Blog
October 2006
After a year, I lead a horse ten steps
Earlier this week, one of the stall cleaners asked if I could move a horse. It’s a common request–the younger stall cleaners are supposed to ask someone experienced to put the horses in cross ties. Without thinking, I agreed. Then I asked who she needed me to move. She told me.
“Oh,” I said. Just “Oh.”
I’ve been back working and riding at the barn for a year now. During that time, the barn owners have been very good at re-teaching me about ground work–not in a concentrated lesson, so much, but in bits and pieces. I’ve learned a lot by observing how they handle the more excitable horses, and they will often talk to me about any unusual situations that come up. Between observing their body posture/tone of voice, and their explanations of what happened and why, I’ve learned a lot about ground work this past year.
My confidence in handling horses has also increased–I found that it wasn’t the individual horses that intimidated me, it was not knowing how to react in certain situations. Once I learned how to react, I felt more confident. I never thought much about the fact that we have to learn ground work just as we have to learn how to ride, but we do.
Nevertheless, the one horse I haven’t handled in the barn this year is the stallion.
The stallion, of course, is the horse the stall cleaner wanted me to move.
The stallion has never done anything to make me think I couldn’t handle him. He’s well behaved, and I watch the barn owners handling him all the time. I handle far more excitable horses every day I’m out there. And as with everything else, over the past year the barn owners have been great about talking to me about the stallion–his progress, why they handle him in certain ways, what they do if he starts to misbehave, etc.
If I’m confident about bringing in the young TB even when he’s determined to show me just how high he can buck, you’d think I’d be confident about the stallion, too.
Unfortunately, stallions, like heights, intimidate me by their very existence. They don’t have to do anything; the fact of their existence is enough to make me turn chicken and molt feathers. Actually, I should be honest: I’m not afraid of heights. I’ll go up on the roof any day for you, and I’ll stay on the roof all day. It’s the coming down that scares me. If you send me up on the roof, you better have a cheering squad, an hour of spare time, and a fireman to get me down.
For the past year, if anything came up with the stallion, I just found one of the barn owners. And they were perfectly happy with the situation; I’ve known that I could handle him, if I wanted to, but they didn’t expect me to.
I don’t know what was different this week. I watched the Fantastic Four over the weekend; maybe the super hero powers rubbed off on me. More likely, I looked at where the barn owner was teaching a lesson, at the stallion in his stall, and at the cross ties ten steps away and realized how utterly ridiculous it was for me to refuse to walk a perfectly well-behaved horse ten steps.
So I decided I would do it.
Even better: the cross ties were full, so I ended up holding the stallion in the barn aisle for the ten or fifteen minutes it took the girl to clean his stall. He was a perfect gentleman the entire time.
I realize it’s not a huge deal to walk a horse ten steps and then stand there, but I’m darn proud of me.
September 2006
Twelve Month Plan: Oct. 1 Update
My monthly update on The Twelve Month Plan. Except in this case it’s only two weeks since I started the plan.
The goal: 8% of the total amount owed.
Actual amount paid off: 5%.
Bummer.
I did have a major car problem that resulted in a $$$ bill. That’s not an excuse: unexpected problems will always crop up. But on the plus side, I managed to pay the $$$ bill in full, so my total debt didn’t increase. It just didn’t decrease as much as I’d hoped it would.
Also, looking at my bank records, it’s clear that even with the auto bill I could have made the 8% goal if I had eaten out less and made one or two other changes in my food purchases.
No more lunches out? Sigh.
I like eating lunch out; giving them up is not going to be fun. Boy-oh-boy, does Wonder-Horse-To-Be have a lot to answer for already!
More Power
Arrh! Arrh! Arrh!
Clearly, somebody’s been watching a little too much Home Improvement. Ahem.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been concentrating on really riding the horse up into the bit. Not, let me be clear, creating a headset with the reins and then trying to catch up with the rear end. I start with a working-length rein and ride forward-forward-forward until the horse steps up through her back and reaches into the bit–she’s the one who takes up the slack in the reins, and, if the word doesn’t make you cringe, she’s the one who creates the frame.
