Mental Balance

     Raise your hand if you were cold today!!!! Both of my hands are up, I was FREEZING all day!!!

     I did a lot of thinking again on my drive home, about MENTAL balance and the difference between it and EMOTIONAL balance. I was getting really frustrated and started confusing myself, but I think I figured it out.

     First of all there is a HUGE difference between EMOTIONAL and MENTAL, and I feel kind of silly that I had not figured this out sooner. Lets take for example horses and their trainer: I work with horses of all ages, youngest being  a 6 month old filly, and some older mares, 4 and 9. The 9 year old mare "Indy" is a higher level horse, around 3/4, she has the mental capacity to handle new and more advanced scenarios in our training. Now, Catori, the filly, is immature and cant handle much more than a few of the Parelli games.  I would never go out to the pasture, get Catori, put a halter on her and ask her to sideways away from me 40 feet and then back. She would have absolutely no idea what I was asking her to do. Indy on the other hand, she would be all about it, she LOVES to play the sideways game and she is MENTALLY BALANCED enough to handle it. Will Catori be able to do that? Of course! And I am sure with her little dominate attitude we will be doing it a lot! But right now Catori cannot handle it, its going to take lots of working together, building confidence and becoming BALANCED in all three areas!

CATORI

INDY

     Now, lets take the trainer. In a few days I am going to have a girl come work with me who has never done NHS and has very little experience with horses. Sure she has ridden, groomed and probably even tacked up a horse, but not much more. She is not where near MENTALLY BALANCED enough to do some of the things that my more advanced horses are able to do. For example, our 4 year old mare "Salita" is very much left brain, which mean she is dominate, pushy, rude, and sometimes a little scary. It would be a pretty stupide idea for me to but this girl and horse together. First of all, Salita would think (MENTAL) that she is in control, she is the leader, and would take advantage of the poor girl. And oohh gosh that poor girl, she would probably be scared of horses after working with Salita having no experience at all. The girl is too immature mentally as a horseman to work with that horse, she would probably regress both MENTALLY and EMOTIONALLY and maybe even get hurt PHYSICALLY.

SALITA

    So, in conclusion, when working with a horse, make sure YOU as a person are BALANCED MENTALLY to work with that horse. Do you have the necessary maturity and knowledge to help the horse and be its leader? Is the horse BALANCED enough MENTALLY to understand what you are asking of it, and able to do it?

I hope everyone stays warm! Tomorrow is EMOTIONAL BALANCE! This is going to be a fun one!!!!!

Stay True!
-E

BALANCE- an overview

   I was taught to that with horse training you need balance; Emotional, Mental, and Physical. All of these apply to both horse, and human. After working with the girls yesterday I did a lot of thinking about this on my drive home ( I was stuck in traffic for a good hour, I had lots of thinking time!). I decide this would be a perfect topic to write about, not only because I have not fully grasped it, but because of my own emotional and mental and physical fitness in life and horse training.

   I did a little experiment, I googled all of those words separately to see what "society" or google, thought those words meant. I took the first picture it brought up.

Mental

Emotional

Physical 

  definitions: 

mental |ˈmentl|adjective of or relating to the mind : mental faculties | mental phenomena.

emotional |iˈmō sh ənəl|adjective of or relating to a person's emotions : children with emotional difficulties.
    physical |ˈfizikəl|  adjective   of or relating to the body as opposed to the mind : a whole range of physical and mental challenges.

     Ok, all of these are adjective, which is? A word or phrase naming an attribute. (and for those who do not know, or those was want to get DEEPER, an attribute is: A VERB regard something as being caused by (someone or something) ) 
   What does all of this mean? Why is this so important? Well, it all circles back to one thing- BALANCE (an even distribute). And why is balance important? Thats the question!! WHY do we need this? So, I could go on and on and on about this, but I am going to break it down for myself... and maybe the half a person who actually reads this silly thing. I am going to give myself a day or two and think this over. and my next blog is going to be based on just Mental Balance, the next Emotional, then physical, then maybe by then I will have figured out how they all work together and how in both horse and human they help! 
This is already making my head hurt!!
-E

Day 1, the first step!

    Okay, today was FREEZING! How can the weather go from nice and warm with a cool breeze to 30 degrees??!! I HATE BEING COLD! But, as cold as it was, I played with three of the horses today, and I have to admit, I was not motivated to do it, but it turned out great!
   I worked with Indy, Aurora and Salita today, in that order. Indy BEGGED to play, she has been wanting to play for awhile now, so she got to go first. I am starting everyone on the Carolyn Resnick Water Hole Rituals, no matter what level they are. This was Indy's first time and she was awesome!!! Indy is a LBI who LOVES to be right, so all I had to do was show her what to do, and she RAN with it! At first she tried to make it harder than it was, but once she figured out all she had to do was give me two eyes and two ears, life was good! We made huge progress in just 20 minutes! After we were done I let her chill with me and eat some hay then I let her out of the roundpen. BUT, she did not budge! She stood right by the gate the whole time I played with the other girls! I LOVE LOVE LOVE motivated horses with desire! What could be better?!
    After Indy I brought in Aurora, who was done the WHR many times while we were in Florida working with Mirka Pitts. She is in no way a pro, but she does know what to do and she is always asking questions. Aurora has no problem giving you two eyes and two ears, she is a LBE and very curious! She is the most "cuddly" horse I have ever met, she loves to be around people. We are working on draw, and so far she is doing GREAT, I ever got  stick to me walk about 15 feet, I was very proud! She is a smart baby!!
    Salita, Salita, Salita!!!!! Salita is a 4 year old LB- EXTROVERT to the 10th power!! I have never met a more dominate and left brain horse!! She is so much fun to work with, but she is a challenge, which i think is good for me, and a few months ago I would have been REALLY frustrated working with her, but today, I looked at as a challenge, a game, and I needed to win the game! Well, I did not win, but I moved forward a few spaces!! I had a bit of an issue, every time I tried to draw her to me, she would turn her head or move away. Even when I was just playing the friendly game she would literally turn around to get away from me. Well, as dominate and left brain as this horse is, I should have guessed that it was NOT a confidence issue, but thats what I thought it was. Sooooo, I chilled out, I relaxed and I gave her lots of time. WRONG! This was a HUGE dominance issue! When she was turning away from me, she was actually lining me up to kick me!! Little brat! She knew exactly what she was doing!! SOOO!!! I matched her energy and we worked hard!!! I did not have a huge breath through but I managed to keep zone 1 at me as much as possible and even had her attention when I asked!! It was a good session, and I even forgot about the cold!!
    Amanda watched the whole time, she had never seen the WHR done, and I think she enjoyed it, she loves watching her girls make breakthroughs!

Aurora

Indy and Salita

  

Its a good thing I have horses in my life.... everything else is pretty screwy, I am truly thankful for the supportive and loving people who have embraced me and helped me through my difficult times!! I have such high aspirations and dreams, its going to be a rough road, hell its been pretty bumpy so far, but I am ready to take it on!!!

STAY TRUE!!!!!
-e

So, I caved.

     Okay, I did it, its not the prettiest thing in the world, but hey, I did it. I have SOOO much going on in my head, it would be a huge mess to try and write it all out. I will try to be as organized and literate as possible, please hang in here with me!!

    I am going to write about my days, my dreams, my horses and my life. I am sure I will bore most, but maybe someone will find it a tad bit interesting!!

-E