Vulcan Mind Meld
In preparation for next month’s schooling show, and because so far I have not found a test whose instructions include “Between A and the eighth time you pass A again [transition],” I thought I should work on transitions in tonight’s lesson. I am pretty sure they are supposed to happen in less time and space than it takes a VW bus to accelerate from 0 to eighty.
Since promptness in a transition isn’t much good without quality, we started by focusing on quality. Things started coming together. Not surprisingly, as they got better, they also became more prompt. Walk-trot. Trot-walk. Working-lengthened-working trot. And… canter.
Canter right went ok. Better than usual. Mini conference with my instructor. Reverse.
Right, I thought. And now we’ll…
The horse’s owner swears he canters when you just think about it. I swear he canters on the fourth attempt, and only to prove he’s capable and I’m an uncoordinated monkey.
But that transition was the Vulcan Mind Meld. I think it took three strides before I shut my mouth and my brain caught up with my body.
...canter. What? We’re already cantering? How… wha… I… connection! connection! Leg! Focus!
So now that we know what’s possible, the trick will be to work on getting that sort of quality consistently.
And, um, keeping my mouth closed when it happens. Otherwise, I can just see the judge’s comments on the test: “Try not to look shocked when things go right.”
The Whirlwind Catchup
In the interest of brutal honesty, I need to clarify a thing or two.
On my placeholder page I said something about half pass and shoulder in. And then I put something about hearing “show quality” during a lesson? There might have been an implication there that the shoulder-in and/or half pass were show quality.
We were, um, talking about a Training Level trot.
*cough*
*embarrassed silence*
Anyway. Here’s how things go in my world.
I took down the blog. The next day I had a lesson on the upper-level horse, and we did do half pass, shoulder in, half pass. It was the best half pass I had ridden to date. For one thing, it was a real half pass and not a “turn the corner, leg yield, switch the bend, leg yield the other way, throw up hands in despair, try not to look at my cringing instructor, circle, and half pass” that I sometimes do. I was never dyslexic in school. I wonder if my hips are dyslexic. Or maybe my legs. I never was very good at any sport that involved kicking objects; maybe that’s why.
But that day, not only did I get the half pass, I managed to move from half pass to shoulder in and back like my body was actually coordinated. And the horse was amazingly responsive. I walked out of that lesson feeling like a superstar.
And the next day, riding another horse, we had some of that show-quality Training Level trot. Which also made me feel like a superstar, because I have difficulty maintaining that sort of thing once I get it. “Oh, look—we’re engaged and moving along with nice soft contact. Pat, pat. Whoops… lost the connection. And there goes the engagement… And—now we’re on the forehand. Damage control! Damage control!”
I take my moments of awesomeness wherever I can get them, at any level. And there have been many of them while I was not blogging. Some of the highlights:
- Riding a super, super light mare who carries herself so well that the connection from my hands to the bit is a quiet, quiet whisper.
- Helping to get a horse I was riding last summer going under saddle again after a little time off. He is amazingly light and responsive and we’re very excited about how well he’s doing. We’re even planning on schooling shows.
- On the upper-level horse—self-carriage at the trot that made me giddy.
- Also on the upper-level horse, this weekend we played around with the trot work (yes, everything happens at the trot. I like the trot) in some Third Level tests. Not only was my trot on her better over all (and we maintained it better than we have before), but the transitions from movement to movement were do-able. This is coming from a rider who likes to take half the arena to think about and prepare for the next movement, so that was a huge deal for me.
- Zig-zag half passes. My brain exploded a little the first time I tried to figure it out, but by the end they made sense and were even more fun than the half pass / shoulder-in / half pass exercise that started this run of awesome lessons.
In addition to all of that, I am also helping an owner start her young, green horse. Last night we rode in the arena for only the second time, and for the first time with another horse. She did really well! We even took her on a little walk around the property and she was nice and relaxed for that.
All of this comes about thanks to the generosity of some owners and my trainer, who have given me some great opportunities in the past few months. Normally, I’d be riding in my two lessons a week, and that’s it. Right now, I am riding two or three horses a day.
