Day 17 – 30 Day Horse Challenge – Your equestrian idol

Hey, so you know how in the last post I was talking about how my most recent fall was not that recent? Cause ha, my achy shoulder says otherwise today.

Yep...the gymnastics lesson was a bit more exciting than we thought it would be. Apparently there was a girl who had been jumping Midnight pretty regularly, and his owner had been doing trot poles with him, but never trot in/canter out gymnastics, so he is much more green to them than the instructor and I anticipated.

What happened was he trotted in very nicely to an X, but the next jump (a one-stride) had a flat plank kind of like this (only much smaller, and with just one plank):

We were supposed to trot in to the X and canter over the vertical, but in the middle Midnight got all crooked and then just sort of launched himself over weirdly. Obviously I didn't see it, but it was probably a situation of him going one way and me going the other. Thankfully the jump arena has soft footing. The instructor kept apologizing, saying she didn't realize he was still so green over these--and I totally know how she felt now, having taught lessons. But there really was no way we could have known how he was going to react; it definitely wasn't anyone's fault--possibly mine for not being more aggressive about keeping him perfectly straight.

All is fine though. I am pretty bummed that I will have to replace my Charles Owen Wellington since I freaking love that helmet. It's like a suction cup on my head. I definitely did fall on my the side of my head though so even though it doesn't look damaged and I didn't get a concussion or anything, I really do need to replace it. Lesson learned: wear a cheap helmet for jumping lessons!

My homework for the week is to work on straightness with chutes (trot poles or low Xes) and also to do a lot of leg yields on both sides.

My equestrian idol...this is one of those questions that I just feel kind of bleh about. I don't really have one. But I do remember having a total fit when I was starting my first day of my Practical Horseman internship, and I saw the contact info for McLain Ward and Beezie Madden in my Rolodex (yes, they still use Rolodexes there!). Actually, if anything, the people who work at PH are probably my role models. They have found a way to combine their passion for writing with their passion for horses, and they are very knowledgeable. I am happy with my job but I SO wish a position had opened up at Practical Horseman after my internship. Never say never, right?

Making the most of lessons...trying, at least

So for my 22nd birthday this past March, my mother was kind enough to gift me with four riding lessons with the trainer I've been working with for the past six months. I spent the first lesson riding Stan, who is a bit of a Frankenhorse, and very spooky, but never genuinely does anything bad (although apparently I am the only person he is spooky for--which just makes me feel great). Since I do not take lessons very often, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to get my money's worth and it just adds to my tension when I don't do what I'm supposed to, either from fear or muscle memory, or both (for example, acting as if Stan is ALWAYS going to freak out in the scary corner of the ring).

Just because he is a Frankenhorse with a parrot mouth, crooked legs, and a roached back...

...doesn't mean he isn't handsome! This is why we call him Manly Stanley!

I love riding Stan because once we work through the spooky stuff, he is very responsive. However, I do want to make the most of my lessons and challenge myself so that I can actually grow.

Clyde is the first horse I rode at this trainer's farm until he threw me and then was lame for several weeks (related incidents, but I can't remember exactly what the injury was). He is ridiculously finicky about his canter transitions, and WILL NOT canter unless you:

1. Sit deep and half-halt,
2. switch your weight to the inside and bend with the inside leg and rein,
3. then put on the outside leg at the EXACT RIGHT MOMENT of his stride. I am not good at this. At all. So he usually just ends up strung out in a super-fast trot and I usually end up out of breath from clucking and all hunched up from trying to do too many things at once.

Clyde says, "Check out my tattoo!"

So what with Clyde's being lame, Stan being an easier ride, and not having money for lessons until recently, I haven't ridden Clyde for several months. I have been reading the fantastically useful Build a Better Athlete!: 16 Gymnastic Exercises by Leslie Webb, though, and Webb recommends cueing for the canter (step 3 from above) by swinging your lower leg slightly behind the girth and sort of brushing the horse's side with your calf instead of squeezing. I've been doing that with Joey, who tends to rush into the canter and he responds immediately to it--maybe because he is a dressage pony and I guess they tend to do more swinging around with the lower leg for various cues.

Long story short--I wanted to ride Clyde for my lesson so I could try this magical new canter cue. In my first lesson, I went in totally confident and I was able to regain control and calmness after Stan spooked once at the Evil Demon Corner. I was feeling good, ready for a challenge. Even if Clyde didn't respond, at least I would get some practice feeling when the exact right moment of his stride would be to ask.

