It's about the feet

My session this weekend consisted of going through the plan James Roberts gave us to see where the sticking points are.   When I was sitting at James’s I knew I had done it all before during the summer with her and we where working on the riding fine. But in the past couple of months the riding has changed so I thought it would be a good idea to start from scratch and see where we get stuck.

So here goes,
* Have your horse catch you - She trotted down the field to meet me 'tick'
* Halter with Savvy - when I stood next to her neck she brought her head round and put her nose in the halter before I asked, 'tick'.
* Touch all over - yes including mouth and 'private' areas - even got a blissful look on her face when I scratched her between her teats - 'tick'
* Place down the feet - not so hot, picked it up nice then tried to stamp it down when I went to place them, got there eventualtulay but not up to the usual.  Interestingly the back feet where 10 x's better then the frount feet.  During the summer I could pick up and place her feet were ever I wanted them, as many times as I liked, even while she was eating. Need to work on this.
*Standstill - perfect 'tick'


This was as far as I had planned to go today as the ground is to wet to play on, but I spent some time grooming and scratching her. Also did some lateral flexion on the ground, a bit sticky but not to bad.


All in all a good session. It what was interesting was how much has changed in the placing of her feet that I haven’t noticed until I really started thinking about it, no wonder our riding has been off! So my plan is the everyday I will pick up and place her feet until they are better than the day before.

Plan2Plan with James Roberts

On Sunday 9th January we braved the cold and did the 220 mile round trip to JRFS in Wiltshire for a horseless workshop with James Roberts.   The theme of the day was 'having a plan' here is the discription of the course:

'Plan your programme for the year in achievable steps. You will be taken through James’ Experience Plan to give you a programme to follow for the next 6 months! James’ plan is easy to follow, and realistic! It is used on a daily basis by James and his team, having been cultivated over the years by James in order to get the best out of his young horses, challenging horses and foundation horses. You can even watch James demonstrate areas of the plan with his young horses and foundation horses!'

As always with James this was a very beneficial and thought provoking day.  Although I had heard a lot of this when Bella was there being started it now makes more sense now that I am a little further down the road. 

We started the day with James saying I am going to ask you a simple question 'What do you want to do with your horses?' to which the normal answer is L3, L4, Instructor etc BUT on the grounds that Parelli is a training program for your horse 'What do you want to do with your horses?' .... after a few moments of silent processing people starting coming forward with things like dressage, endurance, riding club, having a horse my kids can ride safely ...  James point to this was that sometimes we get so stuck in the programme that we forget why we are doing it in the first place!  Which left me thinking, what do I really want to do with Bella??  Well I guess the answer to that is have fun, be safe, hack out and maybe get back into my dressage. 

James than went on to talk about leadership, the tools we need (not the halter/rope type tools but the tools of a horseman) and then onto the plan. 

Here are some photos of notes he made whilts talking including 'THE PLAN'

 The Plan!

By the end of the day we all had a plan of what we are doing, where we are heading and why we want to get there.  Thank you James for an amazing day.