Re: [RC] Doctrinaire bit nonsense/ eventing - Jasmine CaveThis is from one of my "savvy up" newletters. Capt Mark Phillips then asked if Pat (parelli) if he'd be interested in presenting to the US eventing team while training in Florida next January. Well, it happened ... and it exceeded all of your expectations! Here's how it went. No one really knew what we should do. The USET was very open, Karen and David O'Conner wanted to make sure the power of ground skills really came through, and Capt Phillips was open and curious... it had been 10 years since he had seen us. We decided to start by turning Pat's apprentice crew loose on the cross country course with 45 foot lines. Pat had Magic and Casper there and talked to the crowd while we demonstrated. We jumped in and out of the water complex and played over as many of the jumps as we could get to. To say the audience was riveted would be an understatement! Within 30 minutes, more cars and trucks started streaming down the driveway because the audience got on cell phones, called their froends and trainers and said "Get over here.. you've got to see this!!" We started with about 20 people and ended with around a hundred! We'd never seen these jumps before, but the horses all went out and played confidently and with exuberance. It ended with some of us riding over the jumps bareback with halters. When Mark Phillips addressed the crowd, he said "Do you have any idea what you are seeing here? These people are riding bareback, they have no bits in their horse's mouths, they're jumping, backing up, going sideways, have no control issues... and some of us have half a scrap yard in our horses mouths and can barely get then to back up!" Everyone was excited. The next day, we did a similar thing but this time it was even more confident on the cross country jumps and all of us were riding. Honza stole the show by jumping everything totally bareback and bridless! The level of confidence, unity, accuracy and control was stunning. When Pat asked Capt Phillips, "can you imagine all your riders knowing this stuff," Mark quipped "I'd be out of a job!" Karon O'Conner said that if the savvy team were the competition, "They'd kick our butts!" Over the next 2 sessions, Pat took 3 horsesand with the help of a couple of apprentices, demonstrated how to start the 7 games on the ground and then on the horses backs. One of the horses was a serious problem as he would freak out at everything. As you can imagine, all the horses made significant changes that night and by the next day behaved very differently. The one that was most serious was now being ridden by its owner, bareback in a halter, paddling through the water and around the jumps, having jumped on line already. The owner was thrilled and said this was the best day he'd ever had with this horse. The USET is scheming to have Pat do more camps with the teams. In the meantime the French equestrian team is wanting the same. Currently Pat is coaching pentathalete Tracy Mattes. So the answer is yes. They need more training and less gimicks. The only problem is that unless you have the knowledge on HOW to get your horse away from the gimmicks you will be stuck with them. Jasmine __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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