Blog
September 2006
The Anti-One Person Horse
Some people have horses that go better for them than any other rider. Their horses nicker when they walk into the barn, or their horses run up to a pasture gate. If they leave on vacation, when they come home their horses bounce around in a tizzy-fit because they are so excited to have their owner back.
I went on vacation. When I returned, the Super Saint yawned at me.
I don’t mean to imply the Super Saint and I didn’t have any sort of bond or special connection. In fact, we had a deep and meaningful relationship built on intense conversations. They went something like this:
Me: Let’s do a shoulder-in.
Super Saint: You want me to counter-canter?
Me: No, let’s shoulder-in.
Super Saint: Oh, leg yield!
Me: Ah, no. Try again?
Super Saint: Are you sure you wouldn’t rather play rodeo queen?
Me: Actually, you know, I’d sort of like to do a shoulder-in, if that’s all right with you.
Super Saint: Oh. Right. Shoulder-in. That’s that thing where I spin around on my haunches as fast as I can, right?
And so on. Eventually we would do a shoulder-in, but not until he had exhausted all means of misunderstanding my aids. It was in part his natural tendency to play schoolmaster: he’d do anything you’d ask him to, if you asked him exactly right. But it was a game with him, too. My instructor swears he winked at her once or twice before offering up his “alternative” interpretations of the requested movement.
I didn’t believe her until the day I watched a novice rider take him around a course at a schooling show.
If he were a one-person horse, we could all assume that when I schooled him he would be perfect, and, while he might take the novice rider around the course, he wouldn’t sparkle for her the way he did for me.
The reality, however, is that I schooled the Super Saint to discuss lead changes. You have to understand: he didn’t particularly like to do lead changes. Well, that’s not true. Put him in a dressage ring and he liked to do a lead change before every canter-trot transition, just to prove he could. But he didn’t particularly like to do lead changes outside the dressage ring.
So we talked for a bit, and then the novice rider jumped on to warm up, and it was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to get any lead changes in the ring. But it was a novice show, and the idea was for her to have a fun day showing. Into the ring they went.
Down the first line, with Super Saint loping along at his own speed and finding the distances for the rider. Around the corner, with Super Saint slowing to a crawl because the rider completely dropped her leg–but because he was the Super Saint, he didn’t break from the canter. He just, you know, conserved his energy. I’ve seen Western Pleasure mounts trot faster than he was cantering, come to think of it.
And up the diagnol, while I watched on the rail and prayed he’d magically pick up the correct lead over the fence. Or at least keep a balanced counter-canter through the corner so the novice rider could have a confident ride.
Of course he landed on the wrong lead. Of course he did.
Then he looked at me on the rail. And he winked at me.
And did a flying lead change.
Awwww. Wasn’t he sweet? Taking care of his novice rider like that. Perfect show horse. Auto changes. Gotta love him.
Want to know how many lead changes he didn’t offer me during the Open Show that started the next day?
He was the Super Saint, and I loved him, but geeze. What in the world do you call a horse who behaves perfectly for everyone but you?
August 2006
Typical Dressage Test
Who says I can’t ride dressage?
- A enter working trot, haunches left.
- X transition to a walk, take six steps, halt parked out behind.
- Proceed working trot, haunches right.
- C spook left.
- E oval left, 18.7 meters by 22 meters.
- Between K and A pick up the counter canter, trot, and pick up the correct lead.
- A break canter.
- F resume canter.
- B oval left 23 m by 19 m.
- Between the centerline and B, have horse collapse on his front end into a shuffling trot. Pretend this"transition” was intentional.
- C shuffling walk.
- C-H more shuffling walk, with a jog step or two.
- H-(squiggly line)-the general vicinity of X-(squiggly line)-F free walk, long rein. Show a marked difference in stride, including four jog steps, six jig steps, an extended walk, a collected walk, and a Western peanut-rolling amble through the country side.
- F-A bolt forward.
- A transition downwards into a high-stepping carriage-horse sort of trot.
- E circle right twenty meters, displaying canter-trot transitions every fifth step.
- Between the centerline and B, halt. Proceed collected trot.
- A down centerline, shoulder-fore.
- X halt square, fall off in shock.
On Fashionable Attire in the Show Ring
I don’t do fashion. I don’t buy fashion, I don’t understand fashion, and most of the time I just don’t see the differences people are talking about. In the hunter ring, for example, rail birds will critique the shade of this rider’s breeches compared to that rider’s breeches. I’m sorry? Aren’t they both some sort of puke green color?
So far as I can tell, hunter fashion involves dressing exactly the same as everyone else, unless you want to be daring and stand out. Then you dress exactly the same as everyone else but a shade or two lighter (or darker). However, don’t do this unless you are certain you will put down a spectacular round, because otherwise you’ll call more attention than you’d like to your faults. Everyone will talk about “that girl with the more-tan-than-green breeches who chipped the lattice gate.” You’ll die of shame and never be able to enter a show ring again.
I don’t see it, really, but then sometimes I will point out a perfectly nice blue shirt someone is wearing and they will look confused for a moment and then say, “My shirt’s green.” So you’ll be entirely unsurprised, I’m sure, to hear that my first showing experience was a disaster, attire-wise. Even I can see that now, looking back at pictures. And if I can see it….
Let’s just say that a friend heard I was showing and assured me she had some old show clothes she thought might fit me. Did “old” ring any alarm bells? It should have. Let’s also say that she kindly offered to braid my horse for me, to save me the cost. And, just for laughs, let’s say she had ridden dressage back in the day and I was going into the hunter ring.
