Hub Cap Diamond Star Halo

Hey there, what's happening? Me, I'm doing good. Trainer Dude is back from his annual sojourn to Florida, and we are officially banging a gong and getting the horse search on. (Obligatory music video here. I'm also very fond of The Power Station's version. But, no disrespect to Robert Palmer, I feel like Marc Bolan is the only man who ever pranced the earth who can say "you're built like a car" and make it sound like a compliment.) 

So far, there have not been any serious contenders to be my next horse. Part of me is desperately impatient to find another horse (that would be the part of me that checks every single horses-for-sale website on the planet every single day.) Another part of me realizes that it is probably doing me the world of good to not have a horse right now. It's giving me the space and the time to process my whole experience with the last horse (which was pretty intense and emotionally draining.) I've been carrying around a lot of physical and psychological tension related to horses, and powering through it did not work. So now I'm just giving myself time and space and taking off pressure. 

I've been riding my horse friend Willie a couple of days a week. I've been thinking about my position in the saddle, and working on some mild exercises to help him with bend and acceptance of contact, but I'm giving myself permission to step back and not push myself, so mostly we just walk around. We went on a trail ride with Meredith which was great! I haven't been on a trail ride since I was 13. And as soon as the weather cooperates we'll be doing more of that. I am realizing how important cross training and just hacking out is for the mind and body of the horse and the rider.

It's also been very helpful for me to work with Trainer Dude. Not that we're doing much work together yet. But it makes a significant difference to me to know that I have him on my side to help me through this. I trust his expertise, I trust his personal character, and I trust his motivations. It takes a huge chunk of the worry and stress out of horse shopping (and the whole prospect of having another horse to take care of) to know that Trainer Dude is on my side, looking out for my best interests, and if something goes wrong, he'll help me take care of it. 

Yesterday I had my first session of physiotherapy for my wonky left shoulder. I found my physiotherapist by calling the sports therapy place down the street and making an appointment with the first PT the receptionist suggested. And it turns out that my carefully selected PT has an extensive hunter/jumper background. She completely understand the physical movements and demands of riding ("Do you have difficulty or discomfort with overhead movements? Like lifting a saddle off of a rack?) She also understands how important it is to a dressage rider to be physically balanced. Since I live in a big city this is a pretty big stroke of luck and I'm very pleased.

The PT examined me to figure out what's going on with my shoulder and what any contributory issues may be. I need more core strength, and there's a slight problem with the lower back curving forward too much (which also shows up in my riding.) We are also going to work on those issues once the shoulder has been addressed. Yay! Then she gave me ultrasound treatment on the muscles on my affected shoulder. (My PT said that it helps loosen up constricted muscles so that they can be manipulated and exercised with less pain. I've heard mixed things about the effectiveness of ultrasound therapy in helping muscles heal faster and I'm curious to know what her take on it is, but I didn't ask her about all that since we barely know each other and I don't really know what I'm talking about. It feels good, anyway.) And she did some exercises on me, and gave me a set of exercises to work on at home.

This is a good example of what I'm figuring out in many areas of my life - that even though self-education is possible, you're better off starting with professional help. I've been doing my own little exercises and stretches on this shoulder for years, and it's helped to a certain extent, but since I don't have a foundation of training to understand what I'm doing, it's never properly addressed the problem.

That's it for this post. Tune in next time, when I'll possibly talk about correlations between horseback riding and cooking. Or possibly something else.

-Beth

Block Rockin' Beats

Hello, horse friends! This'll have to be a quick one. But I just figured out an easy way to check the regularity of footfalls in online videos, and I thought I'd share.

First, join the YouTube HTML Beta program (requires a fairly recent browser, but I'm no computer whiz and mine is updated enough.) To slow down a video, click the cog-shaped settings button at the bottom right corner of the video. The options are to speed it up by 2x and 1.5x, or to slow it down by 0.5x or 0.25x. (You'll want to mute the video before changing the speed so the sound isn't obnoxious, but if you're watching horse sales videos, you've probably done that already.)

Then, open a second browser window and get an online metronome going. (That happens to be the most user friendly one I could find in my brief internet search, but I am sure that there are plenty of other options.) And then it's just a matter of playing around with the metronome to figure out the approximate beat.

My main motivation for doing this (other than avoiding doing Boring Grown-Up Things in favor of doing Fun Horse Things that I can pretend are Serious Work Things) is to check the regularity of the walk in sales videos. I feel like I can spot a glaringly off trot or canter, but I am not all that confident about being able to eyeball the walk. It's also turned out to be a useful exercise for me in looking at the sequence of footfalls in the canter work. (I feel for horses that get confused learning how to do flying lead changes - it's a lot of legs moving around to keep track of.)

