The Belly Button Thing + The Other Thing

EQUALS AWESOME The other thing being that thing that they tell you to do, when the horse is falling in on a circle in canter, which is: open the inside rein. Which seems ridiculous and pointless and scary, because surely if you open up the inside rein, the horse is just going to fall in even more and you’re going to end up spinning like a top?

Actually, you don’t. What happens is, the circle gets frighteningly smaller and then the horse, who has been overcompensating, compensates in the correct direction, and Bob is the brother of your mother or father.

It really does work. Especially when added to the belly button thing. Oh, and the thing that Ruth told me to do in the canter, to drop and open up my knees. Honestly, I barely know myself.

What happened was, we had been having some excellent canters, knees were down, navel was engaged, and the inside leg was on. I was holding Rebel back a bit, just to let him get used to the idea that I am now taking a greater interest in being in charge, but still, we were going great.

Until the last canter. We went into the twenty metre circle at C, and damn if he didn’t start running away a bit, and dropping his shoulder. I sat back, legs long, did the belly button thing, and opened the inside rein — and damn it if he didn’t straighten up.

He tried it again, I did it again, and bang on the money: I could feel him shift his weight so that he didn’t tip over like a dozy cow.

I think that it takes a while to process something intellectually about the riding. So much of it is counterintuitive, that it’s a struggle to believe, in your mind, that sitting back is actually safer than curling up in a ball on the horse’s neck [well, when I put it like that...] and that opening up the rein in the direction in which a horse seems uncontrollable will actually get him under control.

I believe it in my mind, now, because I did it in my body. There was a moment when the circle was getting reeeeeaallly small when I thought that I didn’t dare try to open the rein again, but I did, and he straightened up.

All without using the stick. All without bashing the belly. All without panicking. All easily and quickly done. No drama. Lots of praise resulting. Feeling of self-amazingness increase expotentially. There’s a lot here to like.

The Belly Button Thing

IT REALLY WORKS It really does.

Progress Report

When the snow was coming down a couple of months ago, so was my moral. I was out having coffee with a friend, prior to heading out for a later-than-usual private lesson, and I just felt so bad about my riding that I didn’t even want to go. The white stuff kept falling, then stopping, then falling again, and the actual practicalities — would I even be able to get back from the yard in this weather? — were falling down when faced with my fear that I was actually crap at this and that I should stop.

It Takes Time

It just does. It takes time for me to get used to a horse. I’ve been riding Amigo well, and we jumped on Saturday, just wee ones, a foot if that, but I need to do that. I need to take my time with a new horse.

I’ve been riding Amigo at least once a week now, let’s say… it’s been seven times? Eight? I can say that the fourth time was the charm. You have to learn a horse, and they’re all different, and there are things I can get away with on Delilah or Rebel that don’t work with Amigo, and vice versa [emphasis on vice when it comes to you-know-who.] Amigo really doesn’t like it when I give him a bad line into a fence. Really doesn’t. So how do I know that, unless I do it? I don’t.

I simply don’t. There’s the thing, and I bring it to the lesson myself, of having to be competent immediately on an unknown mount, and it just doesn’t work. I end up feeling bad about myself, and then it takes who knows how many lessons [two?] to get back to the place where I know that I need to relax and go with it.

It’s good to know.

Just for a Moment

I can gauge my progress more clearly now. It used be: didn’t fall off. Now, there are some things that are happening that happen, just for a moment, and they change everything.

I Haven’t Learned My Lesson

I KNOW, I KNOW! Well, what was I supposed to do? The traffic was murder, the bus was late, I had to take a taxi all the way the feck out to the feckin’ yard, and I got in, and he was saddled, and there simply wasn’t time before pony camp to maybe beg for Amigo, so I put on his bridle, and he let me — no head tossing — okay, a minimum, an absolute minimum — and I thought about all my strong words and convictions, and he looked at me and snorted and I said, ‘Smart arse’, and led Rebel out to the indoor.

And he was grand. Absolutely super. I got him moving at a good working trot, after serious consultation — no magic spells or anything, just a convincing marriage of stick and leg — and he immediately gave me the canter on both reins and we jumped really well, a double with two strides of canter in between, and I worked my bum off, and dammit. Dammit. He was grand. I talk about his bad behaviour and I know Ruth believes me, but there’s been no evidence in the private lessons.

So maybe I ride him on Thursdays. The thing is, in the serpentines? Totally listening to my leg, which I put down to the Festina Lente lessons. I feel like I can ride him better because I’m becoming a better rider, not because he’s becoming a better horse. ? Or that I’m not expecting him to be a different horse, but I am becoming a different rider. Is that like a classic excerpt from Hot Horses And The Women Who Ride Them, or is it sense?

I think, first, I’ll give myself a break, applaud myself and himself for a good lesson, and just keep paying attention. I’ll know what to do when I need to do it, keep my safety at the forefront of the equation, and trust that I’ll know when it’s okay when not to ride him, and equally, when to do so. I’m not the same every day, so surely he’s isn’t either. Commonsense, Suze! If it’s to be applied to anything, surely it is the horses.

Flying Changes!

SORT OF So, Rebel was ridic last week — yes, yes, I know, I know, yes, I took him again, last Tuesday, and he was absolutely fine for 85% of the lesson. We were building up to this awesome thing, a series of jumps, one at E, then up and around to one at X, then down and around to one diagonal to the first one at X, and we did it really well over the poles, good lines in, and managed the round with the first jump at X, and then, coming from standing, I came around the long way from A, and I could feel him building and building, and by the time I’d yanked him round at K, I knew he was going to explode and he did, and Nikki told to me to get off, and I did.

She said it wasn’t my fault, and I know it wasn’t, and I know, I know, but seriously, I’ve learned my lesson.

I have.

So Sharon and I discussed swapping week to week for Amigo, and I thought I’d have him this Tuesday, but I didn’t and got Delilah.

Matter Over Mind

Thanks to whoever read this today. I was fairly certain that I’d had a headline like the one above, and am glad to know that I’m not, precisely, repeating myself.

But thank you, dear reader, you saved me having to check.

Woke up on Monday and it sounded like it was lashing rain. The light edging into my bedroom was gray, and that, that noise, that was definitely precipitation… in my bid for five more minutes, I didn’t get up to peek around the shade… but when I did, I saw that it was only gray, and the noise was my shade shushing against the balcony door.

I was going to have to out in this, and go riding, wasn’t I?

I booted up my computer to find the email that had the number of Festina Lente; would I be a complete coward and mail in my ’sick’ note, or would I leave a message on the answer phone? It was 7.50 am. I had to be out the door for 8.05 at the latest.

A cloud shifted to the side, and I saw a fragment of blue sky.

And suddenly found myself leggin’ it across the coast road for my first bus. How did that happen?

Seeing A Man About A Horse

NOT FOR ME! NOT YET! But I will — I will! — be undergoing this process sometime, so when Sharon asked me to accompany her to Kilkenny to check out a chestnut mare, I was not going to say no.