A Virtuous Circle

Last night, Rebel was strong again, but it was the manageable kind of fizz; even though he was literally lunging at the fences — taking off from waaay out, and then unable to get his stride for the second face of the double — it wasn’t a big deal. I got to do that thing with my butt again, the pinching thing that makes him shorten up his stride. It is fun! And it makes me laugh, the way it works, just tensing up my arse, and suddenly everything changes.

In the car to the LUAS, we chatted about the lesson, as we do. My horsey friend said how she trusted the horse she’s currently riding — and maybe that was a mistake? And I said that I didn’t think so: ‘Because since you trust him, you’re relaxed, and he feels your relaxation, and then he relaxes, and the whole situation just feeds on itself, in a good way.’

So what’s the opposite of a vicious circle? I initially thought ‘precious circle’ and criiiiiinged. This from someone who makes smoochy noises at Connell, in the barn, in front of everyone! Seriously, though, as words go, ‘precious’ is just one of the worst. Sorry, it just is.*

Luckily, Wiki offered up a legitimate antonym to ‘vicious’ in ‘virtuous’ and this pleases me, not least on an alliterative level. This also allows me to go down a dictionary/thesaurus rabbit hole. Virtuous has mainly to do with morals, is what I conclude, and I think… I think that the virtuous circle with the horses goes back to that state of trust.

The more I trust someone/something/somehorse, the less I worry. The less I worry, the more present I am. The more present I am, the less I worry, and then trust is a foregone conclusion, because I am confident and relaxed [because I am not worrying!] It’s like when we’re jumping a series of fences as we did last night: double at B and a crosspole roughly at X, on the right rein. Now, I don’t trust Rebel on the right rein, it seems to make him fizzier and fightier, but since we had so much to do, and I had so much to think about, I mostly just left him to it and focused on getting us around the place. Now, I do trust that once Rebel at least sees the fence, he’s going to go over it. I know that much. Since I trusted him to do that, the fact that he was taking off really early on that first fence — well, I just went with it.

The thing was, he needs to be able to trust me to do my job, too, which was to notice that, hey, he’s taking off really early and not getting his stride, so therefore perhaps I should pinch up my butt. We did the double again, with me pulling up my arse muscles, and it was perfect. [This was not an independent decision, just to be precise, my instructor reminded me to do it.] So maybe he trusts me, now, to be paying attention and making adjustments?

I don’t know that I trust Rebel in the pure sense of the word. I know I can rely on him to be stroppy, frustrating, and moody. ‘Rely’ means many things, but ‘count on’ seems to work here, in a less than positive sense. But! I suppose the answer here is to be able to rely on myself, to know that I will be present, in the moment, in every moment that makes up the lesson, and that I will flex as necessary.

I am finally in the place where I understand [acknowledge, know, be aware of, be conscious of] that I have to be there, every single second. Even more than I already have been. Which I had thought was a lot, but apparently, there’s even more Now to be experienced. I’m very juiced up to be experiencing this, and am going to be seriously experimenting with this virtuous circle thing — without being too precious about it.

*Some words I do like.

Keeping an Open Heart

I was talking to a pal the other day, about a bunch of things that are going on for me at the moment, and in conclusion I said, ‘Well, I’m keeping an open heart.’

The thing is, I know I was going to say that I was keeping an open mind, and that… I didn’t. I mean, I could feel the word on my tongue. It almost made it all the way out, but then this other word slipped out of my mouth, and I realised that this it was a good thing to say, and a good way to live.

This concept has been on my mind for the last week or so. I’m working on what I’ve been calling my ‘horsey-divorcey’ book, a middle-aged lady, post-divorce, equine conversion, codependency recovery memoir. I’ve been working on it for the last forever, or at least it feels that way, and it’s another reason that I wasn’t posting very often in the last year or so. I was having a hard time switching from blog-brain to book-brain, and I feel that since I’m halfway done, and have also nailed down the memoir’s raison d’etre, I can do both at once.

One feeds the other. Each chapter features a number of posts culled from here; this post is inspired by some things I’ve been thinking about lately that have come up from the book writing. In one chapter, the main thrust of which is falling, I talk about how much I wanted to be a rider! and I proceed to recount the first seven falls that were meant to ‘make’ me a rider. [All seven posts can be found in the Catalogue of Falls category'.] Someone had told me that horse people said that it took seven falls to make a rider; I had some fear around falling, and the notion of turning it into a goal kind of took the sting out of it.

It occurred to me that there was no way in heaven or hell that I wanted to call myself codependent, and I couldn’t imagine how I was going to take the sting out of that. I have by mainly turning it — the concept of it, my reality of it — into a hook in a book. By extension though, through that kind of distancing, it’s easier for me to hold the notion at a healthy distance, from which I gain perspective. It makes it easier for me to look at my behaviour in my unsuccessful marriage see how I can heal, and move forward.

