Blog
September 2006
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.
When is it “ok” to buy a green horse?
I am not a fan of green riders–whether they are totally new to horses or are re-riders trying to re-learn what they used to know–buying green horses.
I want to buy a green horse.
I’m a re-rider.
Yes, I know. Green + Green = Black + Blue.
The thing is… (and isn’t there always a “The thing is…”?) I’ve never had a chance to really work with a green horse for an extended period. I’ve had plenty of small training opportunities, and I loved them, but never a greenie. It’s something I always wanted to do.
It’s just the danger of failing what could otherwise be a very nice horse scares me. And I know that’s a very real danger for re-riders, who know more than their bodies can actually do.
Six months ago, what I knew and what I could do weren’t on the same page. They weren’t even in the same book. Or library. Actually, I doubt they were in the same time zone. Right now, I’d like to think I’m back in the same book. It might be a very thick book, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same one. Only this time it has footnotes, as the things I used to know sort of “click” what what I’m doing now.
I’d just like to know what page I need to be on by this time next year so that I can get a green horse and not worry quite so much that it’s a completely inappropriate decision.
Where’s that magic checklist? You know the one: you get one point for each of the following skills that you can do right this moment, and a quarter point for each of the following skills that you used to do, plus five points for every day you would be able to work the green horse, plus ten points for each of those days that would be in lesson situations with an experienced trainer, and if your total points are X or more, you may buy a green horse.
The sad thing is this whole “green or school master” anxiety thing is sooooo misplaced. It’ll be at least a year before I can buy a horse of any color, and who knows where I’ll be, skill wise, this time next year? More importantly, who knows if I’ll even meet my financial goals? I shouldn’t worry about this question until I’m ready to start looking.
For all I know, all I’ll be able to afford will be a My Little Pony.
I wonder if there are any green My Little Ponies?
The Registry Problem
It’s a fact: in general, a registered horse is worth more than a non-registered horse. The paperwork makes it so.
I can only hope–never having owned a registered horse before–that the paperwork is very fancy with lots of charts, numbers, and acronyms.
And for those of us who can’t afford a fancy, registered horse, may I propose we start a TAHAR registry? Any horse with four legs will qualify, because “that’s a horse, all right.” We can make super-fancy papers with lots of italic and bold font, underlined statements, advanced mathematical calculations, and secret acronyms so we can talk in code to each other. We’ll have the best paperwork in the world!
Plus, to catch up with all those folks importing their horses, we’ll change the requirements for an “imported” vs. home-born horse. For example, while the people in my city are pretty normal, the people in the town forty-five minutes away are pretty foreign. They go on about “fresh air” all the time; I don’t think they really like the scent of gasoline that sort of hangs over the city in winter. Can you imagine?
Clearly, buying a horse from someone in the town is almost like buying a horse from a foreign country. I think it’s safe to say that such a horse was “imported.” Don’t you?
I’ll be honest, though–I don’t own a horse right now anyway. Although I’m sympathetic to the owner of Bitsy Lou, the knock-kneed, pigeon-toed daughter of Wild Jack, that sway-backed, one-eyed stallion that likes to “visit” all the mares in the neighborhood, and I do think Bitsy Lou deserves just as much paperwork as the fancy-schmancy warmblood, at the moment I’d love any horse at all, papers or no papers. I’d even take Wild Jack’s reject son, the one that will never amount to much.
In this country of “Hello? Why does she get that?! I want one of those! Excuse me, Congressman, I’m being discriminated against! Change the laws! Get me one of those!”, I am, well, feeling discriminated against. I don’t see why my lack of a horse to own should preclude me from a registry.
So I propose a second new registry: for Shanks Ponies. There could be smalls, mediums, and larges. I would probably be a large small or a small medium. But I’m pretty short. And there could be “typey” classes, for the long-limbed, lean girls and women, and “stock” classes, for those of us with, well, draft-type “bones” and “muscle.” The registry will even come complete with drama: if one person’s Shanks’ Pony is prone to getting Charley Horses, are they are a “true” pony, or are the Charley Horses evidence of a major fault? Should they be penalized? Do we create separate classes for them so that they won’t be discriminated against and can win their own ribbons? And so on. I’m sure it will take years to iron out all the minor details.
In the meantime, for just $99.99 plus shipping and handling, I’d be happy to create a fancy-schmancy certificate for your TAHAR horse or your personal Shanks’ Pony. For only $49.99 more, I’ll include an Import Certificate of Authenticity on your TAHAR (pending proof that you trailered the horse more than thirty minutes after buying it). And for just $5,000, you’ll receive a free round-trip ticket to the nearest foreign country so that your Shanks’ Pony can be certified as Internationally Competitive.