I didn't count on my trainer saying, "We'll probably just keep it to a walk and trot since you haven't ridden him for a while," immediately when I mounted up. I was disappointed, but I realized that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that maybe I could use my other lessons to work on cantering with Clyde.

Another thing I didn't count on was the wind.

And the fact that the wind would blow the jump filler flowers, making them look like they were up to no good.

Or that Clyde sees dead people in the bushes. Or something. I didn't see what it was that made him decide to suddenly turn tail along the straightaway, since I was concentrating on, "Forward. Straight. Straight, straight, straight," and looking forward rather than at Clyde. What I do know is that once we got about 15 feet away from the corner, I was hanging on his neck and wondering how I got there. There was no chance of me salvaging the situation since Clyde was still skittering away from the dead people in the bushes, so I just slid on down and landed on my butt, thanking my trainer for redoing her ring a couple months ago with wonderfully soft, even footing.

Clyde plots his next scheme.

 I hadn't even seen it coming, but that was it for me. After I mounted back up, my leg muscles were trembling from the shock of it, just like they do every time I fall, and I was frustrated that I couldn't make them stop. My trainer said to just hang out at the halt and take a few deep breaths. This just gave me more time to think about what a disappointment the lesson had turned out to be. No cantering, then I fell off at the trot, and now I couldn't stop my trembling body from telling Clyde, "Yes. Continue to freak out. Everything is scary today."

We picked up a walk, then a trot, on the other end of the ring, but of course that's where the suspicious jump filler was, so our circles were shaped more like kidney beans (sadly, not an exaggeration). Now it seems silly, but I was so disappointed in the difficulty I was having in just making a simple circle that I started tearing up when I asked my instructor what I was doing wrong. When the lesson was over, I seriously wondered whether I should even be riding horses like hers. What had I even learned? I felt that by asking me to retreat to the other side of the ring, my instructor was letting me back down from the problem instead of facing it. Maybe she thought that I wasn't capable of facing it. And maybe I wasn't.

In hindsight, she was crunched for time and probably just needed to wrap things up, but it was still a pretty confidence-crushing lesson for me. I mean, my entire blog is about me identifying as someone who rides whenever/whatever she can, and I fell off at the trot.

This past week, my instructor and I had more time to talk. I asked her whether she thought I should be riding school horses instead of her show horses, and she said that at a certain level, you just have to work through problems like the ones that Stan and Clyde tend to throw at me. And that's true. While I enjoy riding push-button ponies like Joey, I don't really have much to learn from a horse that does anything I ask.

For the rest of the lesson, we worked on my sitting trot and my canter departs, since that pre-canter running trot is where everything falls apart. It was never a problem with the drafts I've been riding through most of college since they are so comfy, but now I'm glad that I'm working on the things that will actually give me a good return on my investment.

Moral: Buck up and look forward to the next lesson, whenever that may be!

Guilty pleasure

First day of Spring Break! What does that mean? More horsey time :) Tomorrow should be really fun because now that I'm home and close enough to drive to Gentle Giants, I'll be attending a rescue horse birthday party. Then I'll make the most of the rest of the week by volunteering on the days I don't have "real" work. Should be a great chance to see if my lessons are translating to more confidence riding the rescued greenies. I have like three jobs I want to apply to as well, plus homework...so it's not exactly a break, but at least I will get a lot more time outside.

Until then, I'm trawling through the internet for my guilty pleasure--spills and thrills. I don't know why I find so much pleasure in seeing other people fail, but I LOVE the Bad_Riding group blog on Livejournal. Sometimes the commenters can be ruthless on riders who were maybe just having a bad day, but there is still a lot of fail out there.

Here is one of the nicer videos that is clearly just showing mistakes. The last couple seconds of the video really make it--I think we can all relate to that "Really? Did you have to?" feeling.

Sourpuss

Sorry to blog about the same fall twice, but I wrote this essay about how my dad and I are similarly obsessed with different sports (and how we mutually don't really "get" the sport of the other one) for a creative writing class and figured it might be of interest.

~

Ever since I can remember, my father has spent early weekend mornings either training for or competing in races, triathlons, and cycling competitions. I usually only saw the aftermath of these events—my father napping away the afternoons. I didn’t see much point in Saturdays and Sundays before 11 AM.

