So maybe this isn't a dressage blog anymore. Maybe it's a horsekeeping blog.

New record - 2.5 years between posts! No wonder I have no followers.

I've been meaning to post for a while, it's just that I haven't ridden enough lately to have anything worthwhile to say about dressage. I still work it into lessons at B's every week, so the interest is alive, and I learn something new every time. So scratch that - I do have things to say, I just have not made time to think about them.

Since that last post, my honey proposed, we started hunting for a farm, we got married in my brother's yard, and about six months ago bought this wee farmette in Galloway, and brought the horses home. My dressage teachers have moved to Germany, but that's OK, because my horses are old enough now that I probably would not bring them to clinics anymore anyway :/

Jojo is 25 and kind of creaky all over; Royal is probably 23, and distinctly creaky in the right hock. We work a little in hand now and then, and occasionally ride, but we don't do anything you could call training. I'm deeply ambivalent about this. On the one hand, more work might help them retain what soundness they have; on the other, for god's sake they survived race careers and then under-saddle careers, have they not earned the right to spend these last years standing around in the sun, eating their heads off?

Their farrier quite sensibly suggested pulling their shoes a couple weeks ago, and so we did. It was the right thing to do, but it broke my heart, a little bit.

I think, "Oh yes. When the weather cools, we'll get back into real work, and put the shoes back on," but I'm pretty sure that won't happen. I just cling to it to feel like ... like what? I'm not even sure. Like they're not old, and like we could do something again someday. When your horse is at home you're supposed to ride every day. And I if I stop thinking that soon we will ride every day, then I have to let go of a lot of things. And that will hurt. Vicki Hearne once noted something to the effect that we are immortal, until we're not. My poor, graceful beasts have been immortal the whole time I've known them, and it hurts like hell to see them get old, and know that soon, in three or five or maybe 10 years, they will not be immortal any more.

The other day, J, A and I were out at B's. J, who boards there, asked whether it wasn't a lot of work to keep the horses at home. A, whose horses are at home, and I both said, Nah, it's not the work. It's the anxiety. Then we LOLed.

But it's true. It's not the getting up early to feed every day, it's not the shoveling and pitchforking, it's not the time spent, it's not the interesting new back muscles you feel when you spread a few months' worth of manure in your giant new garden.

It's the not-sleeping-through-the-night-ever-again. It's the looking out the window at the paddock dozens of times a day. It's the awakening to cracking thunder at 4:45 a.m. from a storm that wasn't predicted, and dashing across the yard and paddock in your underwear to get the horses into the barn Now. It's putting them in their stalls for the hottest part of the day, setting up the fans, and checking every 10 minutes to make sure nothing is on fire.

There are hundreds of these small, consuming anxieties, because my horses are old. So many small disasters every day, where a younger horse would bounce back, but an elderly one would cascade into crisis. And I am, in some ways, grateful for the small, consuming anxieties, because they distract from the knowledge of the larger one: that they are immortal, until they are not.

behold the master

hi kids!

You could say the process of learning is the process of getting smacked over the head with humility until some of it sinks in. The way (SPOILER!) the obsidian chunks embedded in the wooden club sank into (DID I SAY SPOILER? SPOILER!) the side of Middle Eye's head when Jaguar Paw finally whapped him with it in the violence-porn gorefest "Apocalypto." Thank you, Gibbsy, but I could have lived my entire life quite cheerfully without ever seeing the pink mist cloud you get with a sudden and forceful blunt-trauma head injury. Let alone the cranial artery splorting in time with the pulse in Gerardo Taracena's neck. It's been like a month and I'm still having bad dreams.

Whoops. Sorry. Still a little haunted.

WTF has this to do with dressage, you understandably ask? Well:

So you could say the learning process is like getting whapped in the head, only not with a club like in a Mel Gibson movie, but with humility.

In much the way that my teacher is a much, much better rider than I ... he's also a much, much better writer than I.

Dr. Ritter and his Tony, one of the most gentlemanly and kingly stallions I've ever met, are on the cover of the February 2009 issue of Dressage Today. They're working in hand and Tony is in a levade. Here:


Beautiful, no? And this is something of a big deal. Dr. Ritter has been writing some for them too, and I know how hard he and his wife have been working, and for how long - they have earned it.

