Progress and Thoughts

Progress is such a dicey thing sometimes. It can be so hard to track, impossible to know whether you have made any from day to day some days... and, sometimes, no matter how much you actually HAVE progressed, you cant even feel it, because you think you should be further along. Ridiculous, right?

 

The other day I passed my Liberty Level 4. Well now. There is one of those things I didn’t see coming. I have 3 out of 4 savvies passed so far, just Finesse to go now, and then that coveted black string will be MINE MWAHAHAHAH..... I mean. Its not about the string. Its just a perk. The other day, I got to thinking. Holy CRAP. I have passed ¾ of L4. How the bejesus did that HAPPEN?!  Where was the progress, and how on earth did I manage to be even close to as good as all those people I see who have passed their auditions??

 

The answer is, I really don’t know. It feels like it went from “whats a yo-yo game?” to “Oh hey, L4 in three savvies” .... huh??  This is why I blog and journal my progress. I get a lot of satisfaction out of being able to scroll back the years and see where I have come from  to get to this point, because I really don’t remember.  And what Pat says about “Welcome to a new level of incompetence”, well its right. Somehow, it doesn’t matter what color string you have, sometimes you just feel like a goober who doesn’t know the difference between the end of a horse where the apples go in and where they come out...

 

Its fun to be able to go back through prior entries, and see exactly what I used to struggle with, and feel some happiness that those maybe aren’t the same struggles I deal with today, or that if they are, I handle them better/differently.  I think overall, it satisfies my inner student and says  “SEE? All this isn’t for nothing, it IS getting better”. Which brings me back to the whole talent vs skill thing – I spend a TON of time with my ponies, developing this skill, and making it part of me. Part of every interaction with every horse. All the time. It has to be, you have to LIVE horsemanship. To me, Parelli isn’t a brand, it isn’t a set of lessons to learn, it is just a way of being, a way of seeing horses through horse-colored glasses, a way to hope for the magical connection to just for once be real, and not held together with something mechanical. 

 

In a world of instant gratification, horsemanship MAKES you take the time. And then some more time, and some more again. As a supremely impatient child, I can tell you from experience, my ponies taught me SO much about patience! I started with Parelli back in... 2006? Ish? And here is is 6 years later before I got my L4... to be fair, I didn’t always have a lot of time for my ponies in the beginning. First there was school, and then work. There wasn’t money for lessons really. I had a few, but not many in the early days. The box said homestudy, and by golly, I took it LITERALLY! I always wanted to be homeschooled and do online courses, this was my chance to show I could do it! So I did!

I am a bit of a procrastinator/perfectionist when it comes to assessment, so it took me eight months to get my L1 - *because I was waiting for the live assessment during a clinic, obviously* Then another year and ¾ for my L2, because I waited to do it when I was in Florida the first time.... Parts of both of those reasons belong to the fact that I didn’t own a video camera, or have anyone to tape it for me.... but also to the nature of “I have to get it perfect!| I try so hard now to help people get past the perfection .... even though I still want it in my heart. Someday maybe...

 

I must really like spacing out my auditions, because my L3 was another year coming.... video cameras and I don’t get along very well when its time to shine... turn it on and tell me to go have fun, easy. Turn it on and tell me AUDITION TIME and things go south. Pressure and I just have a very unfortunate relationship. Im working on it.

Enter L4.... Soemhow, I was the luckiest person alive and passed my freestyle LIVE in florida... thank goodness. It is SO much easier that way! For me... just because there is no video camera.  Then the deadline... Sometime mid July the panic sets in and I managed to power out my online and then mid august pooped out a Liberty audition, with not even my horse because my horse was lame... thank goodness for professional support! Parelli people are the nicest people I know, honestly.

 

So there is is, a six year, very spread out process of two assessments [pre audition time] and so far six auditions... Progress, albeit seemingly slow... When I think about the people that just start and are L3 in a year, I get really excited for them. I know they fall into the talented category, and they will go far in a short time span. Me and my skill will just have to keep plugging away at it until we can catch up I guess.  It’s fun though, to remember how far we have come, and how much faster progress is with new horses compared to the slow climb I made, first with Dakota and then Mo.

I remember thinking after having Indy in half of my externship, that she knew as much as Mo after it... and I had been steadily progressing with Mo since she was 2[she was five-coming-six at the time], compared to basically starting over with Indy for those three months.  I felt like that was a good ratio... start out taking years to learn and teach.. to turning it into a matter of months...

 

The same thing has been happening with Indy’s Liberty lately – it was our neglected savvy because I have a hard time with it, and then she just goes RBE and runs around, but patterns and repetition and consistency have brought her *almost* up to Mo’s level in about three weeks. GO INDY!  Obviously there are some things that aren’t quite there, but hey, she went from nothing with me, to I think, a high L3 in three weeks... Ill take it! Indy is also a smarty pants, so that may account for some of it :D

 

Sorry for the randomness, I got distracted with all the reminiscing. I try really hard not to take for granted that these days, when I can go out and just hop on Mo, bareback and bridleless and just do ... something...  that we built our relationship and I worked hard to be the partner she wants me to be... it didn’t just magically appear. The days when she was a crazy bucky goober, or the days when Indy was a psycho runaway, they aren’t that far past. But they are in the past, and thats pretty ok and cool with me. The fact that Mo can do just about anything bridleless, is one of my favorite things in the whole world. Freestyle is where I want to excel. Its what I think is the coolest test of the relationship. That I can take Indy out on the trail [some days, this is still new] and take off the bridle completely still blows my mind. Honestly, I never ever thought I would do anything sans bridle with her. It was a sad thought, but I just wanted to live more than I wanted to do bridleless stuff with her... but theres PROGRESS! We DID get to the point where I *wanted* to take the bridle off.... we did LIVE, we did have brakes, we did still have connection.  And each time, its still the coolest thing EVER.

 

Possibly, I am easily impressed by cool things. I think my ponies are cool.  I love them so very much and what they can teach me every day.

 

HERES TO PROGRESSION! Bring on the never ending self improvement.

 

:D

S