You'll Never Fall Off the Cliff If You Always Remember To Retreat

Whew! I had one last lesson monday with Juli Piovesan before she heads to Colorado and my head is still spinning! Juli has always had a knack for observing me and then pulling out things to work on I would have never recognized as problems. And as it turns out, the things she chooses for us to work out are much easier to deal with and usually are the root causes of the things I identify as problems.

Juli and me at one of her workshops :)

At the beginning of the lesson Juli mentioned that I even though Rydel is an introvert, I need to be asking more of Rydel and that I shouldn't be afraid to push her a little bit in order to keep progressing. Rydel is ready for this and I need to stop avoiding the things that give us trouble. She then said something that I will never forget. She said,

If you keep asking for more, you will make progress, just remember to approach and retreat. You'll never fall off the cliff if you always remember to retreat.

This is so powerful and really speaks to how I need to approach building a relationship with Rydel. We have come so far, and have so much potential. This was a huge wake up call to me because I had been too afraid to deal with our problem areas and too worried about hurting or scaring my RBI to get to the next level. I had spent so long convincing myself that she was going to be too arthritic to ever be a level 3/4 horse that I had allowed myself to be stuck in level limbo. Well, no more! During our lesson Juli helped me realize that I had been avoiding upward transitions online because that's where things fall apart. She helped me face my fears and deal with the situation head on which yes, involved some obstinance and BBE freak-outs from Rydel, but Juli gave me the savvy quivers in my arrow necessary to deal with these and before I knew it, I had a happy, confident horse cantering along on the circle and squeezing between myself and the wall. We practiced upward transitions during the circling game and figure 8 remembering to make it a game and give her time to think. The goal is to help her learn that she can be left brained while going fast and that going fast is not only for escaping. This will definitely help with our upward transitions during riding (why didn't I think of this before!?)

Last but not least we played around with fitting my Theraflex and Juli had me cup the back of Rydel's scapula while she moved her forward to determine which shim pattern and placement allowed for the best possible movement of Rydel's shoulder. Got on and did a lot of friendly game playing with changes in my weight, bending down to touch my legs, and using my stick to rub her all over. Finally we played with keeping my focus while riding and learning how to not over-correct. I'm definitely going to need a lot of practice with this! However, this lesson could not have come at a better time. With the level 3/4 clinic less than a week away, I'm feeling very confident!