Gia - session 883 - Danielle does a "Gia" clinic

 It's me, Hi...I'm the problem, it's me (by Danielle Bryant, from two days ago)

For a few years now, I have been contemplating the idea of doing an in house clinic solely around Gia. I wondered if I would have enough material or interest to warrant doing such a clinic. Turns out, I had plenty of both!  10 people joined me for 3.5 hours of talking, demonstrating, and working with Gia. Gia tends to garner interest and intrigue. She can also be a polarizing creature! I grouped the clinic members into three groups: those who loved Gia, those who were interested in learning more about her, and my favorite group - those who are terrified of her. Each group had to come up with 3 things that they wanted to learn, see or do with Gia. Surprisingly, there were not a lot of overlaps so we had lots of material to work with.

While the clinic was focused mainly around Gia, there was a lot of basic horsemanship involved. Gia tends to expect things done a certain way and if it is not done so, she tends to have big feelings. She also likes to take advantage of people's insecurities. Gia can use her size to intimidate at times, and her big feelings sometimes cause big reactions (from both Gia and those working with her!) I demonstrated some basic techniques of how to work with and around Gia in the field. My main goal was for the group to think and communicate like horses, not people. We had some volunteers attempt to get Annie (Gia's fieldmate) and move Gia away. Also, we spoke some about how to deal with Gia at feeding time. Once we got Gia out of the field, we worked on expecting her to walk politely and respectfully. She came in and I spoke on how I groom, stretch, and set boundaries with Gia. It is interesting to discuss these things with people, because I have been working with Gia for years and some of it has become second nature. It's quite interesting to examine the behaviors that both Gia and I exhibit in order to work together. Finally, we ended working with Gia in the round pen. I demonstrated some natural horsemanship techniques and how I work with Gia in a free lunge scenario. This gave everyone the opportunity to read horse body language and see how my body language communicated with Gia, We even had a few students give it a try!

All in all, everyone seemed to enjoy spending the afternoon with Gia. Hopefully, all three groups of participants were able to take away a lot of good information from the clinic. I, as always, enjoyed a day with my favorite mare. But, most importantly (at least in her mind), Gia seemed to really enjoy being the center of attention.