All I have to do is maintain the contact and remind her to keep the energy coming forward.
“All” I have to do. *snort*
It’s a completely different trot when we get it: her step is larger and more powerful, but it feels like there is more room in the arena because she’s straight and listening to the aids. There’s time to adjust little things, without worrying about the big things. And although it can take a lot of work to get her to really move forward, once she’s there, maintaining is easy. (Not true of all horses, unfortunately. The super-cute gelding I rode this week will actually step up fairly well when you ask him to, but you better have legs of steel to keep him going forward. Ye gads!)
Although I know I’ve had this trot before, it’s been so long it feels like the first time again. And I finally have a glimpse of why upper-level riders can be so motionless on their horses: when the horse is engaged behind, and pushing through the back, and reaching into the contact, the rider doesn’t have to half-halt them to death to maintain the frame, or constantly cue with the leg to maintain straightness. The cues can be focused on creating the next movement and not correcting errors in this one. Right? I think so.
And it’s not at all the same thing as riding a hot, forward horse–in that case, you spend as much time rating the forward motion as you do trying to push a cooler horse up into real engagement. With the mare, who is a little cooler and takes convincing to get her to engage, once she’s engaged she actually needs very little leg to maintain. And the hotter gelding I rode actually slowed way down and started stretching out his stride once he engaged–vs. his earlier quick, frantic trot. But he took much more leg (reassurance) to maintain the engagement than the cooler horse. I doubt that’s true across the board for hot/quick vs. lazy/cool horses, but it was interesting to ride both types and feel real engagement on both types.
I also love how subtle my aids can be once the horse is engaged. We were reversing through the circle and it was finally a case where the “close the fingers on this hand, now close the fingers on the other hand” actually worked to create fluid, balanced turns and changes of bend in the reverse. Except for closing my fingers, the rest of my body could stay still and centered.
It’ll take time before I’m able to consistently maintain the back-to-front engagement, but it’s great to have had that feeling again. And to have had moments where I felt like the horse was truely on my aids and I was riding, not harrassing or nagging her through an exercise.
My trainer has been telling me forever to “love” the forward trot, and I finally really get why: the next step up from “forward” is “engaged,” and an engaged trot is something to truely, truely love.
So: The whole riding thing
I know you’re wondering: I talk big, but can I actually ride?
Well, yes. And no.
My background as a junior rider was solid enough: at home, I was training all Second Level dressage movements and riding around 3’ and 3’3” courses (hunter, jumper, and eq style). But in the show ring, I’d say I was solid at First Level and the 2’9” to 3’ fence heights. I did show Second my last year–a little before the Super Saint and I were ready, but we learned as we went. And I did show a few courses at 3’3” with one of my trainer’s horses, but they were remarkable only because my show nerves didn’t get The Horse of Many Names and I killed.
Then off to college, where I jumped around at 2’6”-2’9” forever. And ever. Until I was bored to tears with the fence height. Of course, there were mitigating circumstances, like my tendency to injure myself. And my irrational fear of fences higher than 3’. I am deeply sympathetic to horses who think there are alligators in the bushes, because I am convinced there are alligators in the gap between the 3’ and 3’3” holes on jump standards.
As all re-riders know, however, previous accomplishments mean jack squat after you take time off. It’s all very well to know how to ask for a shoulder-in, but it’s another thing to convince your hips to do this and your shoulders to do that while your arms do this other thing and your eyes are looking out the back of your head. My body’s just not convinced it’s really supposed to move like that.
I’ve also discovered that my injuries during college have taken a higher toll on me than I expected them to. The problem was my back: the problem is always my back. And the riding program at my college is not to blame. Actually, funny but true: the swim team is. I know. Everyone says swimming is great for your back. Well. I pulled my back out freshman year on the swim team and it’s never been the same since. Not that it’s ever been great; I think I was born with an eighty-year-old’s back.