-Beth

Sturm und Drang

I have no particular talent for foreign languages, and I've never even attempted to learn German. So I'm not totally sure if their language is generally jam-packed with phenomenal, somewhat untranslatable words, or if their national interests overlap with my own. Because the Germans certainly own the vocabulary house in two areas: 

1. Words that describe inner turmoil and a seething, tumultuous inner life (sturm und drang translates as 'storm and stress' in the same way that angst translates as 'fear'.) Other fun ones: wanderlust (yes, it's German, who knew?), schaudenfreud (an inexcusably ugly emotion, but eh, I guess it happens), sehnsucht (profound existential longing), weltschmerz (this word is specifically discussed by John Steinbeck in The Winter of Our Discontent and by David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest, which provides me with enough context clues to know that I don't want to think too hard about anything this word describes right now), and, my personal favorite: futterneid (jealousy of someone else's food, I'm assuming in a restaurant type situation.) 

2. Words to describe aspects of horse movement. Who doesn't love schwung? Though durchlassigkeit is pretty good too. I don't know if there's a connection there. I suppose that Germans just get what's important in life: bad moods, horse riding, and delicious sausage. 

I have no doubt that anyone who has ever met me or read my recent blog posts is surprised to learn that I've been in a bit of a funk lately. So, for the time being, I'm setting aside my as-yet-unpublished phonebook-length musings on my horseback riding trip in Slovenia. To be completed on some future, sunny day, when lateral movements don't seem quite so earth shatteringly important. This is an instance where my somewhat short attention span comes in handy. I do sometimes find it difficult to force myself to complete long, boring tasks, but being depressed falls under that category, too. I'm already starting to get bored with/amused by my own angst. And as Morrissey himself said, "The world may be ending, but look, I'm only human." (Get well soon, Moz!)

Yesterday I utilized my fairly new, totally excellent health insurance by getting my wonky left shoulder x-rayed and consulting with an orthopedic surgeon. It's been a nagging issue for about oh, a dozen or so years. Which yes, is a ridiculously long time to live with something. I have been able to get it down to a manageable level of discomfort with self-care (stretching, exercise, rolling around the floor on tennis balls), and also getting the odd bit of professional massage and acupuncture. It's gotten better, but it's never gone away entirely. And honestly, I didn't even realize that there were doctors a person could consult about such things. But it affects my rein contact on that side, so, y'know, time to get it fixed. (And any time you can hear your body parts click and crunch when you move them, that's probably not a good thing.)

But it turns out that the underlying issue is not a big deal and it sounds totally manageable. It's probably just some scar tissue that developed in response to mild bursitis (I think? We talked about scapular something something.) I got a prescription for 18 physical therapy sessions - 3x a week for 6 weeks! - which seems like a lot. I plan on asking all sorts of questions about my other physical oddities/nagging complaints, since I'm pretty sure I can get the shoulder exercise routine down in less than 18 hours. So basically it comes down to this: I need to be systematically exercised to develop evenness, strength and balance so I can carry myself correctly. Never ask a horse to do something you wouldn't do yourself, that's what I say.

I am starting the slow process of horse shopping. This was previously a source of funk for me (and not good James Brown funk, I'm talking musty laundry left in the washer too long funk.) Because what if I never find a horse and what if I can't even ride and my life is ruined and I end up living under a bridge in a box or appearing on reality TV programs because my life is so empty and meaningless that I can't cope? Which was not a logical or reasonable interpretation of things. But my brain likes melodrama and hyperbole, and I can't reason with it. So I'm going to trick it into being ready to look at horses that actually meet all of my criteria by the time Trainer Dude gets back from Florida. I think I'm gonna do this by going to look at some massively under budget horses local(ish)y that I know I'll be able to ride (because they're advertised with the tag lines like "Wheel granny out of the nursing home - her dream horse is here!" and "Earnest, hardworking horse only knows how to do two things, and he does them really well!") 

Up until now I haven't felt totally comfortable with the idea tire-kicking horses, because I didn't want to waste people's time and all that. But now I get it. If I know I can ride it, and I know I can afford it, and I'm not totally sure I even want it, there's no pressure. And I can just get used to the process of going to look at horses. It's the same reason you don't go looking for a relationship by waiting for your Destined Soulmate & True Love to show up, you go on dates with people you can (initially, at least) take or leave, and get to know them. So that when you go on a date with someone you actually do really like, you don't creep them out with the googly-eyes and hand-sweating and whatnot. (Yeah, I totally came up with this theory way back when I was dating.) 

So, things are on the up. Keep the faith!

-Beth

On the Creation and Development of Evasions

Sorry to drop off the map like that, Loyal Reader. You must’ve been worried that I'd been eaten by bears or something. Never fear. I am safely back home after my trip to Slovenia. The worst that befell me on my journey was coming down with the sniffly virus circulating among and laying low the barn staff in Lipica. It was nowhere near as bad or as memorable as the weekend I spent in Listowel, Ireland, when I came down with the flu shortly upon arrival. I think that must’ve been the highest fever I’ve run as an adult, since I am pretty sure that my memories of the town/weekend do not entirely sync up with the reality of the place and events.

I was on a bit of a downer in my last post, partially because I was getting sick. But I only ended up missing one of my lessons because of it (my sense of balance was seriously and weirdly off kilter in the first lesson of the day so I decided to bag the second.)

