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[06 Jul 2008|06:14pm] |
Had a very nice day of scribing with the best judge yet to scribe for (or maybe I'm just getting better at writing quickly and legibly both at once). Somehow, this did not translate into copious quantities of take-home message; perhaps that part of my brain was fried while I was "helping" man the cross-country in-gate (for values of helping that include drinking my friend P.'s water while she did the actual job) and then grabbing (politely, after asking, to avoid spooking or upsetting anyone) ear tags as horses came out of stadium. All I've got left is this:
People. When you're doing a free walk, you have to let go of your reins. Horsie is extremely unlikely to offer a stretch when he is given no space to into which he can do so.
Thank you. I feel better now.
Tucker had gotten to go out during the day despite the show, so we skipped the longe and I just climbed aboard. I'd decided that if I had to err (and of course I was going to err), it would be on the side of relaxation and looseness rather than, as yesterday, on the side of precision and firmness: both good things, and at some point necessary, but all too easy to turn into rigidity and tension when things don't go quite as planned. So I breathed, and sang a little under my breath, and did the stretch T. showed me the other day to loosen up hip and groin: just a standing quad stretch while in the saddle, same as I did when I ran and have done many times since, but it never occured to me that it could be useful on the horse, to help sink leg and seat into the right position. Turns out it is! Good thing to know. And Tucker came out a little bit electric, and I felt plugged in from word one, and y'know, neither of those things hurt, at all.
So we did our walk work, and we did our trot, and our canter, and we took our break, and I kept an eye on all the things I'd been struggling with yesterday--the forward lean in my torso and drop of my chin, the high-and-tight position of my right shoulder, my tendency to let the reins get long and to end up with my hands in my lap, Tucker's desire to offload his left hind onto his right shoulder and to be a little fussy in the contact--but without letting myself get caught up in them, or angry about them. Instead, I noticed, and I went about my business, and I made an effort to correct, but refused to force anything, and my leg was solidly down and around the horse, and I was keeping my hands soft and thinking forward with them again, so as to avoid jamming him up crooked behind the contact...and there were a few moments that were almost a little dicey, but I stayed soft, and so did he.
And somewhere in the second set, a miracle occured.
I'm not sure if it was during the canter work, or during a sequence of canter/trot/etc. transitions, or what, exactly, happened. (In any case, I have relearned yet again that when you have a horse with a just-nice-enough trot but a genuinely-good canter, you use the canter to improve the work in the trot rather than muddling along in the gait that comes less naturally. Not that I have ever muddled. Ahem.) But suddenly--or maybe I just noticed it suddenly--we were right where I wanted to be: harmonious and balanced and light, able to set his feet wherever I wanted them, all swinging back and flexing hocks and solid connection. Ah, bliss! It wasn't that there weren't still things to work on, of course. Tucker was a little stiff in his hind legs in the trot/canter, especially tracking left, pushing off his hind legs in the transition instead of stepping them genuinely through, and conversely, he was offering so much carry behind and lift of the forehand--honest-to-goodness sit--in the canter/trot that I was a little flummoxed how to keep all that power flowing forward. But it all became minor, minor, minor, because the horse's body was available to me, and I was aware of what he needed, and so we could work it through and explain things to each other in a way that made sense to us both.
I didn't want to push it. We worked on those transitions, got them consistently more where I wanted them, played a few minutes more just to enjoy ourselves, and knocked off for a walk in the woods (after which, while I was putting him away, Tucker was hilarious: oh so very, very polite while simultaneously making it clear that he knew it was bran mash night and would I please hurry and finish setting his meal up like yesterday?). But I am still walking on air, two hours later. It's not that we did anything particularly fancy. It's just that--this is the best dressage school-type ride I've had on him in ages. There may have been rides in which we achieved better work, but the level of communication there tonight, once that miracle occured, was miles above our usual standard. Clarity. Grace. The work at hand was still work--don't get me wrong--but at the same time it was easy, because we understood each other, Tucker and I, and went at it together.
I've been talking with a few of you, lately, about how I've come to think that riding and training (and teaching to ride, and teaching to train) are different skills. Related, yes. Overlapping, one hopes! But not identical. Easy to mistake, though; you can, it turns out, get pretty far with only the former, faking the latter. Part of me is sorry about all the time I wasted not understanding that. Part of me (most, to be honest) is daunted by realizing that I'm only just taking those very first steps down the road to knowing how to train as well as to ride. But the rest of me thinks that here I am, and if all that fumbling in the dark is what it took to get me here, then it wasn't wasted time at all, and worth every last stubbed toe. (It has to be, I suppose, given how many more I'm sure to get along the way.) Breath-taking!
Tomorrow off, and probably just as well. I have no idea where we'd go from here, and any ride would inevitably be a disappointment. Isolated thunderstorms for the next few days, but I think I'd like to do a conditioning ride on Tuesday if the weather cooperates and we can get out back. Maybe a little galloping, or maybe some bombing around the trails, finding a better balance between initiative and attentiveness. Lesson on Wednesday, then, and I think I'll try to ride Thursday as well, and set up a jump lesson with L. for Saturday if she can fit me in.
Onward.
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