Dr. Ritter has also added a dressage blog to their Web site, ArtisticDressage.com.

That is what a dressage blog should be: thoughtful, informative, well-written and frequently updated. Not like the one you're reading right now. But it's cool - for several years, I've been looking up to the Ritters as riders and trainers. Now I can look up to them as bloggers too.

You see what I mean about getting whapped with the humility club? And about "behold the master?" LOL LOL LOL ::wheeze:: You should read his blog; the man can write. You should explore their site; it's one of the few places that shows how dressage should look.

ObDressage* for today: It's been far too cold to do anything with my guys, and I have a new job that's sucking most of my time. My creaky oldsters are using every calorie to stay warm in all night in the single digit temps, and between frozen spigots that make it hard to wet down the indoor, and the frozen solid footing outside, I don't see where to work 'em anyway. Saturday morning it was 9 degrees when I went out, not counting wind chill. Saturday night I realized the purple swollen hotspots on my face were frostbite. So screw this noise, man.


* That's "obligatory dressage reference."

sooooo ...

Ooh. If only I could wait another week, it would be a year to the day since the last update.

Heh. Sorry.

A lot of things have changed in the year.

My student E. was not my student for long after that last entry. She moved to another barn, a dressage barn, and the last time we spoke, it sounded like she was doing well. She invited me to a thing that unfortunately was happening on a Saturday, which is my Hell Day, and I didn't make it to her thing; I haven't heard from her since, and I kind of fear she might have been insulted. Her move also coincided with a client implosion and the departure of a client who took several clients with her. Many odd things have become clear since that one left, and although it's quieter at the barn now, that's just fine.

The upshot is my student A. still rides Royal on Saturdays, and he is still teaching her lateral work, and doing very well. She weighs about half of me, and he is happy to go for her.

Soon after my last post here, I got really sick, and it took several months to sort out and treat all the things that were wrong. Aaaand, some of the pills make me fat. Fatter. So I'm a big cow, and I've switched to in-hand work rather than riding - it's a lot more exercise for me, and a lot less carrying-around-the-cow for my poor elderly pets. If you really want the detailed whingeing, feel free to read my MySpace blog. Friend me there and you can get in.

But in-hand work is fantastic.

It's making me a more observant and attentive handler, and my two old pets into more obedient, attentive horses. The Kindest Clinic Hostess in the World has been letting me use her school horses, and the Bestest Instructors in the World have been generous with their instruction. There's a lot of info that I can't sort out here, and some of it can be summed up as: Small horses are way easier to do this with.

With Jo I have found it useful to alternate the Portuguese method, holding the reins from the bridle, with working in cavesson-surcingle-side reins. He is more stiff and finds it more difficult to balance, leans on his right shoulder a lot, and frequent transitions also help. Littybitty Royal has a much easier time balancing, whichever method you use.

I'll have to play with them more and then report on one particular day. This post is mainly to tell all y'all readers ::cough cough:: that I'm not dead.

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.

guess we've done some good after all

He doesn't look too bad for 21, does he?

So yeah, I didn't have much time to ride Jojo for a few weeks. And one day he came into the ring with the horrid goose rump of the elderly ex-racehorse. GAH! (See previous entry for more detailed whining.)

Yesterday was good; the basic suppling exercises worked and he was able to canter the 20-meter square quite well, and after that trot it passably. We did a lot of canter-trot transitions, and when I timed it correctly, he went into the bridle instead of going hollow, kept a good trot and then asked to stretch. The canter got a bit uphill, even, between the squares and the transitions. Not so much teeth-grinding - but the weather had cleared and the barometric pressure was back up, so it's SOP. Saturday, when it rained and he had been stalled overnight, he was grumping quite a bit, and didn't supple up enough to stop grinding until nearly the end of the lesson.

So today he got a break, we worked just at the walk, suppling and bending, getting on the aids and then suppling and bending some more. He got onto the left rein after 15 minutes of walk work - woohoo! This really is a record.

After 20 minutes of walk work, I threw in a few trot transitions, and he stayed in the bridle, on the aids, and round. Well, round for him. But after warmups, we're getting consistent working gaits, which sometimes aren't too bad. That is, real working gaits, not just working-considering-his-limitations gaits. I never thought we'd get this far.

He's still madder than a wet hen about some of the lateral work, though.

whew!