I don’t feel like I adequately explained why I was so disgruntled about riding that one particular horse, but it was a significant experience so I’m going to revisit it and clarify a few things. First, the back story:

I rode him in six lessons total. Lessons one and six were with Instructor A, who had quite a history with the horse, and the other four were with Instructor B. The first two lessons he was willing, supple and balanced, and picked up both canter leads no bother.

Lesson three he was also fine from my point of view, but Instructor B pointed out towards the end of the lesson that he was looking at her like, “Oh, I’m too old, I’m tired.” At that point we'd only worked on lateral work at the walk and trot, so she wanted to finish up with some canter work. The exercise was pretty simple: Start off in a 20 meter circle in the center of the arena. Pick up canter as we approached the rail (B for right lead and E for left.) Half circle in canter, then continue straight down the long side, go down the short side past C, back up the long side, and do a downward transition to the trot once we get back to where we started off.

Right lead was fine, no bother. We broke into trot on the second long side sometime between H and S, but I was pretty tired and a little switched off at the point, so we called it good and moved on. Left lead he broke before we even got to the rail at B. I could feel myself completely drop the contact on the outside rein as it happened, but being aware of what your body is doing is one thing, being in control of it is, unfortunately, another. I have no doubt that I was also leaning forward and not using my seat, so it's entirely attributable to rider error. We stayed on the circle, regrouped, and tried again.

Second time, we picked the canter up and kept going. When we got down by C, there was a noise from outside the entrance of the arena down by A, he spooked, took a couple of hops, and I fell off over the left shoulder. Oops. It was an idiot mistake on my part. I am perfectly capable of riding through hiccups like that. I am not a particularly brave rider, and I’m the first one to point that out, and I’m obviously big on self-analysis, so this isn't me putting a brave face on anything. It was a lesson to me about not mentally checking out of the ride before the ride is over (in the same way I'm finally getting the whole point about not dropping lateral movements a few steps before the end and actually riding the horse into straightness instead of mentally moving onto the next thing and letting the horse splat out.) I was tired and not balanced and yeah. I fell off of an old, short horse after two mild, unexpected hops - which I should've been prepared for, since I could tell that he'd been a little nervous about the other horse being lunged down by A being taken out of the arena a couple of minutes before. But it was a short fall to soft ground, I didn't get any sort of adrenaline rush, it was just mildly embarrassing, but whatever. No harm, no foul. By far the worst part was suffering through the many lectures about getting back on and everything I did wrong and conquering fear. As I was getting back on, riding the horse, putting him away, and all around not making a big deal of it.

For lesson four I was given the choice of riding a different horse but didn’t because, y’know, the whole thing was a little stupid and not really the horse's fault. But, this lesson was nowhere near as good as the previous ones. We spent the next three lessons in a different arena, which didn't help anything. There are three indoors at the facility. The main one used for lessons and lower level schooling is 20 by 60 meters exactly, yum. A girl could get spoiled never having to think about geometry or proportions. Then there's a 20m by 40m used mainly for lunging, but also the odd ride. Both of those arenas were full, and probably due to the falling off incident we were told to ride in the big (30m by 75m?) arena used for performances. It has the pillars in the middle, and potted plants in the corner, and bleachers on two sides - an endless assortment of shadows and objects to snort at, basically. Plus, the only other riders in there were always working on higher level and very collected movements - nothing wrong with that, it's just a very "up" sort of energy which was probably not so good for where we were at.

So, we were in the performance arena. I was a little tense, he was a little tense - another dynamic that probably didn't help. Instructor B was giving me more annoying lectures about not being afraid, being the boss, etc. (And also giving me those spiels I get from horse people who rode as kids about how great it is when you ride as a kid because you fall off a million times and don’t care. Which I get, and that sounds awesome. But I suspect that part of the reason it doesn't matter so much when you're a kid is you probably don’t get fricken drilled about the whole thing for years afterward, you're allowed to just move on. And it's not like I have a time machine so I can go back and ride as a kid, but I've forgiven technology and the space-time continuum for that, and I'm perfectly happy with where my life is at, though I do think the universe still owes me a shetland pony.) (I do realize I'm being a little touchy about things that, in the normal run of things, I wouldn't give two craps about. It was just a bit of a high stress situation for me, and there was always a bit of a language barrier, so it was a little difficult for me to express myself and feel understood. Which, if you've made it this far into my post, I'm sure you realize is one of my personal circles of hell. The typing will continue until I feel understood.) 

In any case, I was having some issues getting him to bend to the left, and with all sorts of behavioral ticks and resistances that had not surfaced at all in the previous three lessons. The instructor’s response was, “You can do this. This is all in your head. You stop yourself and say I can’t, when really you can.” Which was madly frustrating at the time, and in that particular instance I don’t know if she was right, but the next day in my first lesson with a different instructor on a different horse, I realized that she was right in general about some other things I have with my riding and it was very helpful insight. 

But then I had lesson five with this same instructor/horse pair, and everything was even worse. Circumstances aside, something was fundamentally amiss. I am not an incredibly experienced rider, so it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong, but it did not feel like evasions to get out of work. He seemed like a willing, honest horse, and I felt like I literally could not force him to bend him with my right aids around my left leg. He wasn't counter-flexing to drop contact, because the contact on the outside rein was still there, and he wasn't curling behind or anything, it was like he suddenly couldn't bend. I asked the trainer to ride him, she got on and was like, “Oh wow, yeah, he can’t bend, there’s possibly something physical going on.” And we called it a day and decided to use a different horse in the next lesson.