Once high school rolled around, I had to face more weekend mornings than I wanted to. I needed to accumulate service hours to graduate, so I accompanied my dad to the races as a volunteer.

“How nice of you to help your dad out! Do you run too? Those long skinny legs must be fast!” was all I heard, in one form or another, from the overly-awake-for-7-A.M. gaggle of my father’s buddies from his running club. Personally, I thought that my long legs were just as well suited to giving the subtlest of cues in the equitation ring. So no, I did not run—at least not in the sense that they meant—the exhilarating adrenalin, the rush of endorphins. I’ve only picked up running recently, and while I have learned to enjoy it, I consider it a substitute exercise for the days when I can’t get out to the farm. After a childhood of mile-long “fun runs” that were anything but, I considered running to be one of the most stupid activities adults had ever come up with.

Giving in to "normal people" exercise. At least the purple shoelaces are a perk.

The other volunteers led me to a table of water-filled Dixie cups. My task was to stand with my arm outstretched, offering water to passing runners, and to keep the table filled with cups during gaps. Simple enough, I thought.

As it turns out, it is actually quite difficult to hand water to runners in such a way that they won’t just spill it everywhere, stop, pick up another Dixie cup from the table, and leave not one, but two crumpled paper cups in the street. The table was doing my job better than I was. I took up refill duty.

“Come on, you can do it! Keep it going!” yelled another volunteer.

I stayed quiet. I did not support these people or their ridiculous paper-wasting hobby.

My father was similarly puzzled by my sport of choice—horseback riding.
   
“Horses are way too dangerous, pumpkin,” he would say.

“That’s the point of lessons,” I would say, and repeated nearly every day until I was 11. Through sheer brattiness, I got myself a riding lesson a week and all of the paraphernalia that went with it—a velveteen helmet, jodhpurs, a crop, and my own grooming kit. I was hooked. My father continues to be skeptical at best, especially after an incident when I was fourteen.

It was the final show of a spring series, and my horse Moon and I had just rocked our first division. We were waiting to be called for the jump class of the second--18 inches, a piece of cake. My instructor opened the gate. Moon and I trotted a circle, picked up the canter—and something was wrong. Moon was really running—something I had never seen the lazy school horse do. We were almost at the first jump. I hoped for the best.
  

We popped over just fine. I made sure to sit up straight for the one, two, three, four terrifyingly fast strides, and we popped over the second. I looked around my corner towards the other pair of jumps on the straightaway, Moon stumbled, yanked the reins from my hands, and I was on the ground. His strong neck pinned me down, and he didn't seem to be in any hurry to get up. I wondered how long I was going to be stuck there. I wasn’t in a hurry either. This was probably really going to hurt soon.
 

 I don't remember the exact moment Moon stood up, but I do remember a total stranger with a country drawl bending over me, asking me how many fingers he was holding up.
  
“Three,” I answered, wondering who he was and why he thought that was what people legitimately did outside of the realm of cartoons. My father arrived soon after.
  

"Hon, do you think you can get up?"
  

"I don't want to."
  

"Please, hon, just try to get up."
  

I got up, no problem, and was surprised that I felt only a dull ache in my shoulder from the impact (it hurt a lot worse the day after, of course). But overall, things seemed fine and I was determined to compete in the next division. I hadn’t woken up at 5 A.M. just to go home whenever some silly horse fell on me. My father led me to my farm's shiny aluminum-sided trailer to get some water (and perhaps to discourage me from what he saw as a reckless plan that would surely result in my untimely death). I saw myself in the trailer's reflection and burst into tears.
  

The brand-new, hundred-dollar show jacket I had bought myself, my precious velveteen helmet--caked in dirt. I unbuckled my helmet and rubbed at it furiously, which only spread the stain.
  

"Dad, my helmet is ruined."
  

"That's okay hon. It's just dirty; you can still use it." He didn't understand--I couldn't continue to show with my helmet in that condition. I was hysterical. And that is how my father became even more convinced that his daughter was slightly insane, and how I learned the importance of being on the right lead, especially in corners on a five-year-old horse.

This got the stain out easily, FYI.

