the spirit of inquiry

I looked back over the last entry and realized we are making measurable progress. Jo's working gaits are better, and they are arriving earlier in the ride. And Royal is wonderful as usual, of course.

Board has gone up, so Royal has entered the Saturday lesson program with my adult intermediate student E. - she wants to learn dressage, and he is both safe and trained. She rode him for the second time this week, and they even cantered. She's learning what to do and not do; he does it right when she does, and cheerfully lugs around on the forehand when she doesn't.

E. made an interesting comment that was reported to me: Royal doesn't complain when she makes mistakes. :) He just bops along and ignores her. Her own horse has a loooong back, less sturdy conformation, and complains a lot, sometimes violently. In his defense, I did find him to be a technical ride. When I did most things correctly, he went correctly, and then he was comfortable and happy. But he needs a quiet, correct ride to go well, and he doesn't have the balance, conformation or physical strength to be a forgiving mount. Poor kid.

Royal is not only back in work, he's teaching somebody, so I must stay on top of his program. Not that that's hard, though; anything you do with him works.

With both horses, I'm continuing the halt, flex-outside, volte-inside pattern I mentioned last time. It's working pretty well to get a good working walk, and then the first trot is a lot better than it otherwise would be. And then everything else goes well. From there on to leg yields, then this one neat pattern: Counter shoulder-in to haunches-in to shoulder-in on each long side. Then on to straight-ahead working gaits again, and pretty soon the 45 minutes is up.

In the past few weeks, I have also found - finally! - an awareness of when my right side crunches up. That right hand always comes up too high, and also comes too far inside and crosses the withers. For the past few weeks I've been able to feel it as it starts crunching up, instead of having to look - woohoo! - and can reestablish symmetry. The horses are thrilled, it makes their job a lot less hard. I get instant feedback when I put the parts back where they belong: Instantly the horse is back on the bit, and tracking much straighter. It never fails.

Ghods! It's only been seven ruddy years of stinking struggle. Seven years of running a body-awareness checklist every 30 to 60 seconds for 45 minutes on end, every damn ride, every damn day. And mostly, failing miserably at keeping the body part in the reassigned position, and having to put it back, again, 60 seconds later. Such a small thing to get hold of, such an enormous change in the horse's ease of going. Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. And all you can do is practice as perfectly as possible for as long as it takes. For some of us, it takes years.

It puts me in mind of Molly Grue's heartbroken cry in "The Last Unicorn," when Molly sees her.

"How dare you come to me now, when I am this?"

"I'm here now," the unicorn answers.

That's a little bit what it's like.

Don't think about the thousands of dollars, the thousands of hours, the thousands of other things, large and small, sacrificed for trying to learn to ride. The dozens of vacations not taken, weekends not spent cuddled up in a B&B someplace with my honey, nice clothes not bought. Don't think about how much I traded for the chance to someday know where most of my parts are and keep 'em there. And certainly don't think about how that sense is, as yet, merely newborn and weak.

Like Sgt. Silas says, "Goddammit goddammit goddammit!"

What was the topic of this entry again? Oh, yeah, "the spirit of inquiry." One thing my teachers have beaten into my head is that you have to experiment. Try an exercise, see whether is makes the horse better or worse, or has no effect. If it goes badly, analyze why. If it goes well, analyze why, too. Address any errors and try it again. Experiment, analyze, ride thoughtfully.

So in the spirit of scientific inquiry, or maybe in the spirit of "monkey with a razor," I've been fooling around now and then with half-steps. I have not developed a piaffe on either horse, true. But I also haven't harmed either horse. They're going better overall rather than worse, and we've learned some interesting things in the process.

I've learned that Royal, despite his lovely canter, is a trot horse. His answer to any difficult question is usually trot-based. Irritate, confuse or frighten him, and he does a little jiggy trot. Throw him off balance, he trots quick and stiff. Ask him for lateral work while he's stiff, he offers trot. If you do everything right, the walk diagonalizes and you get something like half-steps.

Jojo's answer to any difficult question is usually canter-based. I have a little luck diagonalizing his walk, though we have not attained actual half-steps, as long as I ask after a lot of lateral work and suppling exercises. If you ask Jo for lateral work while he's stiff, especially trot lateral work, he offers you canter instead. If you ask for half-steps when he is stiff, he offers a snorty and fierce, yet sadly feeble and lacking in elevation, terre-a-terre.

Once he offered a capriole. The only capriole I've ever sat on, and probably the only one ever perfomed at the death-defyingly low altitude of only about 6 inches off the ground. But I have a witness! It was a genuine capriole, even if it was only a sad little specimen.

Heh. I have less than no business fooling around with this stuff, man.