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