It’s a little surreal. I’m waiting to wake up.
Meanwhile, all the saddle time is making a huge difference in my riding, evidenced by the awesome moments that come more and more frequently.
Life is good. Really, really good.
I should have known better
I am sitting on the couch with various parts of my body on ice and other parts on heating pads and others being smothered by Pook… although, to be honest, I think she’s just trying to steal the heating pad.
Today started out so well; it really did.
After a fantastic lesson yesterday that culminated in some incredible trot work at the end, I was on a high. I tacked up for today’s lesson and off we went. Wind blowing scary dry leaves across the arena roof? Horse and I dealt with it. Flying lawn chair attacking us? We survived. (I feel obligated to point out the lawn chair never actually came near us, although it did come towards us.) Pattern work to focus on becoming more consistent when stringing things together? It went well. There may be hope for the show ring yet. I wasn’t sure, since completing movements individually and taking a few minutes to set up for the next one (my preferred modus operendi) is generally frowned upon in the ring.
Horse was put away with many pats and I went home.
Where I looked under the bed, trying to find Onyx’s toy. It all went downhill from there.
Because there, under the bed, were three white mystery boxes. They are indirectly (and in one instance, directly) responsible for my current state.
When I moved down here from the far North, I didn’t have a lot of time to plan. Stuff got thrown in boxes. Specifically, stuff got thrown in these three boxes. They were never unpacked at the last apartment, and since I hadn’t needed whatever was in them for a year, when I moved to the new apartment I just shoved them under the bed.
I’ll just go through them, I thought. I have some clothes that need to go to Goodwill, and maybe I can clear these boxes out, too.
I bet there are people in the world who would decide to go through three boxes and just, you know, go through them.
I am not one of them.
Clothes that need to go to Goodwill, I thought again, looking at my armoir. I bet there’s more in there.
I attacked the armoir, dusting and cleaning and sorting clothes and trying to figure out why there is always a stray, mismatched pillowcase in every house, and no one ever talks about them. People talk about stray, mismatched socks all the time. Why the cult of secrecy around the pillowcase? Then I turned around to get to the boxes and saw my little tack trunk. I wonder what’s in that, I thought, not having seen where this was going yet. I pulled everything out, took inventory, cleaned a few things, put it all back, and remembered the other box of horse stuff in the closet. Maybe some of that stuff would be better stored in the tack trunk?
First I had to go through the camping gear, then I had to put away all my suitcases, which were breeding again and spawning little day packs, and then I got to the horse stuff. Clean, sort, shift some stuff to the little tack box, notice the bookshelves on the way over…
An hour and a half later, the book shelves were cleaned and organized and I turned, at last, to the three little white boxes. Which were under the bed.
A normal person would, of course, just pull them out from under the bed. A normal person would have done this hours ago. A normal person would probably have already had them sorted and put away again. I was three hours into “going through the boxes under the bed,” and I was only just now contemplating the boxes under the bed.
The bed, I thought. The mattress should be flipped around.
Oh yes. Yes, I did. I pulled the mattress/box spring off the frame, stood them up against the wall, and looked thoughtfully at the boxes under the bed. Or, to be precise, the boxes that had been under the bed and were now corralled by a sad-looking bed frame. Since I don’t have a head or footboard, and the bed frame was in the way, I leaned it up against the mattress and box spring.
And then, finally, I started sorting the mystery boxes. Which had nothing very interesting in them. Certainly not my cutting board. My cutting board disappeared in one of the moves, and I just bought a new one this weekend. I was sure the old one would show up during all this cleaning/sorting, if only to snub its scarred wooden nose at my new board. Apparently not.
However, thinking of the cutting board reminded me… and so it went, until eight hours had passed since I first looked under the bed at the boxes and thought I’ll just go through these.
Clouts to the ear, when stuff I leaned against the wall decided to lean the other way: one.
Number of times I tripped over stuff I put “over there, out of the way” (including one mystery box), banging up one limb or another: four.
Number of times I dropped something on my foot: two.
Boxes I moved that I probably shouldn’t have: one.
Dust rags gone through: six.