My final lesson on this horse, the next day, was unexpectedly with Trainer A again. I got to the barn, she told me she’d schooled him earlier and he was fine, I took that at face value. And he was way up more through his top line, nose dead on the vertical, and all around using himself better. But he was seriously not happy and escalating the behavior, and also it just felt like he was looking for an excuse to explode. And at that point I was scared, not because I’d fallen off, but because he’s a living creature, with his own internal life, and I felt like he was going to keep ramping it up until he got his message across. Either he was in pain, or he really wasn't happy with my riding, but either way, I felt like I was being bullied into riding him, and feeling pressured into bullying him, and that pissed me off.

Rewinding to the moment of insight I’d mentioned earlier: I realized, in a lesson with Mr. Mustache on Thais, that I’ve developed some weird mental block about picking up the canter as a way of controlling the pace of new work in lessons. Through a huge set of circumstances, both due to internal forces and external ones out of my control, I’ve ended up pushing myself/being pushed very fast and very hard in my riding. The pressure of being continuously over faced, and pushed into learning new material, without ever getting the chance to relax and consolidate, is making me a little ring sour. (To paraphrase Radiohead: I do it myself. And that's why it really hurts. I'm not a big Radiohead fan, but The Bends is seriously worth whatever purchase price you can find it for. They're like The Who of our generation - yes, maybe blahdyblah things that could be discussed, but the dudes get us. And, more importantly - know how to fucking rawk.) I am physically blocking myself from picking up the canter as an evasion. We can’t do new, hard things if we can’t even do all three gaits. 

I'm using the term "evasions" not just for artistic impact, but because I really and truly believe that that is how evasions start and become confirmed with horses. In my experience, most horses basically want to get along. It's possible this opinion will change with experience and time, but so far, with every horse I've encountered that had evasions or resistance issues, they were clearly traceable to the horse being worked through pain or fear, or being worked in an improper manner. The horse I described above was perfectly fine for the better part of three rides, and I don't think that my riding went dramatically downhill after that, or that he just decided he didn't want to come into work. If you continually make a horse work when they are mentally or physically incapable of doing the work comfortably deep-seated problems will result. Period. And the same hold true for us humans. Evasions = defense mechanisms. And defense mechanisms occur when people are powerless leave, and have to find a way to make it through unbearable situations. It is not sentiment, but experience that has taught me to take the reactions of horses into account. They do have an opinion about what is happening to them, and the truth will out.

It’s eye opening in many ways. In the practical context of what's going on with me, I don’t have a solution other than giving myself time. And having some frank discussions with my new Trainer Dude about where I’m at and where I’m going.

But that’s something for another day. I gotta go catch up on laundry. Life is awesome, I'm totally swell, and I have loads of other long-winded stories to tell. So, until next time, peace out.

-Beth

"They'll put you in a wigwam and make you do it on a program on TV." –Jona Lewie

As a side note, I feel like I'm destined to have a beer with Tom Petty at some point in my life. I think he could hang.

Today I got to work between the pillars for the first time!

It is a shame that the experience was so brief!

Also that, at the time, I was doing my best Beaker impersonation. 

The important thing is that neither I nor the horse hit either of the pillars (which look pretty substantial. Think: the sort of pipes you would find on the interior of a submarine sunk into concrete blocks below the (probably expensive, but not my favorite) footing.) As an added bonus, I stayed on! Through that, and also through a couple of subsequent opportunities for me to work on my best Muppet impersonation. Which was long enough for us to do some 10m & 20m circles in both directions, try a bunch of walk/trot/halt transitions, etc - "work through it", basically. Which also gave me enough time to reason the situation out. My thought process went roughly like this:

"The horse is counter-flexing like mad when I try to bend him to the left, and I don't give a flying fuck what the instructor says about my wall of aids, that isn't just my wonky rein management and ineffective legs. Dude cannot bend to the left to save his or my life, and he wasn't like that when I rode him a couple of days ago, and I don't give a good goddamn what the instructor says, it has nothing to do with stiff and hollow. Or even submission! This horse isn't right. And he's a powder keg looking for a match. And this instructor has a blind eye for this fucker that Stevie Wonder would scoff at. I am getting off and hand-walking him out. And no, I'm not gonna feed him sugar cubes! What, are you people nuts?!" 

I didn't explain it quite so eloquently at the time, and I'm sure I didn't look composed or classy, but I didn't let myself get browbeaten with the whole "you need to learn to ride through this" spiel. No, actually, I don't. I'm not the professional. I'm the one writing the checks. And everyone at that facility has had ample opportunity to see me ride and work with horses. They can draw their own conclusions. I will be there Monday morning as per usual for my lesson with Mr. Mustache and Thais the Good Egg, with shiny boots and a big smile. I've got ten more rides coming to me, and I'm going to take every one. Put me on the dead schoolie horses. Heck, put me on the sorta crazies. I don't care. But I don't need to learn this lesson twice.

