Blog
October 2006
Blowing the budget, for a good cause
We all know I’m on a budget, saving for The Wonder Horse To Be. I even cut back my book buying, which is a Big Deal. I buy books like other people buy cigarettes.
I’ve also been on a long, slow lifestyle adjustment. This time last year, I was fifty pounds overweight. Not a national crisis, I agree, but I could feel the effect of the extra weight in my back. Not good.
Also, I went to put on my field boots and they didn’t fit. Not even close. Ditto my full chaps. One or two other things convinced me that I would be happier if I could lose even forty pounds.
Because I know myself well, I knew a quick, dramatic diet was not the answer. It had to be the whole “lifestyle” thing, and I don’t change habits easily. I knew this would be a long, slow battle.
Given the “long, slow” bit, you’d think I’d have gone out and bought some temporary field boots or half chaps or something, right? Oh no. See, I keep my old boots and chaps in the closet and tell myself “I’ll wear these again some day, so no need to buy new ones.” Some people have “skinny” jeans; I have “skinny” boots and chaps.
I’ve been riding with sherberty pink polos wrapped around my legs.
Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. If I had to go the polo route, at least I could have shelled out ten dollars for cheap black ones, right? I mean, I hate the sherberty pink color. I think it was supposed to be a regular reminder of what I was working for, but… oy. I’m lucky my instructor just let it slide. I’m lucky the junior riders thought it was a cool fashion statement.
It’s been a year since I started this weight-loss thing. My boots and chaps still don’t fit. But!
But I have lost twenty pounds. A pant size and a half (I’m in that icky in-between stage). An inch and a half off my calves. I couldn’t fit into extra-wide half chaps last fall; I tried on large half chaps at the store this weekend and they fit.
I just couldn’t help it. I bought the chaps. They are purrrrrrrrty: full-grain leather, close contact, brand name $$$ chaps.
At least when I blow the budget I blow it big. And for a good cause.
In which I ride a school horse and feel like an idiot
I rode the Fourth level school master this week. I always feel like I’m going to break him, which is ridiculous. The horse not only has my number, he also has my address, banking information, and email passwords. The only one about to be broken in this situation is me. Fortunately, it’s only my pride we’re talking about.
Case in point: the very simple instruction to “turn left.” I couldn’t do it.
The problem is that he’s a school master, through and through. Very well trained–so he does exactly what you ask for. Exactly. What’s asked. Not what I want, even though I’m sure he knew I didn’t really want to do a quarter spin, reining-horse style. Or a turn on the haunches. Or a turn on the forehand.
Good grief. Turning is one of the things you learn in your first lesson, right after the instructor says, “Here is the horse. These are his ears; this is his hind end” and right before she says, “I did tell you that he would jump over that oxer if you didn’t turn. Now, would you like to get up out of the dust, hop back on, and turn this time?”
Eventually, we did turn. Fortunately. I don’t think my ego could have handled it if we hadn’t. It’s bad enough that I can’t get him to halt properly. Stop, yes. But he parks out behind like an Arab halter horse. Which would be fine, if he were an Arab halter horse. But he’s a dressage school master, and he snickered all the way back to his stall. My goat, the cows, the chickens… heck, the whole farm. He’s got it all.
He’s just a very different ride than the two horses I normally ride. They’re greener, so we can muddle through things together. If my aids are a little fuzzy, it’s ok–because their responses are a little imprecise. The school master? Exactly what’s asked. As soon as it’s asked.
It means I know immediately if my aids are wrong–and I know immediately if they are right. Instant feedback is a good thing. It also helps that he is so clear about what is right and wrong; there is no middle ground. It’ll make a difference when I go back to the other two horses. One would hope, anyway. I also realized my seat and legs are definitely better than they were last time I rode him–even on my once-a-week schedule, there IS progress.
Progress is always good. Maybe next time I’ll even be able to halt.
Winter. What’s so wonderful about it?
I didn’t grow up in the Great White Winter Wonderland, but I spent enough years here to know how to deal with ice and snow. I used to laugh at my Southern friends for being winter wimps. They still talk about my “miracle drive”–a whole seventy miles in three inches of snow. Three inches! It was practically Armageddon! Heh. Dude: you put the car in a lower gear and you drive. It ain’t hard.
I can’t believe I just typed out “dude.”
