I went up to my "horse" and began tapping her shoulder to encourage her out of her chair. She looked at me like I was crazy at first, and the she got to the point where she jumped out of her chair and went screaming out of the room up the stairs...she spooked away from me :) My co-leaders horse went the more stubborn confused approach and pushed (kicked/bit) her handler saying "go away", until she saw the other horse spook, at which point heard mentality took over and she joined her buddy screaming up the stairs. It went on with us trying to communicate to our "horses", and learning how/when/where to apply tapping/rhythmic pressure to the girls to get what we wanted. It took probably 20 minutes to get them to do the task at hand. It was soooo fun. It was great for the girls and us...we all went back and drew connections between how they felt and how their horses might feel when they do certain things.
The girls got to then do a task to the older girls...who were much more stubborn "horses". One of the older girls knew about the communication game and chose to be stubborn anyway....you know that horse who has learned it all, but likes to play games :)
It was a really valuable learning experience for our group and for us. We plan to connect back to that lesson and their feelings of confusion, frustration, how they knew they had done things right, wrong, the importance of release, phases, etc. durning our upcoming weekly 4H lessons.
I just wanted to share and reccomend to everyone to learn about the Parelli communication game, and try it with an unsuspecing "horse". It is an eye opener for handler and "horse".
:) :)