But was it unsuccessful? On Saturday, I woke up a bit tired, and what with my ligament thingie still bothering me, by the time I got to my lesson, I had already reckoned on the kind of lesson I was going to have. And I had exactly the lesson I thought I’d have: not stellar, largely featuring inconsistent jumping on Connell, who wasn’t doing anything but giving back to me exactly what I was giving to him, an hour in which I went in and out of focus, in which I corrected something only to let something else go by the wayside. A lesson in which, at the end when the instructor gave us all feedback, I was literally and figuratively often unbalanced.

I was not fully ‘successful’ in that lesson, but I can look at it and realise that it was successful in that I knew what was happening going in, and got what I thought I was going to get. I now, completely and utterly, understand that I bring myself to this work, and that it’s not up to the horse to ‘make’ it go well. In this way, I can look at the things I am looking at, as regards my codependency, how it manifested in my former marriage, think about what I’ve learned and how I’ve used that knowledge, has enabled me to sit here right now, a horsewoman-in-progress, pulling all the bits of my life together and bringing it all forward.

That’s the only kind of enabling I’ll be doing now, but even as to that, who knows? I’ll do my best, and I’ll keep an open heart.

Today is Friday

… but I spent most of the afternoon yesterday gearing up for Saturday.

I actually had to say to myself, before bed Thursday night, ‘Tomorrow is Friday, tomorrow is Friday.’

Part of this is concern about the over-extended whatever in my right knee. This is so annoying! The aging process, in action! It feels somewhat better, but I just texted a pal to see could I get a lift to the yard [as well as the one I get to the bus after...]

As well, part of this is what I hope is a renewed enjoyment of my Saturday lesson. Last year didn’t see much blogging because I was so bummed by how poorly I was riding. Now, I feel back up to snuff, and maybe even a bit beyond. It’s made me look at that injury in a new way.

You can’t learn to ride without riding. When you don’t know how to ride, the learning curve is steep. There you are, up there, in public, in an arena full of other horses and riders, and the pressure is actually enormous. The instructor is yelling, because there she is on the ground, and there you all are, up there, and it’s not like she’s yelling at you… but sometimes it feels like that. {And okay, sometimes she is.} But every week, you go back for more, and somehow, the penny slowly drops, and you do something right that you used to do wrong, and it is amazing.

In the beginning of this undertaking, for me, the gains were massive, or seemed so. One day, I wouldn’t even understand what the canter aid even was, and then the next, I would get it. One day I wouldn’t even know what it meant to ‘sit back’ if a horse went all sparky on me, and then this day, I simply sat back and reached a whole new level of control.

It’s not like I’m not being continually told what to do, but there’s this thing, this brain freeze thing, in which what happens is: something goes wrong, the instructor instructs me on how to correct it, but the thing going wrong just makes me go deaf, or something. The thing about riding is, there’s not that much you can do to correct something that is wrong, because the correction is essentially simple, so I suppose the sheer repetition of hearing it, over and over, makes it sink in somehow.

When Reb took off on me on Tuesday, I didn’t even need to hear the direction to sit baaaa-accck — I did it. Somewhere, deep in my limbic system, I must have called up the memory of this, and I didn’t do what I did then, and managed the whole thing more successfully. And remembered enough of that event, deep down, to get down and cut my losses.

All of this goes back to that time taken off. Which wasn’t much, I got back up there really quickly, even if I couldn’t do everything the lesson required, because I couldn’t bear to be away… but even when I couldn’t do everything that the lesson required, as far as jumping was concerned, say, I still had fully functioning eyes and ears. I could still learn by watching and listening. When I did do things, I had to do them more slowly, and use more of the muscles that I was probably supposed to be using all along, and I learned from that, too. I think that a lot of the pressure was off, the pressure to go and go and go, and in taking the riding more slowly, even though it was going really badly, it was actually going really well.

So it wasn’t really time taken off, but time taken and used to do the things that I had been doing over and over, in a new way. I think that’s built my confidence, my mental confidence, measurably, and I’m happy to have learned that no time in the saddle is wasted.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Reb wasn’t tacked when I went into the barn. Funnily enough, he’d damaged his ligament sometime last year, and here I was again, limping — was he himself limping again?

Apparently not… and I tacked him up with no worries, led him to the indoor, mounted, lead the ride down to the outdoor, not a bother on us…

The Queen of RICE*

In response to having injured my lower left leg in mid-2010, in the winter of 2010/11 I pulled the medial ligament in my right knee, which is kind of on the inside and around the back. After that healed, I then pulled a tendon or something in my left knee area. I simply switched my stretchy support bandage from one side to the other.

Yesterday, before I left the house for my lesson, I felt like my right knee was acting up again.

What’s That Smell?

I am inured to my own stink, so when I noticed that something particularly pungent was wafting in and out of my notice, on the way home after Saturday’s lesson… I naturally assumed, okay, that yes: I reek.