So ... I'd been meaning to post more, and had some really interesting rides. And then Roy got laid up, and I've had nothing to write. That you'd want to read, anyway.

That's him there in the pic, the little bay chowing down on the lawn; we've just started handwalking, and today we got outdoors, it was lovely. Convalescence updates, and eventually the backstory, on the navelgazing, not-a-training-journal blog at http://www.myspace.com/mare_ears .

It's been real neat riding, and taking a lesson, after not riding for two, two and a half weeks. And by neat I mean OW!

Jojo, the chestnut, lost some ground. I didn't think I was doing all that much with him; there are days when we get decent working gaits by the end of the ride, and have to be happy with it. But we've been consistent; I do three days with him, and my friend A. mostly does dressage with him on Saturdays, so that's four days a week. But after two weeks of just hacking a couple days, he came into the ring and ... my god. Hunter's bump, sunken rump, and really slow and creaky. Ooh, and acting so darned Orange. Grump grump grump. So it's back to work we go, to keep the Grim Reaper from the door a little longer.

Sunday I rode in the outdoor with the lights, and got the shadows on the barn wall. It's amazing how much I need a visual for this stuff - mirrors, shadows, anything! When we get to the decent working gaits, get a passable amount of forward and flexible, he feels pretty good, but he's not nearly as much on the bit as I think. So say the shadows, anyway. ::sigh:: But I am learning to push him a little harder, and he is learning it won't kill him. The shadows looked better when I pushed him, though he did complain. He did stretch out and feel better afterward.

We had been having very good luck with one exercise, moving half-halts into each leg, around from leg to leg. Dr. Ritter had showed me this in a lesson, half-halting into each leg as it touches down, two strides in succession, but twice and then changing proved too intense for Jo, and he goes better if I do three, sometimes - depending how stiff he is - four into each leg before switching legs. So we go outside front, outside hind, inside hind, inside front, change direction; and by the third or fourth change of direction Jo is rounder. So this will stay in our warmup for a while.

In Friday's lesson with Dr. Ritter, we learned a new one: Halt into the outside front, flex jaw to the outside, immediately volte to the inside, then go straight. Repeat with halt and flexion into outside hind. Eventually change direction and do the other side. This I tried Sunday and today with Jo, and it made an immediate improvement in his walk. The right side was more difficult; it's his stiff side and whoo, it can be like concrete.

Jo's initial trot Sunday after this exercise was the shuffly hollow old-man jog; today was better, though he still hollowed his back on the depart step. He comes back within two or three strides now, a vast improvement over the old days. I think today's initial trot was better because we kept at this exercise much longer (I didn't count the repetitions, though perhaps next time I should), and didn't trot until we got a good halt and flexion on both sides.

Dr. Ritter also gave us some interesting shoulder-in-related patterns, and gave me notes; I was kind of thinking some of them will have to wait until Roy is back in work, but perhaps Jo can try them at the walk. I'm sure he'll be thrilled. And by thrilled I mean OW!

in which I complain

Wow. It's a blog. It's supposed to be a dressage blog.

First of all, mad props to my dear friend S., who is the inspiration. I'm not copying! It's just that you had a really, really good idea - and you have a delightful way of writing - and that got me thinking.

And now on to the complaining, which is why we're here, after all. Isn't that why you're reading? "Come sit by me," as the lady said. Why, I'd be delighted, Ms. Parker.

It's hot out. It's really, really hot. And humid. Good for the skin, bad for the motivation.

This is supposed to be a dressage blog. But I can't bring myself to saddle my poor old beasts when the heat index is up around 8 bajillion. All right, 8 bajillion is an exaggeration; it's more like 2 bajillion. The Weather Channel says it's 85 out / feels like 90, but it feels worse. And they're not measuring for "running around on top of a white-sand arena."

Today's training blog entry will probably be like yesterday's would have been, had it been written. "Went to barn, gave Kitten Chow to kittens, caught elderly horse stealing Kitten Chow from kittens, put supplements in feed buckets, adjusted fly masks, considered riding, wrung out sweaty shirt and baseball hat from the Santa Fe public radio station ... reconsidered riding."

No, really. I'm strapping on the Superspecial Indestructible, And Yes They Fit Really Well, Rangers de l'Armee Francaise barn boots and trudging off now.