I Will Stand. My. Ground. And I Won't. Back. Down.

And yes, Mr. Mustache and Thais the Good Egg are both fabulous, as are many of the other two-foots & four-hooves I've met over here. This particular equine/human pair aren't bad either. It's just not a good situation and I'm not going to play along with something that A) I think is dangerous, and B) doesn't seem right. (In the interests of fairness, I should point out that the instructor does have a very long history with this horse, and that, while the horses are all well taken care of, and there are a fair number of older guys still in active work, I don't get the sense that they've turned one of the back pastures into a horse version of Boca Raton for the retirees. So, the stakes are high for them. But I'm going to file that one under Not My Problem, since I'm a little more concerned about not having to figure out my health insurance coverage in the emergency room of a foreign country.)

I do swear up and down and backward and forward that, in the future, the angst and worry is only going to be about the trauma of shoulder leading in the leg-yield and "circle needs more round."

Speak to you soon!

-Beth

Just like Destiny's Child, I'm a survivor.

I've settled into the routine, and I'm having a good time, in my own overly intense way.  

There was some confusion with the booking when I got here (the stables operate quite a bit more independently of the hotel than the website/booking agents would have you believe.) The riding instructors/barn staff were surprisingly reluctant to accept my pre-booked riding program. ("Perhaps once a day is better?" Doubtful expression. "That is a lot of riding.") Since, as noted above, it's all about me (and horses), this sent me into a mild paranoid panic ("They can tell I don't know how to ride! Whaa!" etc etc.) But then I figured out/learned three things, and now it's all (basically) good.

#1 - The staff in the stable works for a set number of hours a day. One rider getting a twice daily hour-long "group" lesson for two weeks just adds to their workload, without any payoff. (I am thinking of gifts to get my two main instructors as thank-yous, since they've been great.)

#2 - The stud farm and hotel are both owned by the state. Economically, things over here are just as bad as they are pretty much anywhere else in the Western world. The hotel was brought under private management, and now it isn't doing very well, although I personally think the lack of financial success has as much to do with the general economic climate as it does the management. (It could use a face-lift, a targeted advertising campaign, and probably less staff, but what do I know about hotel management?) There is some uncertainty about keeping the "lessons for tourists" side of the stud farm going, and there is enough enough talk about scaling back the operation there that some people are concerned about long-term employment. So I get why they aren't super-excited about investing themselves into the program. 

#3 - There was some genuine concern about my ability to keep up with the program. I'm scrappy, and I work hard, and I'm a nice person, so they've all genuinely warmed to me. And I'm getting a tremendous amount out of it. Having said that, I grossly underestimated how physically and mentally taxing it would be taking two lessons a day, every day. I should know that an hour spent in the saddle noodling around on my own is quite a different kettle of fish than riding in a lesson, and I am way underprepared for all of this. But, in my experience, there are a lot of things in life that you can't really prepare yourself for, and you just have to dive in and flounder for a bit before you start to get the hang of it. (And yes, I do use that logic to justify all sorts of possibly not-wise decisions.)

I've been learning loads and taking notes. The biggest improvement is probably in my leg position. I've learned that keeping the horse "between the aids" is not a figurative expression, it's completely literal, and while I'm still not successful at doing so almost all of the time, I've had snatches of it, and just getting a picture of what that is like makes this whole trip worth it. I did get a lunge lesson, and I totally rocked out on all of the posting trot arm moving around exercises. My sitting trot is still pretty wretched (mostly due to having to work too hard at moving with the horse, and then getting tired. Yes, I'm pretty sure that I'm doing it wrong.) My seat at the canter is improving, though I still pop out of the saddle a bit during transitions (I think that more than anything makes my instructors die a little inside every time they see it. But I'm working on it!) And I'm knocking off one of the goals I set for myself in my training journal for 2013, which is learning how to ride with a whip (though that is its own topic.)

We walked into the local town, Sežana, a couple of times. I'm heading into Trieste to get a rental car sometime before the weekend, since we are miles away from anything, and the pubic transit situation is United States bad. 

Culinary highlights so far: 

The best gnocchi I've ever had in my life, no joke, with gorgonzola sauce that held its own. 

Calamari stuffed with prosciutto and cheese. I find calamari to be pretty hit-or-miss, but this would've made a calamari convert out of anyone.

Okay, another day, another dollar. Off to ride!

-Beth

That Don't Impress Lipizzans Much

This is the part of the story where our hero wails, "What on earth have I gotten myself into?"

I had my first two riding lessons today. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don’t know how to ride. It’s possible I will never learn how to ride. But I did get to meet these two lovely horses: 

Siglavy Thais, born in 1999. 

On the tall side. Smarter than most humans.

Neapolitano Bonadea, born 1990.

Recently put into semi-retirement from quadrille duties,

even more recently gelded. 

Short and sassy. As forward as he wants to be.

There are, shall we say, many areas that have been highlighted for further improvement. I've jotted down some notes, but I'm gonna sleep on it before dwelling further. I am bone-tired. Tomorrow I get the day off to regroup/rethink my life. Husband is doing an admirable job of both keeping himself entertained and ignoring my existential crisis of the day. 