This was little something extra.

What happened was: It was really cold yesterday. Cold enough that I thought I might take off my light jacket halfway through the lesson and decided against it; cold enough that I was wearing a light jacket at all. I remember a period of time, early on, during which there was a more experienced girl in my Saturday lesson. This is going back… five years, maybe. There I was in my layers of outerwear, and there she was in a button-down top. I’ve toughened up over the intervening years and often ride in the winter in a long-sleeved top, and that’s it for protection from the elements. And my body protector, sure, but even so. I think I even wore a scarf one time, early on? Sheesh.

So, Saturday was pretty chilly. We worked hard, non-stop, on the flat, and Con worked up a sweat, so much so that he had white stuff all over his jowls, and near the girth. It was too cold to hose him down, and I couldn’t bear to leave him like that… so I took off my jacket, dipped a section of it into his water bowl, and wiped him down as best I could. And then dried him off, again as best I could, with the jacket.

I balled it up, stuffed in into my rucksack, and thought nothing of it.

Until I sat there on the bus, wondering what in holy hell smelled.

In fairness, even as I asked the question of the general Consciousness, knowing fully well that it was me that was the source of the pong. I felt a little self-conscious, but also a little bit proud. I worked so hard in that lesson that I stink to high heaven. <It’s almost lyrical, that.

I also felt a little dubious. Surely I can’t be smelling as bad as this?! Could I have sweat that much in so much cold? Then I remembered the jacket, and how I had wiped all that sweaty white stuff onto it, and then, weirdly, I was a little embarrassed. I don’t even know what that is about. Why would I be more conscious of the stinky jacket and not the stinky bod? I haven’t got a notion. I think because I really don’t think that I smell that bad, but whooo, man, the reek of this jacket was noticeable even through the rucksack.

Ah, sure. I forgot about it, mostly, after I identified it as the source of all things smelly. I even took it food shopping. I only hope that it helped to prevent Connell feeling too much discomfort. If it did, it was well worth the the looks from my fellow commuters. Sorry, people! The comfort of the horse wins.

Hey, I Forgot Something.

I forgot to be nervous on my first day back in the saddle.

KTHXBAI 2011!

Yeesh, I had thought that 2010 had been a tough one — I remember saying to a friend, somewhere around October of that year, ‘I cannot wait to see the back of 2010.’

And now we’re all rolling our eyes at one another, shaking our heads and hoping for better in 2012… which is exactly correct.

Horsey Hols

Just in time, too.

I think the cold weather had something to do with it, but everyone was kicking up their heels this last week of term.

Now, as far as Tuesday was concerned, the wind didn’t help keep the lads settled down. We’re fairly used to the wind, up there on that big hill, but this was like nothing we’d ever heard. It was relentless, and the clatter on the steel roof crescendoed upon crescendo until I was sure someone was going to go ballistic. At one stage, Winston and Rebel seemed determined to have a bit of a race, but it didn’t come to much. Spuddie broke out into a canter, unasked, as well. We made it through, though, even if it did sound like the roof was going to fall in.

Saturday: too cold to watch the first lesson, so it was with some surprise that Connell came back to the indoor carrying a different rider. Seems he did that squealing/bucking/galloping thing, and it necessitated a switcheroo.

I wasn’t bothered. Still cresting the confidence wave, it didn’t even occur to me to be bothered. Or if it did, it didn’t even last the length of the thought. So I got up there and we made our way down to the indoor, where the wind was still blowing from Tuesday, and the horses in the field we had to pass were going mennnnnnntal. Connell did a little muscle bunching, precipitate to reacting, but we managed to get past without incident.

We had a good, solid flat lesson, and I don’t care if it was because he was hopped up on the notion of two weeks of freedom, Con was positively springy, and felt great. When we got to the canter, there was the usual right-rein power struggle, and when I did get it off him, there it was, that little squeeeEEEEE and a buck and the first two steps were like wooHOOOOOO — and I just sat back and had none of that. Fantastic.

We were meant to get a little more cantering in towards the end, but the horses in the field decided it was New Year’s Eve or something and were racketing all over the place. They were far enough away that the humans didn’t notice them until we noticed that the horses we were riding noticed and that they wanted to join the party. Or were freaked out. Or both.

As we were queueing up to leave, I said to the instructor, ‘Hey, I’m nervous.’ I’ve got a streak going here, and I’m not going to wreck it. She grabbed Con’s bridle and walked with us until we were well past the critical juncture.

It takes a lot of confidence to admit you’re afraid. That’s kind of awesome, isn’t it?

Mojo: The Return

[MOJO IS A GOOD NAME FOR A HORSE] It’s been a year and half since I joined the Saturday lesson, since The Injury, since despite It, I tried to jump in my first Saturday lesson, fell on my head, and have been struggling week by week, Saturday by Saturday, to like it again.