Having a clean and organized house: highly overrated, actually.
Jumping into the new year
As you know, I’ve been dealing with a crippling—can’t-ride-over-poles-on-the-ground crippling—fear of jumping. I kept trying to tell myself I was resigned to it, but as everyone but me realized (I’m sure), I really wasn’t.
The thing is, I liked jumping. A lot. And I don’t like giving in to fear.
A few weeks ago, I was watching a rider school over a vertical and I realized something very important: when the horse jumps, they go higher over the pole than when you ride over it on the ground. More air space = less chance of the trolls that live under the poles eating you. I thought about it for a while, then emailed the trainers at my barn at home. I’m coming home for Christmas and I want to jump, I said.
After they got over their shock, they asked me if I’d prefer a kick-quiet mare or a gelding who could be quick but had a flatter jump. I decided that, in the event that I froze in front of the jump and stopped riding, I’d prefer a horse with his own momentum. That he wouldn’t jump me out of the tack was just a bonus.
The gelding was a super cute little Morgan cross. We did a few trot cross rails and then my trainer set up a 5/6 trot in / canter out line. The gelding had a stellar sense of humor, because the first time we cantered the 2’ vertical, I did indeed freeze and stop riding. He jumped anyway.
By the end of the lesson, I was getting through the line calmly and even adjusting the ride to get both the 5 and the 6. And that—the ability to make a decision in the middle of the line—was a huge boost to my confidence. I was as excited about making it through that line as I was going over my first 3’3” eq course as a teenager. You have to get the job done first, and then you can start making it pretty. We got the job done.
I had fun doing it.
The second lesson my trainer wanted to do grid work so we could focus on my position. I agreed, as long as the grid didn’t have a one stride in it. I fell off at a one stride in a combination. She grinned and said, “Good, we’ll do that then.” I stared at her in dismay, reminded myself that the reason I was jumping for the first time at home is that she knows me and my riding very, very well, and told her I’d do it, but she better not kill me.
We started out with a four stride. No problem. That was like the last lesson. As we went along, she kept adjusting the line—moving it to a three, moving it out to a four and putting poles in the middle, etc. The last time through, we did the one to a one. The jumps were all of 18”, and cross rails at that. I honestly think the horse just cantered over them. That’s not important. The important point here is that I cantered over them with the horse.
And was alive on the other end. Breathing. Grinning.
It was fun.
I’ve really missed jumping. I think I’m finally ready to get back into it. Here’s to a new year and new beginnings for all of us.
Cross Training
If it were up to me, you could velcro my bum to the saddle, glue a dressage stick to my hand, and we could have intimate, arena-lit conversations about the theory of the half halt. Dressage all the way, baby.
I would be happy. But probably not as happy as I am knowing that in any given lesson my trainer could mention the j-word. For one thing, it’s good for me to push outside my comfort zone. For another thing, even when there are no actual jumps involved (which is almost all the time, my feelings about jumping being what they are), I believe strongly in approaching the same problem from different angles.
Example: for the past few lessons we’ve been working on riding in a lighter seat. Not quite three point, but certainly worlds apart from a dressage seat. But you know what—that lighter seat helped me break up my hips and I was finally able to sit the trot with the horse’s movement and not trying to drive the horse somewhere with my seat. It also lengthened my leg and helped me wrap around the horse and use my whole calf, instead of trying to drive with the heel.
Of course, for dressage I’d want to bring the leg back a little and sit a little deeper and open my hip angle some, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s all translatable. Plus, it’s something else I can try if I’m feeling stuck—or if the horse is feeling stuck. I like options.
That’s the thing for me. Once we decide we “are” a certain type of rider, we close out all those options from other disciplines. Would I want to ride a dressage test in that sort of forward seat? Probably not. But in training, can I see times when it would be useful? Certainly. And even as a stepping-stone for me, as a way to give me the feeling of how my body should be moving with the horse when I could not physically handle it in a deeper, more “secure” seat—that’s valuable, too.
And, in the event that we do revisit the whole j- thing in the near future, it’ll only help my confidence to know I can ride effectively in a forward seat.