Develop Curiosity

One of the big tenets of the Parelli system is developing a relationship with your horse. Well, a good relationship, really. If you have a horse, how would you classify the time you spend together? Do you march up to him, grab his nose, and then drag him off to ride in circles for an hour? Worse, do you have to "catch" him by sneaking up to him with the halter behind your back?

Does he run toward you or away from you when he sees you coming?

The first thing Parelli has students do with their horses... is nothing. Walk into the horse's corral, smile at him, and then walk past him. Find a place to sit (or stand, or lean) and ask nothing of your horse for 30 minutes. How different is this from what you normally do? What do you think your horse is thinking? Well, watch and see.

Jester is very social - he likes to know what is going on around him. He runs up to the gate when I (or anyone) comes near. So I wasn't surprised by this. But this time, I brought no carrots and offered no greeting, other than my smile. Then I walked past him and headed for the top of his paddock. He followed me closely, waiting for the magic carrot to appear. Finally, once he was convinced I had none, he gave me some space and we stood around together, swatting the cloud of flies around him.

After a minute or two, he walked down to his shelter and stood inside, listening to the sounds of the barn through the trees. Every once in a while, his ears would twitch back in my direction. A few times he'd wander back up to me, stand around for a minute or two (swatting flies), and then wander back down to the shelter. Each time his angled his body from 180 degrees away from me, to only 90 degrees, facing me and the barn. At one point when he approached me, he did the typical prey horse behavior of approach-pause-approach, stopping to grab some clover and see if I was still safe to approach. When I seemed safe, he continued to approach until he bumped his head against me.

Near the end of the 30 minutes, he changed it up and munched on some grass by his water trough. When I walked toward him (and the exit) he didn't move but just kept munching away.

In retrospect, standing due West at sunset perhaps didn't set me up well for being watched, but was an improvement over standing in the mud and muck. And he did get his carrots eventually, but once I was on my way out and I wasn't trying to entice him to do anything with them.