The Art of Natural Dressage

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:16 pm 
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 2:40 pm
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Location: Belgium
Thank you so much, all of you for coming! :cheers:

And putting up with me in that heat for taking 10 minutes just for saddling Owen!

It is so wonderful not having people tell you that you should make your horses obey and do stuff and get results.
I already have the results I want: a beautiful alpha horse "lion" who is a great true friend to me.

Big hug to all of you wonderful people!
:kiss:

Josepha

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 5:26 pm 

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 4:27 pm
Posts: 483
Location: Corneto di Toano, Italy
A very big 'Thank you' to Bianca, Romy and Josepha! :f: :f: :f:

It was a very nice weekend, I have met all beautiful people :love: and I have seen horses being taken care of in a way I could nothing but approve! :cheers: :cheers:

I have learned little and not -so-little details which I can include in the way I go about with my horses.

Thank you all for the very nice experience!
To be repeated! :yes: :yes:

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Kind regards,

AnneMarie

------
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make'em drink...


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 8:29 pm 
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Joined: Mon May 21, 2007 4:25 pm
Posts: 476
Thank you all so much! I had two wonderful days with all of you. It was great to be all around like minded people. And I hope the horses know that they were wonderful too, they taught us but also made us laugh a lot. Can´t wait for the pictures.
Love you! :kiss:


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:35 am 
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Posts: 6281
Location: Dresden, Germany
I finally arrived at home now - had to spend the night at a train station, because the last train was gone already due to my delay in Maastricht. Now I feel a bit sleepy as those wooden benches are not that comfy to sleep on, but the meeting gave me so much to think about, so who needs sleep anyway. :funny:

I have learned so very much from you and especially from my sweetie Impie Image and the fierce Masterlion II, formerly known as Don Jamie. As soon as I got some sleep I will try to sort my thoughts and write a little report. :smile:

A big THANK YOU to all of you! :) :love: :) :love:


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:31 pm 
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Location: Dresden, Germany
Okay, I have slept a bit and now here is the more detailed report.

From Wednesday to Friday I visited Josepha, Ralph and the boys. We had a great time playing with the horses.

The shy and introverted Don Jamie discovered his inner lion. On the first day we only moved around in the arena a bit and on the second day we discovered the joy of playing with the pedestal. After about half an hour he noticed that the pedestal would not eat him when he carefully touched it with his hoof (but that hundreds of little carrot pieces were coming instead) and after another twenty minutes he even realized that kicking and pawing the pedestal was even better - and finally climbing up with both frontlegs. And this made him feel that he was big and strong actually. He did not want to stop this for two hours and the expression on his face was priceless. He felt like he was in charge. This also transferred to other things, like stepping on or over the snake (aka pool noodle) and killing it for me, although in a very gentle way. ;) After a while he even started demanding his treats, which I happily rewarded. The only thing that did not get him a reward was nipping me (he wanted to eat my fingers several times), all the other things he did got the treat dispenser going.

Owen was playing with Josepha and they were doing great after she had discovered that being calm herself made him relax AT ONCE (I have never seen a horse who is that much in sync with his human´s emotions and behavior), turning him from overexcited and nervous into a calm and relaxed Masterlion within seconds. :clap: But maybe she wants to write more about how she achieved that herself. Anyway, it was amazing to watch that and the other really important lesson those two were showing was the power of being happy and grateful about what the horse is doing instead of just delivering the treats. I made a little video of that: Owen´s 2nd time of climbing on the pedestal (the first one was even more cute and almost brought tears to my eyes). I also played with Owen for a while and he was great, but he kept looking at Josepha like “Can´t YOU take over now?!” :funny: Here is another video of Josepha and the O-master. Bianca has more videos and Inge and Franziska took lots of pictures, so there will be more for all of you to see. :smile:

With Ino we practiced backing out of our space from behind the fence so that it would become his default exercise when he is getting overexcited and it would be less dangerous to play with him and less necessary to put pressure on him. I used my hips for that (thanks to the broken arm I had the chance to practice a bit lately) and he was amazing and stepped backwards when I moved my hips towards him a bit.

I also tried to play with a guest horse from Josepha´s neighbours. Boy, that was a lesson in humility! She was so insecure and skeptical about me and even after almost one hour she still didn´t want to follow me except for some steps, let alone running with me or offering exercises all by herself. Such an interesting experience and thanks a lot to Tanja for allowing me to play with her sweet little mare! :smile:

We also did some non-horse-playing things: On Thursday I finally watched my first horse DVD (Bent Branderup) and on Friday we spent most of the time just sitting in the sun, talking and making crazy plans about producing a movie showing the real nature of Josepha´s interaction with her horses. :twisted: 8)
Thanks to Josepha and Ralph for inviting me to their place. I wish I could have stayed longer!