I never had any illusions of my father and I being able to ever enjoy a trail ride together without him worrying I was going to die, so during my sophomore year of college, I accepted his invitation to a cycling race in the rolling hills of Carroll County, MD. I woke up early, and suited up in some borrowed Spandex and a blue biking jersey for the so-called “Eat a Peach Ride” that celebrated the fruit’s harvest and was also a fundraiser for brain injury research. I could get behind that--I like my brain. My dad, thrilled that I was finally expressing an interest, rented a professional-grade racing bike for me to use that day. It was the exact model he had, and one used by Tour de France competitors—a lightweight Trek Madone.

I biked most days at school, weaving between pedestrians, up hills, and even down some stairs when they interrupted my path to CVS or Starbucks. I doubted that a racing bike would make me any faster, but I figured it would be easier to deal with than my mountain bike with sticky gears.

I didn’t count on those “rolling hills of Carroll County” being quite so steep. Or on finding that my legs had turned to jelly around mile 6, or that I was so slow on the inclines that I could have probably walked faster. Or the fact that racing bikes have a completely unlabeled gear-switching mechanism. I soon found that I was completely incapable of intuiting whether I needed to move down or up a gear.

After over two hours of my father riding slowly behind me, calling “Upper left! Now lower right!” to signal which gear I should switch to as we rode through the laboriously odious, horrifically steep hills and terrifying drops of Carroll County, we completed our circle back to where we parked at the Agricultural Reserve.

I wanted to collapse. A volunteer handed us both a Dixie cup of water, and a pair of red socks with a yellow bike helmet and the words “Sock Guy” emblazoned on them.

“Good job!” she beamed. I did not think that thirty miles in almost three hours would be considered “good” by any standard, but I took both items politely, taking care to not spill the water.

“Cool, biking socks!” my dad said, examining his pair.

“What are biking socks?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. They’re just specially designed for biking.”

I couldn’t see anything special about them, but the fact that I had my own specialized super-thin socks to make it easier to pull on my field boots crept into my mind.

“Let’s get peaches,” I said. I was not going to leave this ordeal without one of the fruits we were supposed to be celebrating by biking around in a thirty-mile circle.  We made our way to the food stand, took our peaches, and sat on the grass next to our bikes.

“So you think you’d want to do this again?” my dad asked.

“Don’t count on it,” I said. I had given it my best shot, but I think I understood the appeal of his sport just about as well as he understood the appeal of large, dangerous animals. I considered my peach, and sank my teeth into it.

Suitability: Overhorsing

I am so excited to see the rescue where I volunteer, Gentle Giants, being featured on the Snarky Rider blog...not least because the director of the rescue, Christine, is very entertaining with her guest posts.

Her post about Chase went along with a theme I'm seeing in a lot of other horsey blogs in the past week: suitability. As is usually the case at the rescue, the most handsome horses get a ton of calls from potential adopters, regardless of their ability and whether the horse is advertised as a bloodthirsty brain-smashing bronc. Chase isn't quite that, but he needs a very special adopter. Someone who can put a lot of time into building his confidence and handling his trust issues. Someone who doesn't mind playing lawn darts every so often when things like this happen:

Image from Chase's adoption page. I guess GG figures that a picture is worth 1000 words.

I was not that person. Christine asked me if I would be willing to ride Chase-- a horse with severe fear issues when mounting-- in exchange for a little cash this summer. I thought about it. I figured that I could follow the OCD-specific pattern that Chase required in order to not bolt when I mounted him. I'd never any problem mounting smoothly, and what's more, I'd never been paid to ride before. I said yes.

I was slightly dismayed that I had to ride Western, since I never feel quite as secure in a Western saddle, but I soon realized why it was necessary. Chase totally lost his marbles in that instant when a rider disappeared from his sight as he or she moved from the ground to the saddle. I'm not sure why he hasn't figured out that people don't magically teleport from the ground to his back after months of expensive training, but funnily enough, horses don't seem to register things like the ratio of money to expected results.

So in order to mount, I had to crank his head around as far as possible so he could see me the whole time, loop the rein around the horn for leverage, and then use the horn to pull myself up from the ground...all with those too-long Western stirrups. Now, I'm 5'4." Chase is 16 hands. It wasn't that I couldn't mount up from the ground on a horse that height--I did it all the time in high school, with my 17-hand Thoroughbred Spur--but Spur wasn't trying to BOLT as I pulled myself up.

