Flirting with the dark side
In case I never mentioned it, I board Ro at a barrel racing barn.
There are two of us who ride dressage and a third who sometimes rides hunter.
Everyone else? Barrel racers.
This is awesome. There is no warmup ring in the world that will worry Ro, because she’s already accustomed to horses, well, barreling past her.
They are actively trying to convert us, especially since they went to a race recently and saw an Arab kicking ass. They are even more convinced than ever that Ro wants to run barrels.
My “but she’s a dressage horse!” defense lost any semblance of solid ground today when my instructor, watching us gallop around a little (we were supposed to be cantering, but I digress…), pointed out that Ro was going faster than anyone else in the arena and could probably run barrels.
So I give in.
Ro’s first event, her debut into competition, is going to be a barrel race.
The barn is having a party in early February and running a barrel race as part of that, so we’ll at least go trot the barrels. We might canter them if I’m feeling brave. I hear that at barrel races, people win money instead of ribbons. The idea is appealing.
They are also bringing in some cows to do some roping, so it’s possible we may not make it into the arena at all. Ro has seen cows before, but I’m not sure what she’s going to think of them in the chute by the arena. Hopefully she’ll be interested and not freaked out by them.
If she’s ok with them in the chute, I’m going to try and get her into the arena with the cows. No roping for us—I don’t have the eye/hand coordination, and the cow would probably pull Ro over—but I think it would be fun to herd some cows around. At a walk. A slow, sedate walk.
Cross-training is good for the body and mind, right?
Let’s see what happens when a dressage queen and her princess pony go western for a day…
Eddo Hoekstra Clinic Part II: Video Snippet
After chomping at the bit to get a hold of the clinic video, I was able to pick it up today.
For some reason, I thought having half a dozen media players—most of which claimed to have editing capabilities—plus a stand-alone program or two would mean I could, you know, do some editing.
Two hours later, I managed to get a very short clip with video quality that didn’t completely suck (the DVD is great—clipped-out versions, not so much).
I give up, give in, and generally never want to go through this again. This clip may be all you get from the clinic.
She’s been under saddle (somewhat inconsistently) for about six months now, and this is only her second time off the property. Watch the difference in her trot from the first 3-5 seconds and the rest of the time—towards the end, she really starts swinging and moving like a real horse.
She’s such a good girl!
Eddo Hoekstra Clinic Part I: Obervations
Sonesta Farms held a clinic with Eddo Hoekstra this weekend. I audited some sessions on all four days (Thurs - Sun) and had sessions on Ro on Sat/Sun. I had video taken of my rides, and I’ll put the highlights up once I get it.
Some general observations:
He wanted the riders to do less but do it correctly and allow the horses to figure things out for themselves. He told several riders to use less or quieter aids, and he was very consistent about asking riders to keep their hands upright and close together. Most riders who wore spurs were told to use them less. On Ro, I was told to use only my leg right below the knee when asking her to straighten and move into the outside rein—not my entire lower leg. You could see all the horses respond to this. As the riders got quieter and softer, so did the horses.
The word of the weekend was “rebalance.” There was some discussion among the auditors early on about what he meant by that, and the general consensus was “half halt.” I don’t think so. When he said “rebalance,” you could see the riders fixing their position first and, sometimes, also half halting. The few times he said just half halt, the riders would half halt without fixing themselves. By the time I rode on Saturday, I was pretty sure that rebalance meant “fix yourself first, then the horse,” and that held true through my session with Ro—every time he said “rebalance,” I had crept out of position. A half halt might be part of the overall rebalancing, but the two are not synonymous.
The phrase of the weekend was “If you were in a car, you’d be in a ditch right now.” He very much wanted riders to maintain the pattern no matter what the horse did. They could miss a transition, get a transition late, or just flub everything up entirely, but he wanted them on whatever line the exercise was supposed to be on. If you were on an octagon, you needed to stay on the octagon. If you were on a circle, stay on the circle. If you were going down the long side, you needed to stay on the long side—not wander into the quarter line.