Friday evening we arrived at Bianca´s, where almost everyone else was there already. I finally met my sweetheart Imperia again and I really had to be careful not to cuddle her to pieces. Funny, I have never been looking forward to meeting a horse so much. I won´t write about our training here but do that in her diary when I will have more time and Bianca´s videos are ready. But it was absolutely wonderful. She is such an incredibly sensitive little horse, picking up the smallest signals from my body language and offering all kinds of nice things. I guess I am in love just a bit. :love: :love: :love: :love: :love: :love: :love:

On Saturday we were playing with the horses again. It´s always so nice to see Bianca interacting with Evita, they are such an inspiration. But also watching the others play with the horses and analyzing how their body language, movements, rewarding strategies and general behavior influenced the horses´ reactions was most interesting and helpful. For example Els is sooo good at that. With her very careful observation of Evita´s reactions they have developed a wonderful communication. I also played with Evita and was totally shocked (in the best possible way) to see how safe she is even during the wildest games. Bianca´s way of interacting with her is so beautifully systematic and controlled and at the same time so loose, positive and full of fun. Those two are my big, big inspiration! :) :) :)

And it was so nice to meet all those great people. I already knew Ralph and Josepha, Bianca, Dominique and Barbara and knew they were lovely, but this time I finally met Inge and Els after having known them only from the internet for two years. :) Oh, but also getting to know Franziska, AnneMarie, Kim and John was a total delight and I am so much looking forward to next year. Speaking of that, we are planning to have the AND summer meeting 2010 at my home in Dresden/Germany, plus an additional clinic meeting at Bianca´s.

Thanks again to all of you for coming! This has been so much fun and so much to learn for me! :)


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:42 pm 
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Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 11:57 am
Posts: 1983
Location: provincie Utrecht
very short reply from this side.

it was a great weekend, all lovley people and so much learned.
so good to see the people in real live after reading all the storys, now i have a complete sight and the diarys are going to live more and more.

the pics i made i have to load them up, but not today / evening. sorry...

my horse is slowly getting better, he use is foot a bit more and can walk (slow) again.
lucky for him it is still very warm so if he lay down a lot of his time it is not that cold on the ground.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:46 pm 
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Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:00 pm
Posts: 1684
Location: Belgium/Tielt-Winge
oh good that he is already a bit better!
I was happy to be at the meeting for the whole 3 days... I loved it, the relaxed way in which everyone acts is really a dream... I love all the positive vibes hanging around...

oh and the horses :) they were sooo great, I'm so happy that they would alow me to 'try' things with them...
and to Romy, I have been listening to the person behind me all day and it worked sooo wonderful, I am hoping to be straighter in time ;)

Today after work I went to Beau and played with the hip movements and it was so much fun, my great horse...

I wish we could do this every 3 months or so... I love learning this way...

I miss you all
BIG HUGS!!!

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 10:12 pm 
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Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 11:21 am
Posts: 202
Location: Germany, Black Forest
Hi everyone,
just had a first look at my photos - they are really great! I'll upload them soon, just have to reduce them (about 400) to a watchable amount....

Thanks again to everybody, it was a great and very inspiring weekend!

more soon

Franziska

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:14 am 
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 2:44 pm
Posts: 1940
Location: The Hague, Netherlands
A very short message here because it's late ;) I'll write more in the next days and will upload the video's :D But I already wanted to thank all for the really really wonderful weekend :applause: :applause: :applause: A big big hug and we miss you all so much!! Thank you thank you thank you all for coming!!!
A very very big hug from al of us!! :kiss: :kiss: :kiss: :kiss: :kiss: :kiss: :kiss:
and Romy, good to read you made it safe home after your overnight stay at the train station :ieks: Impie misses you!!!

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:15 pm 
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Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 11:21 am
Posts: 202
Location: Germany, Black Forest
So, now that I have a quite minute some more from me:

I had three "main inspirations" :idea: from this weekend:

1. The way Biancas two spanish mares are: They were braught up in an "AND-way" and never knew any pressure or punishment. You can see and feel this totally in their beeing. The first expression that came to my mind when I watched them was "open minded". They are so friendly :) , open to contact to everyone, free of any mistrust and show their feelings and what they like or dislike so openly - this is really amazing! :clap:
If you experience such horses you understand how horses are naturally and what difference there is to most of the horses you meet everywhere: how much they have closed up and refuse real contact with people... :ieks:


2. The body language lessons of Romy: If you watch her you can see how much you can communicate with body language and how this works. I learnd a lot by observating Romy and by her feedback to my own actions with Evita and Imperia and on my video with Filux. :applause:


3. The consequence of Josepha in not using any pressure on Owen. Although Josepha wanted to show us something riding she put her relationship with Owen in the first place. I think for everyone in such a situation where you have audience and want to show something, the temtation to do it at the horses charge is very big. But Josepha put Owens needs and wishes first and did only what he wanted best. I really admire this attitude! :applause:

There was much more inspiration I got on the weekend but those three points were the most remarkable and impressive things for me.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:20 pm 

Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:58 pm
Posts: 1622
Location: Western Cape, South Africa
Sounds amazing and I really look forward to all your pics when you have recovered!

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Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 4:14 pm 
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Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 11:57 am
Posts: 1983
Location: provincie Utrecht
i have put quickly some pics in my album, just a few. to get a small impresion of our weekend.

http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Album=NZSLLWLZ


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 4:21 pm 
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 2:44 pm
Posts: 1940
Location: The Hague, Netherlands
WOW GREAT!!! :applause: :applause: :applause: really beautiful pictures!! Thank you!!

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 4:22 pm 
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more will come ;)


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 4:36 pm 
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Location: Belgium
Wow Inge, thank you!

Owen's first jambette under saddle! and you've got an excellent picture!
Can I use it on my website?

please... :giveflower:

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