I bounced up into the stirrup with one leg. He scooted his hind end away from me. I repeated this until I got up the guts to just swing my other leg over. And then I heard my helmet ping against the round pen and I was sitting on the ground, trying to catch my breath. According to the people watching, I flipped over his head, thwacked against the wall, and fell into a pile of manure. Wish I could have seen it myself. 

I'm trying to get to the idea that suitability goes to the core of true horsemanship, and sometimes the factors are out of your control.  I'm never going to be taller than 5'4," and I'll never be suited to mounting a tall horse from the ground. Especially one with some "quirks." Personally, I think Chase would do best with a guy riding him--someone with the height to mount up easily and the strength to keep him from bolting (which he has now in the form of a brave volunteer). Maybe I could have learned to ride Chase--but we're not suited to each other as regular partners.

But so many people overhorse themselves-- or worse, their kids. Poor little guy--even in the thumbnails you can see how terrified he is of his horse. His position is weak; he gets left behind or jumped out of the tack, and he's dealing with his fear by YANKING on the reins, only making the problem worse. They are not a happy pair. (You'll have to click the link for photos. It's a professional photographer and I don't want to step on anyone's toes.)

Another unhappy pair:

If you're jumping higher out of the tack than your horse is jumping the fence...it's not a match. Not to gloss over the death grip this rider has on his horse's face, but I just looove how the horse gets smacked for refusing around 3:07...when it's clearly the rider's fault since he was laying on the horse's neck, making it physically impossible for the horse to lift up his front end! (video found via Snarky Rider)

A guest blogger for FHOTD had some great tips for determining suitability when you're buying a horse. I think it applies to just trying a horse that you're going to ride regularly as well.

Moral of the story: The Extended Version
I'll put my responses (coming from the perspective of someone trying to ride cheaply) after the basic guidelines from FHOTD.

FHOTD says: Well, start off by being realistic; don’t try to buy a $50,000 horse if you cannot afford it.
I say:  Find a way to take lessons on performance horses, then use those skills to make yourself a great asset to any barn that needs horses exercised.

FHOTD says: Be serious about buying a horse.
I say: Definitely, though in our case it's leasing or free-leasing. You have to really think--Do I have time to ride this horse regularly? Do I have the money for whatever costs there are, like gas money, farrier money, whatever? Right now, since I've kind of been advertising that I'm looking for a horse to ride at school and work, I think I actually have to narrow it down. There are not enough hours in the day to do homework, work, tack up and ride 4 different horses living in 4 different directions.

FHOTD says: Don’t buy a horse that doesn’t meet your discipline needs. 
I say: Depends. Right now I am riding a dressage horse and I've only taken one dressage lesson in my entire life. He's teaching me to be a lot quieter with my upper body so I think cross-training can actually be quite helpful. I think this rule applies more exclusively to buying.

FHOTD says: If you have a trainer, BRING THEM WITH YOU!!!
I say: Not really necessary for a free lease or just a random horse you're going to ride a couple times a week.

FHOTD says: Don’t lie about your riding ability.
I say: Amen. Colossal waste of everyone's time. But that isn't to say that if you're a showjumper, you can't ride dressage or vice versa. To take Joey, the horse I'm riding now, for example--his advertisement said "goes best in a dressage training level frame." Do I actually really know what a training level frame is? No. But I did know how to get a horse to stretch down and use his back, and after some Googling I figured we might be a good match. A beginner might have to look a little harder or take a few more lessons before he or she is able to find a horse to ride regularly that will be safe and appropriate, but there are older horses or horses with soundness issues who would benefit from some walking and trotting once in a while.

FHOTD says: Be prepared, be honest and be communicative.  And most of all don’t come out with the intention of wasting someone’s time.
I say: Great note to end on.

Riding Other Peoples' Horses for Them: Pro/Con

Pro: Free! Sometimes even paid! Sadly, I have no experience with the latter. The only time someone offered to pay me to ride a horse, I ended up doing a flip over the horse's head, banging my own head on a round pen, and landing in poop. Which brings us to the Con...and I'm not talking about Tegan and Sara here.

Con:

Click the picture for full-size

That would be Joey, the new horse I'm riding twice a week for free thanks to COTH's Riderless Horses and Horseless Riders matchmaking thread. My "interview ride" went great, although I have zero experience in dressage and the ad I answered said he goes better in a dressage frame. I took that to mean--stretch him down, and sit back, which gave us a great first ride.

