Archives :: Flashbacks

Well, ok. It’s a watercolor, not a photo. Does it count that it’s based on a real photo?

Behold, the Super Saint:

I was going through some paperwork and found some of my old dressage scorecards.

On the one hand: “All the irregularity made this very hard to score.” Er… oops. You know it’s bad when the judge can’t even muster up a “nicely turned out pair” consolation comment.

This has been one of Those weeks. I don’t think I need to say anything more.

So a few half-posts that I’ve been trying to make, and then I’m off to bed for five hours before I get back to work. Again. (Ah… life. What am I whining about?)

I woke up this morning with all three cats staring at me. At my jugular, to be precise. Tweedledee was perched very vulture-like on the night stand. The other two were practically tying bibs around their neck. I woke up because Tweedledumb raked his claws against the wall and the sound was not unlike that made when sharpening a knife.

They ran out of food yesterday, you see, and missed dinner. That’s completely my fault, but let’s be honest: they’re all a bit fat and missing one meal wasn’t going to kill them. I never thought that missing one meal might kill me, but perhaps I should have: these are the Mob Cats who Disappeared Nessie, after all.

I rode bareback today. It’s not something I get much opportunity to do, but I enjoy it. (Back in the day, with Super Saint, I could have ridden bareback. Well, “could have” in the sense that it was, yes, possible. But Super Saint, bless his TB heart, had TB shark withers. I didn’t want to ride him bareback.)

I didn’t discover the joys of bareback until a year or two ago. I was staying with my grandmother to help her for a few months, and one of my cousins has several horses. He offered to let me ride one of them, and I took him up on it.

Back in the day, I took Super Saint to a dressage clinic. Within five minutes, the clinician said, “Oh, so you’re a hunter rider.”

Oh, so yes I am. And?

The clincian’s point was that, since I jumped at home all the time, I could do the cavalletti exercise first because I’d be the most comfortable with it. What, you thought this would be about the differences between a hunter seat and a dressage seat?

When I first bought the Super Saint, I was fifteen and thrilled to have my own horse. I’d stand outside his stall with a goofy grin on my face and wonder when this bonding thing was going to happen. He, meanwhile, was thrilled to have fresh hay and water and stood inside the stall, probably wondering when I was going to go away and let him eat in peace.

Sometimes you get that instantaneous bond–the one complete with two souls running towards each other in a field of flowers, an extravagent sound track, and a pyrotechnics display to shame all of Broadway. The Project Pony and I were like that.

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.”

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!

It is early fall and you are preparing to head off to college–a college you chose, in part, because it has an excellent riding team. During a visit to the college some months before, you were told that it is rare for freshmen to make the team, but it can happen in exceptional cases.

You are competitive on your state’s rated circuit, winning your share of show championships and year-end awards. You are a solid 3’ rider, but–as your at-home trainer has pointed out–since you haven’t jumped much over 3’, you’re qualified for some of the lower intercollegiate divisions. You are, in fact, in an enviable position for making the intercollegiate team, since many of the best riders won’t qualifiy for the low divisions.