Day Two - The Evaluations Begin

In order to see what we each need to be working on during our four week Fast Track,. each horse and rider needs to be evaluated by the Parelli staff. John Barr told us that the tasked we would be asked to perform would be level four tasks but he reminded us that the staff needed to understand our current state of development. This meant it was important for each of us to do what he or she could comfortably do rather than to try and power through the tasks at a skill level we might be unsure of. Since Sonny and I are still working on level three tasks, I was pretty sure that we would face some new challenges and I promised myself that rather than trying to push Sonny too hard to complete any task, I was going to make sure that I kept our relationship first.
This morning of the first day of evaluations was dedicated to seeing how well we would do working with our horses on-line and the afternoon would be evaluate our riding freestyle (with a casual, non-contact rein). Since I am much more confident working on line with Sonny, I wasn't very nervous as we set out for our morning tasks but I was surprised at how excited Sonny seemed to be when we entered the large playground area. My usually easy going horse was high headed and snorting. I had a hard time getting his attention as we warmed up and knew I was in for a learning experience. The first thing I had to do was to put a huge green ball on Sonny's back and hold it there for 7 seconds, and then I needed to bounce it on his back. Sonny and I have played with an exercise ball before but this ball was huge and I couldn't get my arms around it to even pick it up. Since the tasks are all timed, I eventually started bouncing the ball on the ground. Sonny stood still but I never was able to get the ball up high enough to get it on his back.
From that task we went to stations where we had to pick up and hold all four feet from one side, back up to the end of our line, load in a trailer, go into a pond, go sideways to the end of the line, jump a barrel, perform a figure 8 without using our carrot stick and circle at a canter with two changes of directions. To make things a bit more difficult, we had to put a twist tie around a loop in our lines. This would show how softly we were handling the line because if our horses pulled back too hard, the twist tie would break, resulting in no score for that task.
I was satisfied with how Sonny and I did even though we didn't complete all of the tasks in the time allowed. The trailer was pretty small and Sonny didn't load in it. I could have forced the issue but I didn't see the point of doing that on the first day when I knew he was uncomfortable. Rather than jump the barrels, Sonny pushed them aside and walked through. I just had to laugh at that. And when I asked him to do the figure eight around the two half barrels, he walked over one barrel, knocked it over and picked it up in his teeth. We did a great job with the pond task. Sonny walked right in and started splashing around. All in all, it was an interesting morning.
After lunch we were sent off to saddle our horses and warm them up for the freestyle riding session. I was a little more nervous about the riding tasks and to make matters worse, just as we began saddling, it started to rain. By the time I got Sonny ready, he and I were both drenched and worse than that, my saddle was soaked. I climbed on with only 5 minutes to warm up only to discover that my saddle was sitting a little to far back on Sonny and I was feeling a little bit out of balance. Probably because I was a little unsettled, Sonny was a bit unsettled, but we needed to head off to our first task.
One of the interesting thing about this evaluation was that we didn't know what the tasks were in advance. When we arrived at an area, the evaluator explained the task and then we were given a set time to complete the task. Unfortunately for me, the first task Sonny and I had to do was a walk, trot, canter task. I knew that I hadn't warmed Sonny up enough to be comfortable cantering him, particularly with my saddle slightly out of kilter so I chose to just walk and trot the task. I told that to the staff member judging the task so he and I were both surprised when Sonny chose to offer a canter on his own.
"Did you ask for that or was that Sonny's idea", the staff member asked me.
"It was pretty much his idea," I answered laughing at my own discomfort and completing the task at a trot.
By the time that task was over, it had stopped raining so I decided I needed to get my saddle adjusted. Fortunately, one of the tasks was actually a saddling task so I walked Sonny over, hopped off and managed to complete the task and get my saddle adjusted at the same time.
From there, we did some canter, walk, back up transitions (Sonny and I trotted), jumped a rail (Sonny stepped over it), performed a "controlled catastrophe", side passed in both directions, demonstrated direct and indirect rein maneuvers, and put Sonny's bridle on while sitting down. It wasn't our best day of freestyle riding but considering the weather, my nervousness, Sonny's nervousness and the nature of the tasks, I was OK with what we did. I probably would have felt a little more comfortable without carrying my carrot stick but I felt that it was important to push myself on this one thing and was proud of myself that I managed to hold the stick during all of the tasks that required one.
I know that one area I really need to work on is my confidence riding, particularly when Sonny is moving with more energy than usual like he was doing today so this is an area I am going to really focus on while we are here. I am hoping that the variety of obstacles available here will provide just the right kind of environment to help me progress both in my riding ability and confidence.
Tomorrow, they will be evaluating our liberty and finesse (riding with contact) skills. These are areas I have just started working on with Sonny so tomorrow should really be interesting.