Raise the Baar in Victoria

Here is a bit of a blog on our raise the Baar super camp held in October for five glorious days doing nothing but enjoying each others company with our horses under the excellent tutelage of Fiona Darling and John and Kathy Baar at Oxley recreation reserve in beautiful North East Victoria.

Writing this is really putting me out of my comfort zone and thank god we have spell check!!! I will do my best :)

Sonya and I arrived on the Wednesday 26th October so very excited to be attending this camp and we had such a long way to drive 45 minutes away, so we were first to arrive!! We set up camp and staked out two big yards for our horses.

The Oxley reserve is set out perfectly for horse and rider. There was a huge grassed football oval that we rode on and had plenty of shade from the well established trees.

Thursday we rose from our comfy sleep in our floats to the sound of excitement and anticipation for our first day of our clinic and meeting John and Kathy Baar who came all the way from America and travelled 18 hours in a plane just to teach us!! We felt so special. 

In starting we certainly got the message to be particular in everything we do with our horses and how we conduct ourselves.

If we form a horseshoe then it's got to be a perfect shaped horseshoe, haltering perfect, saddling perfect, bridling perfect, mounting perfect (best if the girth is done up but they tell me it can be done without :)) so get the picture, perfect practice in all we do to benefit our horses and our level of horsemanship. Level one with perfection!!! That was my biggest learning for the camp.

There were about thirty riders and we were put into our groups on our level of savvy. I can't comment too much on Fiona's group level's 1/2 as they were all a fair bit away from us in the sand arena but I can tell you they were having fun because you could here heaps of  raucous laughter!!

We were all combined in John and Kathy's group for a couple of days and on the third day we split into our level 2/3.......... 3/4 groups.

We started on line and most horses were eager to play!!! Day three they looked ready to ride.

John and Kathy are a great team and super teachers and you can see they have such a great relationship with each other and they passed that along to us in their teaching. You can really see and feel that they truly love what they do.

Other important memories that stuck out for me and you may like to review for yourselves were to trust the program, be willing to be stretched and don't give up. Rhythm first and then comes relaxation.  Horses are afraid of predatory behavior!! Don't let the horse be wrong for so long that he thinks he's right. Sometimes you may have to take a horse to hell and BACK.

When you start to get a bit stuck, prepare online for how you rode the day before.

We also learned a bit of savvy. Very important to know what, why and for what purpose you are putting a bit or hackamore on a horses head or in his mouth. I could go on and on because we did learn so much but now the rest is up to us :)

Over the five days which are never long enough I noticed all the horses and humans making big improvements thanks to the wonderful dedicated teachers in Fiona, Kathy and John.

I must say a huge THANK YOU to the helpers for your generosity and time and you all know who you are ( I am not naming you all because I might miss someone) I am always blown away by the Parelli professionalism. 

I used to do camps and have lessons before I started studying Parelli and it was fend for yourselves; we never had helpers!!! 

So we were very privileged to have you.

Yvette Fenning our official photographer who came all the way down from Rockhampton!! (yes I know a photographer!!) took hundreds of shots so look out Parelli Connect and Facebook. :)

I was so proud to be part of this Super camp and didn't want it to end but there is always more around the corner to improve our horsemanship and savvy thanks to two dedicated people in Pat and Linda Parelli...................................................................

Fiona Burnell  :)

Posted by Isabelle Greenfield. Parelli Volunteer Correspondent, Australia/NZ