New way of thinking

Well it might also be a new way of being. Steve had told me last week that my horse was a pansy and so was I. Great words of encouragement huh?? He said I was afraid of hurting Seven's feelings. So I would do things softly to get him to perform the tasks that I asked him. It worked but I soon found out that Steve was right! Harry's clinic helped get me to see this. Seven will do things for me with the outcome being he gets a cookie, this isn't wrong but it isn't good for respect or seeing me as a leader. He would be slow and sluggish and it would just be a trick for a treat. It looked like he was focused on me but really he was thinking about how he could get the cookie and not really thinking about me at all. So, into the round pen we went and got some new communication going. Now at Harry's clinic I so thought he was telling the people to be too rough. I mean kicking your horse isn't really what parelli teaches but it is the same principle. I saw Linda whack a horse in the nose pretty hard because he wasn't paying attention to her! Same thing with Harry's teaching. If you don't get the response you want when you ask for something softly the consequences are you will get bopped!! This actually got the horse's attention back to thinking about what you are asking. A "wake-up!!" Then he went back to being soft again. The horses caught on pretty quick!! Harry's students didn't really use a stick or lead rope to ride so all the have are their hands and legs to ask with. You could use a lead rope to help you but you just smacked yourself to cause a sound. It was always on your leg. Harry also was good at getting his life up. So that is my new way of thinking. Get my life up and I hope with some experimenting that this will work. Seven didn't know what to make of me yesterday as we started to communicate in this different way. Steve got in and helped and we eventually got Seven to chose to be with us. He also had me watch him with his horse and as that happened and Seven was in the field I must have been pretty interesting to him because he came over and stood with me. I figured he would have not wanted anything to do with me. Or was he thinking he would get a cookie???