Learn to ride or die trying,

-Beth

One of the many cats lying around. 

He's also not terribly impressed.

Greetings From Slovenia

Hullo everybody! 

We have arrived. The trip was uneventful, which is an excellent quality for a transatlantic journey to have. The setting (peaceful, wooded, hilly) is pretty enough in the snow, but I suspect it is full-on beautiful in the spring and summer. I knew that Lipica was close to the Slovenia/Italy border, but I didn't realize that it is literally right on the border. The nearest town is 5km away, which will make for a decent afternoon walk once I get my riding schedule down.

This is definitely the off-season.  We are possibly the only hotel guests. I am the only tourist listed on the board for riding lessons. Which is perfectly fine by me - I might give myself a couple of days to settle into the twice a day riding routine and then see if I can schedule in a couple of extra lunge lessons on the side. (That may be overly ambitious, but when else am I going to get the chance?)

I have yet to see an actual horse, although I did find a gray tail-hair in the closet when I was unpacking (which I am taking as a good omen.) We took a walk around the grounds this afternoon and located the gated entrance to the stud farm. At some point we get to take a guided tour of it, but there's no point in using up all of our entertainment options at once. The hotel cafe and the gym seem to be popular with the locals. It wasn't until I noticed the casino on one end of the hotel complex that the full parking lot made sense. 

Towels with horses on them! Why didn't I think of that?

Otherwise, nothing eventful so far. First riding lesson at 9am! (meep!) Too excited to sleep!

-Beth

Training Rainbow

In my last post I described being aware of the location of various parts of my legs. There's a word for that: proprioception. And it is something that can be trained and developed. File under: Something to research later.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a poster of the training scale to frame and put in my house. (On the off chance that someone who isn't interested in dressage stumbles onto my blog, I offer this brief (possibly not totally correct) explanation of the training scale: It's a progression of six concepts that a rider is supposed to work on while training a horse. It starts with foundation principles that are accessible to the majority of horses - Rhythm and Relaxation. Next come Connection and Impulsion, where the horse is taught to use himself in an athletically effective manner, and the mental qualities of focus and willing obedience are developed. The top two are Straightness and Collection. Those are the most demanding and rewarding areas, I suspect, but I have no real personal experience with them. It's not hard and fast, some concepts having overlapping requirements, but it is essentially a way to break down the areas of focus, so the rider is posing reasonable questions to the horse, and preparing the horse for advanced work in a systematic, appropriate way.)

The closest thing I could find is this large, vinyl banner available for sale at the USDF website:

It looks very functional for a barn environment, but probably not appropriate home decor (even by my standards.)

So, I had a little bit of time to fill, and not really being a TV person, I decided to make my own poster. This is my basic concept:

(For boring software reasons, I printed it off and scanned it. The colors are going to look way groovier when I get it printed from the PDF file, I promise.)

For a brief, insane moment I considered lopping off the right third of the diagram and repeating the pattern at 90 degree angles in a cloverleaf pattern, then getting custom fabric printed at www.spoonflower.com, (for making into throw pillows or something, I dunno.) Which would be a phenomenal waste of resources, but, y'know, it was a thought.

Today, on Valentines Day, my husband is making the ultimate romantic gesture and flying with me, to Slovenia, where he is going to hang out for two weeks at the Lipica Stud Farm while I ride horses. I'm getting very excited, but feeling somewhat under-prepared (except for my boots, which are exceedingly well polished.) Thankyouthankyouthankyou to Meredith and Willie and the Lipipotomus's Amazing New Trainer - I can't imagine what I'd be feeling like without all of your help getting my riding skills tuned up!

Love and hugs to y'all. I should probably go... clean out the fridge or something. I'll keep you posted!

-Beth

Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind

"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it."

-William Hazlitt

Prior to owning a horse, one of the charmingly naive ideas I had about horse ownership was that it would ensure that I always had something to ride. (Which is a bit like saying, "I'm so sick of the crappy plumbing in this apartment! If I owned my own place, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this!" Hah hah. Yeah.) Since I obviously now fall into the "older and more cynical" camp, I've had some time to reflect on the inevitability of periods in which I won't be able to ride. These fall into three categories:

1. The horse is injured, sick, or cranky.
2. I am injured, sick, or cranky.
3. I have no horse.

I spent a large part of last year dealing with category #1, I had instances of confronting the possibility of category #2, and I am currently in category #3. Once I get back from my travels and my Trainer Dude gets back from Florida we will be working to remedy this, but since I plan on being actively involved with horses for the duration of my life, I can see that I need to come up with ways to deal with the times when I am unable to ride. These seem to boil down to two problems, either I don't have a horse to ride, or I am physically incapable of riding.

Lack of Horse, Able to Ride

This has been my main issue so far, but even though it's been driving me bonkers and I've been venting my frustration far and wide, it is probably the easier scenario to deal with. 