Anyway. Although I escaped the Winter Wonderland for seven or eight years, I’m back. And it’s that miserable time of the year again, when the snow starts creeping down the mountain and the school buses start carrying their snow chains with them and advertisers start pushing engine block heaters and remote starters. (Other people call this “Fall.” We call it “Winter-proofing Season.”)
Everyone else just pulls out a jacket and gets on with life.
Me? I’ve been corrupted by the years in warmer climes. I’ve pulled out two jackets, six pairs of wool socks, the warmest skiing gloves I could find (perfect for barn work, by the way), two wool hats, all the scarves I own, and I’m considering buying all the silk underwear from the local sports store. What I can’t wear, I can stuff in the sleeves of my jackets for extra insulation.
And I’m still cold.
There isn’t even any snow on the ground! How in the world am I going to survive when it hits that “my eyeballs hurt” temperature? (That’s a real temperature, by the way. It’s colder than the temperature that makes you put on a knit hat even though you look like an idiot with a pom-pom on your head, and warmer than the temperature where you throw a cup of hot coffee on the ground and it freezes before it hits the sidewalk.)
Fortunately, I work from home. Most of the time, I won’t have to out into the deadly cold. But I am going to have to go to the barn regularly. So, just in case: if I stop posting for any length of time, someone call the barn. Tell them to check the fenceline. I’ll be under the unnaturally large drift. They’ll recognize me by the large “SOS: Need ticket to Florida” sign I’ll have carved into the snow right before I died.
Missing Project Pony
I tend to be very reserved–I don’t like talking about myself. Which… explains why I blog? I know, I know. It makes no sense to me either.
So when I went off to college, I didn’t tell the riding instructors that the Super Saint had just been put to sleep. Naively, I thought I could handle the grief on my own time and it wouldn’t affect my riding. And because karma has a sick sense of humor, the first horse I rode at college was a tall, bay Thoroughbred whose name was a variation of the Super Saint’s and whose personality was close enough to the Super Saints that I was in tears by the end of the lesson.
Yay, first impressions with new instructors!
After the obligatory “you have to tell us these things” not-quite-a-lecture, I think my instructor went through the barn and found the least Super-Saint-like horse there was for my next lesson.
Enter the Project Pony. Actually, I don’t remember if she was officially my “project” or anything like that–for all I know, I was her project. I do know that she was new to the program and a little overwhelmed. My memory is hazy, but I believe the details were something like: her owner had only ridden her outdoors, the mare had never been in a group lesson situation before, and the mare had only been ridden by her owner. It’s a big step from that situation to an indoor college lesson program, where fifteen horses could share the ring when it rained and the mare was expected to have a new rider every day.
Project Pony was… erm… anxious. I was… erm… an emotional wreck. Together, we were our own little group therapy session.
The first day I rode her, the rest of my lesson was doing small jumps. Project Pony and I pranced around the arena until they were done, and then we walked between two jump standards. Well, no. First we bolted between them. Then we did a hunter horse’s version of passage through them. We probably pranced once or twice. Eventually, we walked through them.
For the rest of the year, I rode Project Pony in most of my lessons. She settled in quite nicely. And once she settled, she turned out to be a decent horse for advanced beginner riders–which meant she wasn’t supposed to be used in my lessons.
When my sophomore year started, they pried my resisting fingers out of Project Pony’s redheaded mane and put me on different horses. I begged, I pleaded, I bribed: I still got thrown on different horses. Every once in a while, one of her other riders would fry poor Project Pony’s brain, and then I got to ride her again. Every once in a while, I’d reinjure my back, or something else would happen to me, and for my physical or mental health I’d get to ride Project Pony again. Fortunately, only one of us was a wreck on any given day. I suspect, however, that we both could have been a wreck and it would have worked out all right. We just would have stood in a corner of the arena going “It’s ok… tell me it’s ok… it’s ok… tell me it’s ok… are we going to die if we trot? tell me we won’t die… I won’t die if you don’t die… it’s ok… tell me it’s ok…” at each other.
I don’t know why I’m so nostalgic this week. She’s just a little chestnut mare, you know?
And I’ve written myself into a corner where the only way out is some profound-sounding Hallmark kind of ending, and I’m not a Hallmark ending kind of gal. Neither is the Project Pony.
So I’ll just end with a general salute to apples and to Project Pony’s “What do you mean, I can’t have the whole thing all at once?” expression when I fed them to her.
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.