Pat Parelli

I posted a clip the other day that featured some people overseas playing in the snow with their horses.  These people have learned how to 'play' with ther horses following the principles of Pat. I first heard of him through a friend who lent me some videos that I watched, totally enraptured.  I heard on the radio that he was coming to town and instantly purchased tickets.  The seminar ran 4 days and I totally blown away by what I saw.
He rode in to the arena the first day on a mare called Magic, leading a stud horse on a 12' line.  As he rode around the arena telling us what he was going to show us, ol' stud horse trotted alongside, very relaxed and never cocked an ear at the mare.  He stopped in the middle of the arena and started tapping the ground in front of the stud horse with what's called a carrot stick.  The horse bowed his head, bowed down to his knees and then proceed to lie down, flat on his side.  WOW! and he never touched him once or even spoke to him.  If I can do half of what he can do with a horse, I might be able to call myself a hand.
Over the 4 days there were some problem horses that were brought in and some of Parelli's 4-star trainers worked with them and showed each day the progress that was made with them.  His wife, Linda, got on her dressage horse bareback and gave a demonstration doing some dressage moves and jumping over some obstacles without saddle OR bridle.  She also got off her horse at one point and sent him to the other end of the arena where a trailer was parked and he went right in.  (see him on CNN through the above link, pretty cool)

Not long after that I heard that one of his 4-star guys was putting on a clinic in the area and signed Indiana and I up for it.  Because I had started teaching her to get in the trailer from a very early age it was not an issue for us to haul her back and forth every day and we headed out for our first day.  What was an issue, however, is she had never been separated from Mama-Bear Murphy and she hollered in my ear for what seemed to be an eternity.  At these clinics you spend the morning working your horse from the ground.  One of the exercises we did was to take our carrot sticks with a 6' 'horseman's string' on the end of it and whirl it over our heads.  EEK.  She thought that the whole class was coming at her trying to kill her and did everything she could to try to crawl in my pocket.  Glenn, our instructor, could see that I was having trouble and came over and asked if he could borrow my horse for a minute.  Dang straight, you can!  He took over and within a minute he set up boundaries for her and basically let her know that 'this is my space'.  When he handed her back it was the start of a very productive clinic for me.  She had never pushed me around before and I was terribly embarrased to have had her do it to me there. 
Another thing we did was play the 'porcupine game'.  You place your hand or carrot stick on the horse and have him move over, or backwards, where ever you want him to go.  Pretty soon you progress to just looking at the offending part and the horse moves it.  We learned how to back the horse up by shaking the leadshank at him and basically put him wherever we wanted him.  Glenn had us draw a circle in the dirt around us as he was walking around the arena drawing rectangles about 10' from each of us.  Our job was to stay in our circle and put the horse in the rectangle using the techniques that we had learned.  I got Indy lined out the direction I wanted her to go and then shook the shank at her and had her back up in to the rectangle.  Our job then was to smile at them, cock a hip and just relax.  When I smiled at her, her little ears came forward and she smiled back.  Now to just wait for the rest of the class to finish.  While we sere standing there waiting Glenn got out a bull whip and started to wander around the arena, cracking it.  Thinking I was in for a wreck, I started to tense up when he got closer to us.  When he did get closer he cracked the whip pretty much right behind her.  She kept looking at me and totally ignored him.  COOL!  I had one of those 'so proud of you moments' and started to tear up, but managed to hold it together.  We had a few more adventures the rest of the clinic (including her trying to buck me off), but that's for another time.