So glad I went. I was thinking about skipping it because I was pretty stressed out. Here was my deal; I had traveled all week (left Sunday and arrived home Friday night), then it was labor day weekend. I spent Saturday with Kendall at Indian Creek on horses which was not a great ride (Kendall was feeling ill and crabby), then Sunday at Elitches where our bag got stolen and then left for us to find it sans our camera, then Monday doing farm chores (fencing, etc...). Then, Steve went out of town for 4 days. I had the kids all week to myself, second week on the new job, Delaney in football, Kendall had bad allergies lots of the time and Kyle needs shuffling for his job. Friday, I had to be gone for 6 hours handling the closing of an investment property. I was stressed and done.
And I committed to leave by 6pm to Marcy. I got home from closing at 6pm and I had no bag packed. ARRGGHHH!! I took 30 mins to spend with Steve (he got home at 5pm from his trip), then packed my bag and picked up Marcy at 7pm. I was cooked. As we drove and got closer to the ranch I could feel the stress start to evaporate. We got in about 12:45am and I was beat.
We got up early Saturday morning, about 6am, and headed out. I needed more sleep, but the conference wasn't going to wait for me. I don't think Marcy wanted to either...
It turned out to be a great day and I was so glad I sacrificed the drive time and the time away from my family. Some of the knowledge from my great 4 weeks in courses was solidified and I was able to understand higher level concepts than ever before. We got to watch Linda get a lesson from Walter Zettle and I understood all of it! I know how challenging it is to ride as well as she does because I'm starting to try that myself. She's so advanced, but I could finally appreciate how advanced Linda is. It was like I stepped up to a higher plane and saw things a whole different way.
OK, now to the facts. Saturday started off with Savvy team demoing together. That's always nice to watch while you chat with friends you haven't seen in a while. I'm becoming part of a growing faction of national Parelli students mainly because of the courses and I love to see faces from the past. I get a kick out of people and interacting with them. One woman I know took me to meet Helen Topp, her favorite Parelli instructor. Helen is quite an accomplished horsewoman who got her first horse through L3 at age 15. Then, while waiting to join the Parelli organization at age 18, she got 5 more horses through L3. Wow. I'll try to host her next Spring.
We watched Linda get the lesson from Walter which was absolutely inspiring. Walter made a clucking, hard kind of noise when she wanted Linda to get Remmer to pick up his life a little. By the end of the lesson, Remmer was energetic, lively and engaged. Unbelievable. His movement was light, responsive, the front end was high, the back end was engaged, simply gorgeous. It made me want to get my English saddle out and back on it. I loved watching this lesson. I learned so much. I can barely remember what else we saw that day because Linda's lesson was such a highlight. I know Pat came out and showed Caton off some.
On Day 2, Linda gave a lesson to Kathy on a LBE OTTB who was pretty emotional in the arena with the audience. It was cool watching the way Linda had Kathy managed the energy of the horse. The way she demonstrated putting the relationship first was spot on for me. She used the question box, lots of circles, approach and retreat. Then Linda gave a lesson to Avery on AHug, showing how to motivate a LBI.
They closed it off with a Q&A session with Mark and Pat. It started off ok, but quickly turned into a whiney, emotional love fest that I wanted to escape. We left as soon as it was over and missed Pat's finale session. We had a long drive home and I had a morning flight, so it was nice to get going.
A great weekend and so glad I went.
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