Necking With My Mare

We had a session yesterday, so I went looking for Saxony, camera in hand, as her round pen had been moved to fresh grass. There she was, beside one wing of the barn, watching me approach.

She dispatched the clublike carrot I offered. I love the crazy mess there at the end of her blaze, like white paint that ran thin through the canyon of her nostril and then pooled along her upper lip.

We had such a good lesson. My trainer sat in the bleachers of the indoor arena and gave instructions. We're leaving on October 15th, so she's setting us up with a sort of working curriculum until next July, when I hope to bring Saxony back to her for the festival summer.

Does it make any sense to say I rode my horse? That's how it felt. Forward walk, really big forward walk, then in to shoulders in, both directions. Don't drive her with my leg or seat. An extended segment of sitting trot. Sit, sit, sit. Trotting on a big circle, working on contact, keeping the bend. Our circles are drunken, but we were working. One, two, one, two. I can count the beats of the trot out loud if I need to. Then haunches in, which we'd never done. B just called it out, with plain directions. We did it; there wasn't time not to because we were just moving, flowing. Ending the hour with a forward walk on the buckle. I'm becoming able to think Saxony into changing directions during our stretching walks on the buckle. Her walk is different now, wavelike to ride, soothing and carrying. I didn't want to get off.

Back at the round pen, I saw that my mare has discovered her neck, now grown strong and shapely through her five-times-a-week training regimen (not including my own rides on her.) 

She likes to lift her head high over the round pen panels and sometimes rest her jaw up high as if to stretch. And maybe she is stretching. It's another thing she's learned to do, stretch down and sigh out during work. Just as she's learned to present her face for the bridle and stay quiet at the mounting block. She seems to like having a job, seems to like school. I've loved my mare all along, but I've discovered more in her than I ever knew was there. 

Leaving, I turned back, certain she'd be watching me. She likes people; she's a people horse. But I've finally realized that she's bonded most to me, which is the one thing I never expected to come of this time.

Still, Lives

I interrupt my regularly scheduled program of over-analyzing and hamster wheeling to acknowledge the presence of things that require nothing more of me than to get out of my head and notice them.

I'm an existentialist. I don't perceive that a godlike entity or higher consciousness created all living things and cast them as players in a divine plan. I guess, instead, that here is here, that it is now, and all the rest, no matter how compelling, is daydreams. But... I admit to imagining that some kind of natural blessing exists in animals. I take it as a positive thing to have the endorsement of their proximity.

My festival summer is about to begin, so I'm preparing to move my life out of the city and into another time. H.G. and I surveyed our shops lately and were happy to see several guest tenants making use of them.

I confess that I take things like these as signs, recognitions, even, of my place in a world where I'm not so different from anything or anyone.

When Reaction and Rushing Converge, It Hurts

I'm cranked up about some events at the barn, but before I write about it, I have to express my concern for Kate over at A Year With Horses, who fell from one of her horses today. I think of her as the Zen master of horse blogging, and although I know she'll most likely have enlightening things to say about her fall, I'd rather it hadn't happened at all and she'd be perfectly well. I hope she recovers quickly and that whichever horse she was on -- Dawn, Pie or Drift -- is fine.

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Things went awry during Tim's lesson this morning. We ended up with a disjointed session broken into two segments. I'd invited K to join us with Scout in the round pen so Tim could spend a little time riding in the company of another horse and rider. I'd planned to take him up to trotting today. Saxony is in heat, so I warmed her up briefly to make sure she'd be steady. She was fine, and Tim was soon up and riding. Mounting has become fluid and natural for him; he settles lightly and quietly into the saddle. We were just walking side by side along the fence, talking through reminders about rein and leg aids, when K brought Scout in. Our barn owner came along and settled herself into a friendly lean against the fence. 

K led Scout to the mounting block. She casually mentioned that she'd hurried Scout into her tack and wasn't happy about how she'd placed the saddle pad. Then she stepped up and swung into the saddle. Scout promptly bucked her off. Walking beside Saxony, I didn't see the full event. K landed unharmed in the soft sand and was up in flash. I had Tim halt Saxony, and we stood by quietly.

K took Scout back to the mounting block, assuming this was an instance of pissiness best met head-on. Scout was high-headed, but stood still. As soon as Katie mounted and stepped off, Scout unloaded her again with a very simple move intended to get rid of the rider. I saw this buck. It was a move of precision and economy, a distinct reaction, not a choice. K felt it coming before it happened and began a voluntary dismount which enabled her to land standing.

Several things happened in rapid succession. First, the barn owner rushed into the round pen and grabbed Scout's reins, saying she needed to be free-longed, "chased around the pen until she's over this shit." My hackles rose instantly, and I stepped between her, K and Scout. My mind was working on what Scout was trying to tell us, but that process was swept aside by my need to immediately shut the barn owner out of the situation. She was releasing a cascade of assumptions about Scout that were piling up around us very fast.

I cut in and took the reins, reminding K that Scout is not a bucker. Like any horse, she can buck, but bucking is not in her personal arsenal as it was for Dar. K replied that Scout bucks all the time, but there was no time to resolve our semantics just then; I had to rush to reclaim my horse from the barn owner. I told K we would longe Scout in her tack, but on a line. She's never been free longed in tack, and this wasn't the moment to teach her.

I worked with Scout on the longe line. She wasn't lame, but she was bracing and tense. She offered no bucks, just inattentiveness and speed. Soon the barn owner lost interest and wandered off. It took 20 minutes to bring Scout down to stretching and blowing, and then she was back. We took a couple of minutes to adjust the saddle. K reset the pad and fastened the girth. I asked her to do what I call "bra stretches," lifting and extending each one of Scout's forelegs to settle the skin along the girth into comfort. In a moment, K was back up on Scout and they were schooling as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

I returned to working with Tim, but I was distracted and ill at ease, not able to focus solely on him because I was turning Scout's bucks over and over in my mind. I cut the lesson short, and I've learned today that I don't want to teach someone to ride if I can't be completely devoted to the task. It's not fair to the student. We rescheduled.

Rushing is an issue I've been struggling with this year. By the time I sent Tim home, I was running way behind and realizing I would have to rush to make up lost time. I'd had to rush to intercede between the barn owner and Scout, then stop time entirely to work with Scout, then rush to back into the lesson with Tim. I rushed through untacking Saxony and then rushed to look at Scout. She has rain rot on the front of her hind legs, something she gets every spring. I grabbed the M.T.G. and massaged it in quickly, and it was then that K and I noticed a saddle sore on Scout's right side, there at the girth line. It was probably a bug bite that had been rubbed raw by the girth. Bingo. I treated it in a flash, but I was seething with rage and upset and rushing to contain my emotions.

It wasn't until I was driving down the freeway, hurrying to meet my brother, that I understood my near hysteria. Because I'd had to rush to get in between the barn owner and Scout, then rush to bring K with me so she didn't drink any bad "training" Kool-Aid, I didn't take the time to listen to my own voice, even as it was insisting that Scout was reacting to something, not being an ass. Anyone who owns a horse knows to look first for a physical explanation for unexpected behavior. I really felt I'd let Scout down, possibly hurt her more by longeing her for 20 minutes, made Tim idle by for nothing, and disrupted the plans I'd made with others. For me, when rushing and reaction converge, it creates this kind of bad, intractable moment. What a lousy feeling.