• Find people with horses who are willing to share. When my last horse was on stall rest I was very lucky in having a trainer who owned a schoolmaster. She was very generous in giving me lessons and ride time on him. Even after the schoolmaster was semi-retired and my horse started slowly coming back into work, she found me another horse to ride occasionally. More recently, barn manager extraordinaire and all around hilarious person Meredith has very generously given me ride time on her guy Willie (who deserves his own post, I can't do justice to him here.) And the Lipipotamus's Amazing New Trainer lived up to her name by giving me a lesson Sunday on her own eight-year old competition horse (in a double bridle, no less. And yes, she had seen me ride before!) The two experiences I had share boarding with total strangers are what convinced me it was time to buy a horse in the first place, and I will never go down that road again. But I can see that, once you get involved with the horse community and get to know people, opportunities are there, and there is always something to learn. 

• Train for riding off of the horse. This also deserves its own post, but essentially, I call bullshit on anyone who says things like "Well, there's nothing you can do off the horse to engage the muscles you use in riding," and "Riding is about balance and coordination, not strength," and just generally makes excuses for why they don't exercise or even stretch. My first proper trainer was one of those types, and we actually got into a couple of civilized arguments about it. He preferred to ascribe the progress I made in my riding to some mystical "talent." I guess because I'm the only one who knows exactly what I'm doing outside of the stable, it's more obvious to me than it is to other people. But I know, through experience, that there are a lot of things that I can do physically to prepare my body so I get the most out of the time I have riding. And I can feel a very direct and fairly immediate difference when I do them as opposed to when I slack off. I am just like practically everyone else in the Western world in exercising less than I could or should, and I know that I have room for improvement. But I feel like this has been one of the key factors in making it possible for me to do the stop-start riding I've done all this past year. I still have lag time when I relearning everything that I used to know, but physically I'm not starting from anything like scratch.

•  Mental training away from the horse. I'm assuming that anyone who is really into dressage is already fairly obsessive about books, DVDs, clinics, etc. What I am referring to here is something I actually have not tried yet.
  
  
  It came about from the Amazing New Trainer's lesson on Sunday. Bless her heart, A.N.T. wanted to see if I could get a few steps of piaffe and/or passage out of her mare, just so I could have the experience of feeling them (and, I think, to give me something to look forward to so I'd be a little less grumpy about being back at the figuring out how to walk, trot, canter, steer and halt stage.) I totally failed on both movements, and she was a little disappointed on my behalf, but I genuinely didn't care. I've never even tried to ask for those movements before, and just the act of physically sitting up there and trying to do it gave me a mental concept of them that I've never gotten from reading about it or watching other riders perform them.
  
  
  I am aware of Jane Savoie's training material on visualisation. (But cheese and crackers! I am not sold enough on the concept to shell out the kind of money she's asking. And her infomercial-style website does not persuade me to give it a try.) Guided visualization exercises would probably help once you know the feeling of a movement.What I'm talking about here is a little different.
  
  
  What I realized on Sunday is simply this: when I read about riding, I still very often picture it from a third-person, "video camera" perspective. Which is partially just laziness - it's easier to consume something as it's presented than mentally (and often physically) do the work of picturing myself performing the movements, and actually standing up or sitting upright in a chair, shifting my seatbones, moving my legs, holding my arms, etc. (I have been thinking for a while about building a wooden saddle stand that is elevated off of the ground so that I could sit on it with the stirrups down. Which no, would not really be like being on a moving horse, and yes, is probably a crazy idea. But I dunno, it seems to me like sitting in a saddle when I'm, say, on my laptop, or reading (equally ridiculous contraption to function as minimal desk at appropriate height would also have to be created) would at least give me that many extra hours a day when my body is sort of doing what I want it to do when I ride, am I right? I will discuss this with the saddle fitter I know when I see her, she has a lovely saddle stand that she uses for trying out saddles.)
  
  
  Related to this, I rode Willie on Sunday shortly after my lesson, and had a PHENOMENAL ride on him. (Obvious evidence that I need two horses, not just one.) Part of it was due to me being warmed up mentally and physically to ride, but I think it was more a result of, for whatever reason, the lesson unlocking in my mind what the physical sensation of "right" feels like. 
  
  
  I'm pretty sure that the problems I was having were more to do with my upper body being stiff and protective and that most of the changes happened up there. I could definitely feel my torso open up (mental imagery that pops into my head is of the big sails on those old Spanish galleons unfurling in the wind. Apologies if I inadvertently ripped that off from someone else.) My seat connected deep into the saddle, my shoulders relaxed, my arms functioned like they were supposed to.
  
  
  
  I had a stronger conscious awareness of what was going on with my lower body. My knees were like, We wanna scooch forward a bit. They got scooched, and then my heels went Yay! We are right down here beneath your seat bones. Mmm, weight drop. And my legs were all, Willie's warm. Let's wrap around Willie. A little while later, I was trotting around, thinking everything was fine, but then my knees were all HEY UP THERE! WE'RE NOT HAPPY! I looked down, and they'd shifted back to the old spot, so I scooched 'em forward, and they were all Mmmm.
  
