Two Field Trips

I hit a wall yesterday at work. It wasn't even that work was bad, or that something dramatic happened. But I'm just so done with this job. I'm not done with my wonderful clients or their wonderful horses, but the job itself is just too much for me. I really hope graduate school turns out to relieve the stress rather than just intensifying it... yeah that's likely. 

However, instead of getting into how much I'd love to stop being around horses all the time, let me gush about my horse! 

Monday afternoon I took Rico over to Harvey Bear for the second time ever. The trails are gorgeous, I've hiked them several times on foot and have been dying to take Rico out there. However, Rico has not been allowed to climb hills because of his propensity to injure himself. The last hill he climbed was the one up from the beach in late 2009. Then he went lame for several years and my vet recommended against any hill work. 

He's the ornery looking one on the right

Well, I'm sorry, if this horse is doing Prix St George in three weeks (is he? seriously will someone make this decision for me so I can focus on not vomiting?), he can handle a bit of a slope. 

He had a BLAST. He's the best trail horse in the world and I'm not just saying that because he's mine. Okay part of it is probably because he's mine and he can do no wrong. First, he's just overall great in new places- he never gets anxious about it and the worst behavior I've ever had him exhibit has been a flat out refusal to get back in the trailer to go home. 

Second, he's the least spooky horse I've ever ridden. Now, don't get me wrong, I too know the name of this blog, but the silliest thing about this horse is that he *pretends* to spook all the time. He spooks at any and all things that he deems different, however he's not actually afraid of anything. My rule for fear in horses is this: if I can't feel their heartbeat through the saddle, they aren't actually afraid. So he's quite a fearless horse. Except pigs, he's legitimately terrified of pigs. 

Pigless hills!

Third, HE LOVES IT! I'm not the biggest fan of trail riding. If I had a horse I couldn't trail ride or didn't like it, I'd be fine with it. I can get my trail fix by hiking (and get in better shape at the same time!) and I find that the sandbox is a lot more entertaining. But Rico had so much fun out there that it just made my heart melt. He's been through so much the last few years, and coming back into work as a performance horse meant that he was even further bubble wrapped... it was great to finally let him have a good time without an agenda.

So stoked to climb hills!

Trail riding clearly still on his mind, we went to our first lesson since his most recent injury on Tuesday night! The horse was NOT amused. 

Throughout the lesson, he tossed his head, refused to stop, tripped, pretended to need to cough and then trot around with his nose on the ground, bucked, stopped randomly, and was generally as done with the lesson as I was with my job yesterday. Except that I like to think that I handle myself better in times of frustration. 

The good news is that Tracey said these words to me: "I'm really impressed that you-" uh let's just stop there and evaluate. By the time she was half way through the sentence I didn't care what followed. She could have said "I'm really impressed that you managed to put on pants today, you seem to be unaware that you take lessons in the nude," or "I'm really impressed that you have the cognitive capability to hold a conversation with me, you seem to be a useless lump while riding, nice job!" 

Anyway what she said was that she was impressed that I put in the time/effort to fix the fact that I pull on the left rein like I'm trying to start a stubborn chain saw when I have no idea how to fix the problems that occur when I don't pull on that damn rein.

I'm a trainer, so I see these things in my clients too. The most typical one I deal with is a rider who crosses their hand over the neck to get a horse to bend that way (I do the opposite actually). The horse starts to lean so the rider pulls more. The solution is to let go, but the rider feels that when they do let go, their horse falls in so they apply the rein again. Soon there's a viscous circle which becomes harder and harder to fix. I can see how it's a good thing that I'm happy to allow shit to hit the fan. 

The lesson focused a fair amount on picking up all the shit that had been dispersed by the fan in the last month. The left lead canter was definitely the most difficult for me. I tend to do many wrong things all at the same time. Tracey began a continuous string of instructions in my ear (which I came home and wrote down!) and eventually we had a really great canter to the left. Rico was unamused and kept popping his haunches up to bump me out of alignment. Jerk! But I sat back down and "plugged in" to the saddle and eventually he admitted defeat and cantered beautifully. 


I had NO idea how it was going to be in my rides on Wednesday and Thursday... having mirrors and Tracey in my ear seems necessary for my successes that day, but surprisingly I was able to maintain the good work at home for the last two days! Yay! 

Today I'm considering another trail ride, but I'm eager to put the double back on and touch briefly on everything from Prix St George so I can figure out if Yarra Yarra isn't the stupidest idea in the world. 

I don't think I'll be upset if I score in the high 50s, so provided that we can perform all of the movements to some kind of accuracy at home, I think I want to go... I'm sick of referring to my horse as "my future FEI horse" or "my almost FEI horse" or "my asshole horse who won't stay sound enough to become an FEI horse." At least after September I can refer to him as my FEI horse which still may be totally inappropriate if we get a 45% on our test. But I don't care, he'll my FEI horse. 

I still might chicken out :)