But with three years off riding, my back had finally reached a point where it didn’t hurt all the time. Or even most of the time. It only hurt when I did something stupid, like attempting a head stand and then falling over onto a chair. Now that I’m riding again, I find I’m very protective of my newly-healed back. As much fun as jumping is, it’s also where I tend to injure myself: the horse jumps funny, or takes a long distance I’m not ready for, or looks at the distance I’m riding for and thinks Are you kidding me?! and stops so I can get an up-close-and-personal view of the insane distance… and suddenly there goes my back again.
Better not to jump. I realize injuries can happen on the flat, but the point is: they happen to me over fences. The only time you’re going to see me going over a jump now is if the horse I’m riding decides to exit the dressage ring at B.
Which brings us to where I am today, about a year after I started re-riding. I take lessons about once a week. It’s all I can manage right now. For the last year, I’ve mostly done walk-trot. Hee. I never expected to call myself a walk-trot rider again. It’s not that I can’t canter, or won’t canter, or don’t want to canter–I do–it’s that I want–and my instructor knows I want–to ride the horse correctly for dressage. As a teen, I think I “needed” to canter. You know: more speed, higher fences (but not too high! Alligators!). Right now, I “need” to find my right leg and stop trying to fix everything with the left rein.
Even though I’m a walk-trot rider (heh. No, really, I’m laughing. It’s just so funny to me), what I’m doing is far more technical/detailed that what I did at, say, college, where the emphasis was on long, low, and forward, and not so much on precision. It’s a different kind of progress, but it is indeed progress.
Not that you would have believed it if you had seen me after my last lesson. I got off and felt like that time I hadn’t been riding for a year and then took my cousin’s big, round quarter horse out for a three-hour trail ride. With no stirrups. And lots of trot. My cousin came home and found us standing in the yard. Wanted to know why I wasn’t getting off. I had to admit that I couldn’t lift my leg over the saddle’s cantle, since I didn’t have a stirrup to push up against and my thighs were done. Dead. Lying on the street somewhere in protest and awaiting relief from the U.N.
You’d think after a year of re-riding I wouldn’t be getting that sore still, but with only one lesson a week it’s an all-or-nothing deal. Besides, I’m sure it impresses all the junior riders when I gimp around the barn for the next hour. Shows how dedicated I am. Right?
Right.
Why Dressage Riders Make Good Webmasters
It’s because we’re anal.
What? Was I not supposed to say that? We’re precise, then. We like precision.
My problem, of course, is that I was never very good a precision. Take geometry, for example. It’s one of the most relevant school subjects to dressage, don’t you agree? All about figures and shapes and things.
My geometry books had lots of sketches of pool tables in them. You had to figure out the path to hit the little white ball so it’d bounce of the little red ball and send the little red ball into the pocket. My brother understood it all, of course. He’s a good pool player. I don’t even know what the little white ball is called.
But since I want very much to be anal, I am convinced the little drawings of pool tables have something to do with dressage. Angles, vectors, I don’t know what. All I know is that I turn the corner to go up the centerline trying to plot my path out so I’ll halt right at X, and suddenly I’m six feet past it and just left of center. Kind of like the way every time I hit the little white ball it goes off in a completely unexpected direction and puts one of my brother’s balls in the pocket.
I keep trying, though. It’s the anal thing. I can do a thousand turns up the centerline, if that’s what it takes to figure out the mysteriously correct angle. Vector. Whatever. The horse will do a thousand turns up the centerline, too, because she’s no dummy and knows that halt-at-x is the last thing that happens before she gets to go off and eat lunch.
The point is: persistence. Niggling. Refusing to let go of something until all the details are perfect.
I’m like that with web sites, too. Other people will look at their hits and go “Oh, goody! Lots of visitors today! Yawn! Bed time!” I look up “hits” and discover it’s a bloody useless statistic, so then I look up which statistics are useful, and then I do reverse I.P. lookups, and suddenly I’m an expert on site statistics.
I could get an entire barn full of hunter princesses who think dressage is more boring than watching paint dry to beg to be allowed to watch an entire day of Intro-level tests, if only they didn’t have to listen to me explain why hits are a useless statistic.
Now I just need to find out a way to translate all the techy details into normal speech so I don’t scare everyone off all the time. I’m sure there’s a book that explains how to do that. I bet it even has diagrams.
I’ll pay extra for diagrams.