  
  As annoying as I'm sure that was to read, that's pretty much what it was like. Oh, and I got that whole 'hula-hoop belly, cocktail waitress upper body' for bits of it, at the walk, anyway. It crossed my mind to try cantering (there is an issue I've been working through, and I haven't cantered outside of lessons recently), but I always like to err on the side of ending on a good note rather than pressing my luck. But at the end of the ride I did do tons and tons of three-loop serpentines at the walk without stirrups on a loose rein, because, Oh yeah! Moving your outside leg back as a turning aid is really just a natural consequence of opening up your outside hip, which is really where the movement should originate. And, in addition to looking pretty and connecting leg parts, knees can actually serve a function of keeping the inside shoulder from falling in. And I can feel my seatbones and notice where my weight is and adjust accordingly! Magic!
  
  
  I have experienced something similar in other times I've returned to riding after a break, where I'm not getting it and I'm not getting it, and then, Oh yeah! And it all starts coming back. Part of this is related to what I call "The Futility of Working on Body Parts in Isolation", which is, again, probably a topic for another post. (Yes, I do have a lot to say for an adult amateur who's been doing this for about five minutes. Thank you for noticing!) The relevant bit to my current post (and I promise, it ties in somewhere) is that I'm realizing that I have not really used my mental resources to their full capacity, either in the saddle or out. There is an element of "remembering" how to ride that is physical, and some of it is concrete knowledge, but clearly there's something a little more subconscious that kicks in. My subconscious is aware of what I am doing in a way that my conscious is not. In a number of ways, over the last year or so, I've felt like my subconscious has gone to great lengths to tell my conscious brain things about my horse life and my riding. As a total coincidence, I had two conversations somewhat recently with different friends about their meditation practices, and one of them recommended books by Jon Kabat-Zinn. And a third friend recently told me how to check out books from our local library for my Kindle. So. Whether or not it does anything else for me, mindfulness meditation when I am not riding seems like it would be helpful for training my mind to be... mindful, I guess, when I am riding. I'll let you know how it goes.

This post is already way too long, so I'm going to do a separate post on the strategy I'm thinking of for dealing with the (probably inevitable) periods when I am unable to ride due to my own physical injury or illness. Stay tuned!

sleep when you're sleepy. ride when you're awake.

This post's title comes from a text a close friend sent me last night, after I apologized for yet another weekend of horse activities trumping social ones. She gets it. In part because she and I are close, so she's gotten a lot of blow-by-blow details from me as my horse life has progressed, and partly because her career is her vocation and not a punch-the-clock job. This kind of support has been overwhelmingly important to me as I've gone through various transitions and rough patches in the horse journey, and I'm extremely grateful for all of the people in my life who've accepted that this whole horse thing is now one of the biggest priorities and main driving forces in my life.

On the other hand, I'm starting to feel like I haven't quite conveyed what I'm doing and what this means to me to a number of people in my broader social circle. I get the sense (from some, not all) that this is viewed as a "pleasure" activity, like eating ice cream, or going to a movie. It's not that they're dismissive, they're just... puzzled, I guess, when I say that I'm turning down the opportunity to take a vacation and go sit on a beach because I have an even better opportunity to stay here in the miserable heart of winter and ride someone else's horse. Why am I staying home on a Saturday night so I can get up at 6 AM on a Sunday morning to commute an hour each way, so I can pay for a riding lesson and hang out in a cold barn?

Because the only thing worse than a bad day at the barn is a day when I'm not at the barn.

And not that I would even consider the above scenario a bad day at the barn - I'm really looking forward to it! I enjoy many of the "work" aspects of being around horses, and certainly there's a real sense of responsibility and obligation that comes from having one in your care which makes it easy to prioritize the horse's needs. But, for anyone who rides regularly, there are times when it's just not "fun." It's not video games, it's not an amusement park ride, it's not sitting on the couch flicking through the TV channels. It's pushing yourself and your boundaries, it's confronting things about yourself that you'd rather not see, it's learning acceptance and how to be centered in the moment and in yourself. I guess I've never been motivated enough by anything else to really experience this before, but the inherent value that riding and horses bring to my life is so great that it seems obvious to me that I'd put long term goals above short term pleasure. And, I dunno, it feels better to do something and participate than it does to sit around and consume the things that others produce.

In any case, enough of this nonsense. I gotta get myself together and head out to the barn.  Less talk, more rock!

Loners & Rebels

“I’ve had enough of scheming, and messing around with jerks.” –Pet Shop Boys

I know that it raises a red flag when a person you don’t know hardly at all trash-talks their nearest and dearest. All the same, I’ve got to start my blog off by saying, (and feel free to picture Samuel L. Jackson voicing my concerns):

“I have had enough of writing checks payable to … complete idiots, who are also … total jerks.” (That was the edited for TV version – feel free to lip read the adjectives/adverbs Samuel was actually using.)

There. I feel better. And I’m done venting. I just wanted to let all y’all know. Since, as enthusiastic as I am about dressage, and as happy as I am to have the opportunity to do this whole horse thing…

Pee-Wee: There's a lotta things about me you don't know anything about, Dottie. Things you wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand.

Dottie: I don't understand.

Pee-Wee: You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me.I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel. So long, Dott.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure