she decides she wants to go to the barrels, she walks directly toward them. Jazz, who was not yet comfortable with that end of the arena follows part of the way and then takes off running back towards the gate. The second time Linda tries to approach the barrels, she weaved back and forth, looping her way slowly towards them. Jazz followed her the whole way.

It was really neat watching the Parelli and his wife talk through their approach. Even my non-horsey dad found their program interesting although expensive. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for the whole show and missed the trailer loading segment. Ozzy Man could really have used some help with that one. Silly horse doesn't know he could be going on amazing trail rides!