If the horse offered something unexpected to the riders, he wanted the riders to differentiate between “no” and “not now.” He never wanted the horse punished for breaking into a canter. You let them canter on and then come back to the trot. If you ask for the canter and get the wrong lead, you continue on—especially if it’s counter canter and harder for the horse. If you are at the walk and the horse trots, you continue the exercise in the trot—but make sure it is a connected, purposeful trot. You didn’t go on and on in the unexpected gait, but you went on long enough to acknowledge what the horse wanted before saying, “But this isn’t what *I* want, so we’re going to try again.” It was the difference between constantly shutting a horse down so they would be afraid to offer more later and negotiating with the horse so that things did not go entirely off track.
But it did not mean the horse could blow through the riders’ aids and do whatever they wanted. On horses that were consistently blowing through the aids, he often turned to a series of rapid-fire exercises designed to get the horse and rider thinking and back together again. Although horses may be naturally good at some things and those things are fun to work on, you can’t entirely ignore the things that are hard for the horse just because the horse doesn’t want to do them.
He also wanted riders to take risks and make things more like fun and play. One of the first comments he made to me was that Ro wasn’t a baby horse and I needed to sit back and ride her like a real horse. With other riders, he wanted them to push for more in the gaits. Or he wanted riders to just try something for the fun of it. He thought Ro could be doing flying changes in a couple weeks—not schooling them routinely, but he bet that if I asked just to see what happened, she would give them to me.
The idea of risk tasking goes back to the rider doing less and negotiating between no, not now, and yes—the rider needs to keep doors open for the horse to do things. Maybe unexpected things—he likes a forward horse who isn’t afraid to be a little naughty and test what it can do with the open doors.
And if you take a risk and things go wrong? You rebalance and reconsider the situation—maybe repeat the exercise, maybe find a different exercise to achieve the end you originally wanted. As he said to several riders when things went wrong: “You are just as close to something you do want as something you don’t want.”
Some of the best rides to watch were not the riders who were finessing things at whatever level they were working at, but the ones who had things going “wrong” all over the place—very energetic horses, horses blowing through the aids, etc. He had the riders work with that energy, or he had them focus on the horse/rider communication, and by the end of the session there were some very dramatic changes in their way of going. Whatever went wrong could also go right—and he got the horses and riders there by never shutting the horse down entirely. Make sure the rider is correct, make sure the horse is balanced, straight, and forward, and everything else is variables you can play with from moment to moment until you get to the place you want to be at.
Show Nerves Poster Child
We went to a schooling show this weekend—low key, no pressure, no worries. Right?
Yeah, right.
This is me we’re talking about.
Warmup? Fabulous. We’re riding on clouds. We head out to the show ring when I’m two horses out. I watch the current horse in the ring, mumble an excuse, and retreat back to warmup.
Ah. My brain. I knew I left it somewhere. I put it back in, and suddenly I can remember how to breathe again. Ok. No worries.
Back out to the ring we go, as the competitor before me starts their test. I stare fixedly into the distance. A friend comes over to distract me. Apparently, I look a little tense. That’s a nice way of saying I look like someone has just delivered a note that says North Korea is training missiles on my home, and would I like to prepare a suitable response? It may just be a Training level test to you, but it’s a war zone to me.
In reality, I’m trying to remember if breathing is one of those autonomous body functions and, if so, why I appear to have stopped. The other rider finishes her test, and I wander to A. The photographer starts talking to me. I suspect this was an act of kindness on her part: make the rider talk, before she faints from lack of oxygen.
The ride was not fantastic. The score was not fantastic. I got a blue ribbon, but that’s what happens when you’re the only one in the class.
However—I remembered the test. I almost went off course once, but caught myself in time. There were moments when I was able to bring myself together and ride a bit, instead of steering the horse with the reins and hoping we made it from letter to letter.
And that, frankly, I count as a huge success.
I knew and expected that show nerves would kill me, so even moments of regrouping is a positive sign. All I wanted from the show was a low key non disaster, and I got that. I mean: the ride itself was kind of a disaster, but I only left my brain in the warmup ring. I didn’t lose it entirely. I think there’s something to be said for that.
