On an interesting note, as of today I have been a Savvy Club member for one year! :))

I'd like to make a small shout out to Miss Fran Latane! Her Birthday was on the 11th!
She rocks. 'Nuff said.

Now onto the 'good stuff '.

Night before last, I watched the “Right Brained Behavior Requires Savvy!” segment on one of my L1 DVD’s and took notes on the extreme Yoyo Technique used to get RB horses to stop moving their feet and focus on you.

Then we skip to yesterday... I made up a Game Plan for a session I had planned out for that evening:

Driving Game: Assess Driving Game; Goal: get a backwards yield, forequarter yield and hindquarter yield without touching your horse.
Yoyo Game: Tweak Yoyo Game; Goal: Lower phases and more steps!

What happened: I got out there and at first the session was AMAZING.
Driving Game: I got all three yields! I can now check off my final checkboxes for Driving Game.
Yoyo Game: WOW. She backed to the end of the 12 ft line with a Phase 2!

I got a spur of the moment idea to try circling and the results were insane. Keep in mind I had only worked on circling twice before. Very little practice.
I lead her zone 1 and waited. All I had to do was pick up the stick and she was walking! She walked three whole (LB!) circles around me before she asked to come in. Beautiful soft, curious expression, too!

And then.. BOOM!
She shied at something, spooked and ran towards me. So, I yoyo’d her back to the end of the line with a big phase 4 and waited. She snorted and took off running.
Totally RBE, totally frightened and totally freaking out.
I remembered the chapter from my L1 DVD on RB Behavior and so I thought over my options. I could bring up my energy to match her and mirror her until she calmed down, I could make her run faster than she really wanted to go and in smaller circles until she calmed down OR I could yoyo her until she stopped moving her feet and focused on me.
I opted for choice 3 because I’m not confident enough for choice 1 and choice 2 would have made it worse since she doesn’t trust the stick fully and also, she’s an OTTB. She’d run forever!
So I snapped that rope around in a big phase 4, my whole arm locked and moving hugely while I was in my power stance. The snap swung around and popped her nose and she reared, ran backwards and then started running again.
We had multiple repeats until she had stopped running and she was standing still. She blew out and had her head low, ears loosened and her body was no longer braced.
Here is where I made a mistake:
I approached her. I walked in an arc to her shoulder and when I got there and went to take off her halter, she came at me teeth barred and ears back while trying to spin around and kick me in the same moment. I acted out of instinct and did a body block for zone 1 and yielded her HQ away from me. I quickly undid her halter and backed off. She took off bucking, rearing and galloping around at an insane speed.
So I walked off to the barn, sat down and cried. Feeling like a total failure! After I regained my composure a bit, I mixed her feed and walked out of the barn to take it to her and guess who’s there, hanging all over the fence and nickering at me quite loudly?
You guessed it. Ladybug, resident loon!

I couldn’t bring myself to take her hay back in her pen so I just came back inside, cried some more and e-mailed my wonderful friend and resident genius, Mariah! (BLESS YOU, WOMAN!)

I have a huge history of fear and unconfidence pre-Parelli. Parelli has brought my confidence way up for the most part but, today... all of my fear came rushing back tenfold and I was really self-doubting and second-guessing being a horse owner.
Mariah called me, listened to me explain quite hysterically, calmed me down and gave me some very good advice on how to handle this and how to view this.
So, I’m taking it in and I am going to view this session as a success. Yes, you heard right!
Before the scare, we got AMAZING results like never before and my response to her spooking was great for me! I feel like I really retained that information in L1. It’s reflex now. I need to sit back, relax and take it all in. Then I need to refocus and keep going! This weekend I’m going with mom up to Maryland and D.C. to visit a friend of hers.
I’ll spend this time relaxing and de-compressing and when I come back Monday I’ll be ready to try again. Up until we leave I’ll be spending a minimal amount of time with Lady, feeding and UDT only. No sessions until next week!

Whew!

Katieanne