Now, I didn’t know that there was a difference between hunter clothes and dressage clothes, so it never occured to me to mention it to my trainer. I’m sure my trainer wished I had, but the first clue she got that all was not well in Proper Attire Land was when she peeked in on my friend’s braiding job and saw fifteen fat button braids.
And then I presented myself, and to my trainer’s credit, she didn’t faint. Boots several inches too short and too large? Check. White breeches? Oh yes. A white short-sleeved shirt? Yup. A jockey skull-cap helmet with a black satin cover? Definitely. And to complete the picture? A dressage-cut short coat with big gold buttons and a velvet collar.
The only thing right in my turnout, you might say, was the fact that the helmet’s cover was black and not a neon pink leopard print.
I suspect some kind parent hunted down all the more experienced junior riders in the barn and threatened to flay them alive if they made fun of me. I do know someone hunted up some spare tan breeches and a velvet helmet. There was nothing to be done about the coat. Or its velvet collar.
The pony and I won a couple of classes, which just goes to show that neat and tidy in a novice show was still more important than fashion trends. Or else the judge saw the coat and felt nostalgic for her own beginner/novice days, when such coats might have been in fashion.
After the show, my trainer quietly took my parents and I aside and tactfully suggested that we speak with her before purchasing a coat or breeches. The coat hung around in my room until the day my new show coat arrived, at which point I was able to compare the two. I’m not saying I understood, then, why one coat was so bad and the other was so great, but I was able to notice minor details, like the fact that my new show coat didn’t have big gold buttons or a velvet color. I filed these details away for later, and later, when I understood that the only difference, really, was that someone, somewhere decided one type of coat was “bad” while the other was “good,” I shrugged and filed the offending velvet collared coat in a box in the attic. You never know: it could come back into fashion some day. It even has a red lining, and I hear colored linings are the in thing now.
Ad Terminology
I’ve finally figured out the terminology in horse sales ads:
- Bombproof! Our thirteen-year-old rides him everywhere!
- Our thirteen-year-old has been riding since age two and wins classes against pro riders.
- Bred to _____
- Looks good on paper but lacks competitiveness.
- Champion!
- Six years ago, at a local show.
- Color like you wouldn’t believe!
- One white spot on belly. Added $5,000 to his price.
- Could Excel In Anything
- No idea where his talents lie.
- Fancy Mover
- So much chrome, you won’t notice he paddles.
- Knows his job and loves to work.
- As long as his job description reads “eat more hay.”
- Loss of job/spouse/home forces sale. Would not part with him otherwise!
- I will call you every night for updates.
- Lots of Chrome!
- One white coronet. Made you look!
- Must sell as I have too many horses and cannot develop this one to his full potential.
- He’s the worst in the barn and I have better prospects on which to focus.
- No vices! Loads/clips like a dream—perfect for the farrier!
- After sedation.
- Perfect Junior/Amateur Horse!
- A few quirks, nothing serious. You have a trainer, right?
- Price Reduced
- Turns out no one wants to pay an extra $5,000 for one white spot on his belly.
- Price Will Increase With Training
- I’m keeping track of every penny spent.
- Will Take You To The Top
- Of your local show circuit.
And my personal favorite:
- This Year’s Champion in Everything! Wins Everything!
- I just bought a horse that can beat this one with her eyes closed. See you in the show ring!
Unethical Tack Store Owners
To clear up any confusion, I’m not suggesting that some tack store owners are unethical. They all are.
I mean, surely it’s unethical to place rows and rows of saddle pads where horse-less lesson riders will see them and think, “Well, I can’t have a horse right now, but that blue/pink/green/funky patterned one will look great on the schoolie I’m riding now.” It’s worse than dealers standing on street corners offering junkies a quick fix.
Or what about their habit of carrying only a limited stock of blankets? Don’t talk to me about space restrictions; this is clearly a carefully-considered plot. Owner buys Black Beauty a $300 winter blanket in their barn colors. Three days later, Black Beauty tears the blanket up in the pasture, by means that no detective agency will ever be able to discover, and owner returns to the tack store… to find out that, so sorry, there aren’t any more blankets in Black Beauty’s size in the owner’s colors. However, there’s this lovely blanket in a clashing color…. A busted blanket is a genuine emergency, so the owner has no choice. Clashing blanket it is, along with a new halter/lead rope to match clashing blanket. And possibly some polo wraps and a saddle pad or two. Before you know it, the owner’s barn colors have changed. All because the tack store owner didn’t stock their blanket size in the right color. Unethical, I’m telling you.
Or the used-car-salesmanship abilities of the tack store owners–those can’t be legal. I own a pair of sherberty polo wraps now that no thinking person would voluntarily buy. But the tack store owner saw me looking at saddle covers. The next thing I knew, I was walking out of the store with a very nice patterend saddle cover and the sherberty polo wraps to match one of the cover’s accent colors. The details of that transaction are still fuzzy, despite years of attempted hypnotherapy, and I’ve been advised to accept that the sherbert wraps are part of my life (the saddle carrier may be as well, but there are some boxes in the attic I am afraid to open) and that I should be grateful they are good quality and didn’t break down the moment I drove out of the tack store parking lot.
You can’t convince me the tactics tack store owners are ethical. I know better, and I have the wraps to prove it.