People were commiserating with me about the score, but this weekend was emphatically not about the score. I needed to get back in the show ring, and I needed to know that it was not a big deal. I accomplished that much, and the warmup really was fantastic.
What I need now is more of the same, until I stop worrying about the judge at C and start carrying over the relaxation from the warmup to the show ring. I’m sure that will come with time. And, perhaps, with a properly timed beer before my classes…
Fix it and forget it
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 necks. 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 am reconsidering my plan to be the Crazy Lady who lives alone on the hill with her cats. I think I’ll be the Crazy Lady who lives alone on the hill with her goldfish, instead. It’d take some really determined goldfish to murder me in my bed.
This anecdote was supposed to transition smoothly into the topic I really want to talk about, but it doesn’t seem to be working out that way. Don’t you hate it when you can’t articulate the train of thought that led you to a certain subject? I’m just a bit unsettled by the cats.
They were drooling. Aren’t you supposed to die of natural causes before you get eaten by your pets?
Anyway.
I have a habit of agonizing over things I can’t do anything about, especially if they are things in the future that will probably never come to pass. But I don’t pass up a good chance to agonize over something that already happened if it presents itself.
Chocolate helps with the first problem, but it was riding that helped me sort out the second.
One of my biggest challenges at shows was understanding that if something goes wrong in the middle of a course or test, it was not the end of the world. You fix whatever the problem was and then forget it—and ride the rest of the course like everything was perfect. I didn’t really believe in the “fix it and forget it” mentality until I started riding Dressage.
I think it was the time I blew a movement and scored… oh… a two… and then regrouped and scored an eight in the next movement that finally convinced me one mistake was not the end of the world. My trainer had been telling me that for ages, but it was seeing the 2 and 8 next to each other on the score sheet that convinced me.
After that, I was better in the hunter ring, too. We just didn’t realize how much better I’d gotten at moving on—until one Eq on the Flat class.
Generally, the eq classes were dominated by two riders and the rest of us scrapped for third and fourth. But I went into the ring that day and I knew I was on—everything was perfect. (If this were a TV show, things would go all cloudy and wavy and then you’d get a gold-tinted view of Perfect Me with even the buckles on my spur straps sparkling and orchestral music in the background. Aren’t you glad this isn’t TV?) As we lined up, I allowed myself to hope I’d actually won the class.
As they called ribbons (starting with eighth), I became more and more confident. Finally, three of us were left and the first place ribbon was going to be called. I knew there was no way I could have been out of the ribbons with that ride, and I almost started walking out of the lineup when the announcer called “In first place…”
I was that confident.
Good thing I didn’t actually walk out of line. I didn’t place.
I exited the ring, expecting my trainer to explain what had happened. She asked me what had happened. Two other trainers came over to ask what happened, because they had me pegged as the winner. The girl who won wanted to know what happened because, from what she had seen, she thought I had the class too.
Later in the day, my trainer came over to me and said, “So, why didn’t you tell me you lost a stirrup in the eq class?”
“I what?” I said, now even more confused than before.
“You dropped your stirrup. That’s why you lost.”
I had, in fact, dropped my stirrup. My outside stirrup. As we went into the corner by the judge’s stand. For half a stride. I don’t think I even consciously registered it—I picked it back up and just kept riding.
I looked at my trainer, slightly horrified. “I forgot,” I said, trying to explain why I hadn’t been able to explain what went wrong. After all, I knew losing a stirrup in an eq class is auto elimination, so I should have come out of the ring knowing exactly what went wrong. “I really did. I fixed it, and then I forgot all about it.”
In the end, the placing in that class is irrelevant. I have other blue ribbons on my wall and, frankly, I couldn’t give you any details about the ride that won them, beyond what class it was in. And only that because it’s written on the back. But I do remember that eq ride—not just the hubbub afterward, but the feeling of the ride itself. That’s memory is better than a blue ribbon.
Plus, I learned valuable lessons that day. Like: When you are winning a class, the judge has nothing better to do than watch you and wait for you to screw up. Also: “Forget it” does not actually mean “forget it.” It means “Move on, but take note so we can discuss what happened later.”
Ah. Nuances. Someone should have said.