Then yesterday happened. Horses always seem to know when I need to be taken down a notch. There were a lot of little kids and commotion in the barn, so I figured  that with that and the unseasonably warm weather, I'd try hacking Joey out in a big open field with a couple of power lines to watch over us.

I hopped on, felt that my stirrups were a bit long, thought, "Eh, whatever. He's used to that; he's a dressage horse," and walked around, just checking out the terrain for 10 minutes or so. Tried to pick up a trot and realized I was not used to long stirrups at all, so I dismounted, fixed them, and realized something else--I have to work on mounting from the ground and Joey needs to work on standing still for more than two seconds. So we moseyed over to the stool/table thing that I had used to mount up the first time. No problem--then I asked for a trot, and it was sayonara for Joey.

I'm not exactly sure whether he bucked or what, but all of a sudden I was hanging on his neck, and I knew things weren't going to get any better from there so I bailed. Hard. I must have landed on my back, judging by the bruises today, but he definitely knocked the wind out of me. I mostly remember just trying to catch my breath on all fours in the soggy grass while he hightailed it to his hay and his buddies in the barn down the hill. I followed him--much slower.

The farm does therapeutic riding, and so far it seems like stuff is generally well under control. The farm manager had Joey in hand by the time I made it down the hill. I explained what happened, and she pointed out that my face was bleeding. My glasses had cut the side of my nose.

Great, I thought. I touched the bridge of my nose and looked at the blood on my finger. My boyfriend's going to give me crap about this one. I tried to pick a SAFE horse this time! A THERAPY horse, come on!

Turns out he hacks out great in therapy lessons...with an instructor and sidewalkers. My definition of hacking out is a bit different. So I cleaned up, hopped back on in the indoor, and made that little son-of-a-gun MARCH! ...in spite of the stars before my eyes.

Moral of the story: Don't assume an ex-Pony Club dressage horse will hack out. And always wear a helmet!

PS--I was worried I might die in my sleep from a horrific brain injury (though I did wear a helmet, as always) so I called a nurse hotline. Apparently everything is OK and I should just ice my neck, take it easy, and command my boyfriend to give me "gentle massages." Sounds good to me.

Weighing in on fear

Over the past six months, I've been taking lessons and working off rides at a small farm owned by a hunter/jumper judge, and while I have really been smoothing over some bad habits, a new one has arisen--fear. Mugwump Chronicles covered this topic in October, right about when I started riding at the new farm, and I think it's time for me to weigh in.

I feel lucky to ride my trainer's horses--she doesn't have a big lesson program at her farm, so I ride her horse, Clyde, and a sale horse we refer to as "Manly Stanley". They know more than I do, which on one hand is great, because I have a lot to learn. On the other hand, it puts a lot of pressure on because I'm convinced I will somehow ruin them or otherwise prove that I am not worthy to ride horses worth as much as a Lexus sedan. Plus, my trainer's horses are actually fit enough to do some damage, as I found out when I uh...dismounted from the most athletic buck I've felt since the Appaloosa I used to ride in high school, who was impossible to rate, but didn't take so kindly to a crop and would show his displeasure with a high-speed horsey balancing act on his front legs. Clyde had injured himself  in the field, felt ouchy when I asked for the canter in a corner, and wanted me OFF (don't you just LOVE when they buck on a turn?). I understood, though, that it was a medical thing rather than a behavior thing, and it was impossible for us to have known since he wasn't acting lame or sore before that--but it really impressed upon me that I could get hurt at any given moment.

For me, fear when riding kind of ebbs and flows. I get hurt, or hit a wall with my progress that I feel I can't overcome, and I get discouraged. I lose faith in my abilities, which of course actually makes my riding worse since I'm tense, anticipating problems. I keep riding, realize that yes, I can actually get a good canter transition (or whatever the fear du jour is), and my confidence slowly comes back and turns into cockiness. Some other disaster happens and I'm feeling down again. You get the picture.

I remember the first time I was able to overcome one of those fears du jour--two years after the only really scary accident I've had.

Story Time!

It happened when I was 14 years old. It was the final show of a spring series, and I was riding a Paint named Moon who hated to be petted, but loved when you blew your breath into his nostrils. We had just rocked our first division of the final show in a spring series, and we were waiting to be called for the jump class of the second--18 inches, a piece of cake.

