Wednesday 2nd January

Well today I went to my first Parelli Play Day!!

Blossom Loaded really well, but I still asked her in and out a few times until I was happy that she was really confident and would be happy when the ramp was put up. She travelled really well, she neighed a bit to start with but settled pretty quick.

We started the day with playing with obstacles in the small field, to start with Blossom was more interested in the grass than me. But I soon got her interested and we had lots of fun playing with the obstacles. There was barrels, hula hoops, poles, tyres and even a pedestal. She wasn't very sure about the pedestal, but I managed to get her confident enough to smell it, but she didn't want to put her feet on it. We then got the Parelli challenges book and I played with ideas from them, it was good as it made me do things I wouldn't have thought of. I think the best one we done was playing friendly game with a pair of gloves in zone 1 and then putting the gloves on their ears - Blossom looked like a reindeer!!

After lunch we played the property game in the sand school - I had never heard of this or done anything with Blossom at liberty before! I started with just playing with the seven games on line, then moved on to playing with the halter round her neck. What I really noticed was I used friendly game more than I normally would if I had the halter on.. It was really good to play with her like this as it showed me where we still had problems. What I mainly found was my draw in the yo yo game wasn't good, she will happily come in using phase 1 or 2 on line but wouldn't come in at liberty. I also found that she was really unconfident with me on her right side, when the halter was just round her neck.. It was really interesting just to find where our problems where and what we have to work on.

Overall I had a great day and really did learn alot, I learnt what I need to work on with Blossom and what thresholds we have! I also found I learnt alot from watching others, it really gave me more ideas of things I could play with and things I could use when I have problems!!