 Nervously waiting for our class at a previous show in the series. Oh, the days when my boots were that shiny...

My trainer led me to the side of the ring and asked me to recite the course to him.

"Outside  verticals two times to the left, then an X on the diagonal."

"Good. Don't forget your circle."

It was time for my round, and my trainer opened the gate. I looked around the arena, led Moon to the corner, and picked up a trot. We circled, picked up the canter on the corner toward the first vertical--and something was wrong. Moon was really running--something I had never seen the lazy school horse do. We were almost at the first jump. I hoped for the best.

We popped over just fine. I made sure to sit up straight for the one, two, three, four terrifyingly fast strides, and we popped over the second. I looked around my corner towards the other pair of verticals on the straightaway, Moon stumbled, yanked the reins from my hands, and I was on the ground. His strong neck pinned me down, and he didn't seem to be in any hurry to get up. I wondered how long I was going to be stuck there. I figured it was fine to stay there indefinitely. This was probably really going to hurt soon.

I don't remember the exact moment Moon stood up, but I do remember a total stranger with a country drawl bending over me, asking me how many fingers he was holding up.

"Three." I said, wondering who he was and why he thought that was what people legitimately did outside of cartoons. My father arrived soon after.

"Hon, do you think you can get up?"

"I don't want to."

"Just try to get up."

I got up, no problem, and was surprised at the fact that I felt only a dull ache in my shoulder from the impact (it hurt a lot worse the day after, of course). But overall, things seemed fine and I was determined to do the flat classes of my next division. My father led me to my farm's shiny aluminum-sided trailer to get some water (and perhaps to discourage me from what he saw as a reckless plan). I saw myself in the trailer's reflection and burst into tears.

The brand-new, hundred-dollar show jacket I had bought myself, my precious velveteen helmet--caked in dirt. I unbuckled my helmet and rubbed at it furiously, which only spread the stain.

"Dad, my helmet is ruined."

"That's okay hon. It's just dirty; you can still use it." He didn't understand--I couldn't continue to show with my helmet in that condition.

"Daddy, can we pleeeease go to the tack shop on the way home to see if they have something to fix it?"

We did, and they did. And that is how my father became even more skeptical of my equine obsession, and how I learned the importance of being on the right lead, especially in corners on a five-year-old horse.

A little jolt of fear seized my body each time I asked for the canter in lessons after that. I became convinced that it would happen again whenever a horse lowered his head or tripped. So I was terrified when I began free-leasing Spur, an old Thoroughbred named not for his speed, but because he was so quiet and lazy that you needed spurs. He had picked up the habit of rooting and bucking immediately after a jump (or whenever he felt frisky).

"Nya nana nana na!" Spur said, mocking me cruelly.

I avoided cantering for too long or fast when I rode for practice, but in my lessons it was inevitable. I spent weeks with my instructor working out how to strengthen my leg and seat so he couldn't pull me off-balance, and finally, it paid off. I could ride Spur anytime, anywhere, and he was rooting a lot less now that he realized I wouldn't put up with it.

I decided to challenge myself (you see the cycle? I got cocky again...) to ride out in the field. Maybe one day I would even be able to jump the cross-country coops in the schoolies' field. I led Spur up the driveway and into the field, closed the gate, and mounted up from the fence. So far, so good. I warmed him up, pleased that I didn't really have to worry about diagonals or leads on the long straight stretches. Then it was time for the canter. I trotted up to the fence line, and pointed him to the opposite side.

"Caaan-TER," I said softly, and gave a nudge with one leg. He stepped out--a little forward, but nothing I couldn't handle. I followed his head--and-a-one-and-a-two, and-a-one-and-a-two. This was fun! I was outside with my horse! Most people at my hunter/jumper show barn rarely ventured outside!

At this moment, Spur was feeling as good as I was. He flung his head down and gave a little buck. I gave the wrong-answer buzzer, " Ehhh!" and held fast with my lower legs, using them as a lever (or fulcrum? whatever) to bring his head back up without losing the pace. No problem. He picked his head up, and took my added leg as a cue to go faster. He was really running.

"Fol-low, fol-low," I could practically hear my instructor's voice in my head. Spur and I were galloping--outside, for the fun of it! There was no jump I had to get to, no annoying little kid tailing me in the show ring, nothing. I had fixed the problem. Spur and I were a team.

Moral of the story: Hooray for free leases!