Citizen Wausau

Your Voice: Riding, pain and wanton distruction

by Citizen Wausau on February 22nd, 2008

(Note from Dino: This week we find a selection from Billie. Billie has a blog in our community titled, “A Stable Personality: A Life with Horses“. It is a fascinating group of stories so far, and we encourage Billie to keep writing. Her voice is valid, and should find its audience in a place like Citizen Wausau perfectly. I have known her for a while now, and honestly as a non-country fellow, the whole world of horses seems absolutely alien to me. We hope Billie keeps writing, as we hope you keep writing.)

Riding, pain and wanton distruction.

Yesterday dawned cold windy and bitter here, but I had grand plans for the day.

I rode the fancy, imported Dutch horse!

It had been almost 8 years since I last was able to ride a horse trained and capable of competing at the international level. Horses of this caliber often cost (literally) more than a house, so it is no small wonder that I do not own several myself. If a lotto windfall were to come my way I would think about buying one, but instead I am in the process training my own.

Let me backtrack and mention that with the weather and footing being such as they typically are in the winter, I had not been on any horse for several months. The last time I rode was the beginning of November.

My friend that had traveled with me climbed aboard the horse and warmed him up while I gave her a mini lesson and filmed her riding. Then, it was my turn! I giddily climbed aboard, adjusted the irons (the things your feet go into on an english saddle – called stirrups on a western saddle) and set off.

After a couple of minutes where he and I got to know one another at the walk, trot and canter, I decided to try some more advanced movements. We started with simple lateral movements – leg-yield at walk and trot. It went well, he moved forward and sideways by simply following the direction of my hips. So, I tried some shoulder and haunches in exercises…things I am teaching several of my own horses… I was easily able to position his body parallel to or at an angle away from the wall with very subtle shifts of my weight.

So, we tried the ultimate of the laterals – the half-pass. This is a hard movement, where the horse must be bent from head to tail around the rider’s inside leg, then moves sideways and forward in the direction of the bend while crossing all four legs underneath the body. It felt spectacular! Upon viewing the video, perhaps it wasn’t too spectacular, a little bit lackluster, but I don’t care! It was very uplifting just to know that I remembered how to correctly ask and execute this difficult movement.

Then I became greedy and decided to work a little bit on flying changes of lead. (This one is harder to explain, but essentially it the horse is at the canter which is a three beat gait where the inside foreleg lands the furthest forward at the end of the sequence of footfalls, in the moment of suspension they rearrange all four legs and land placing them with the opposite inside leg in the leading position – sort of like skipping). B.C, the horse’s owner had mentioned that Nizelster Boi ran away with her when she tried for changes, so it was not something she had been working on.

I developed a super, collected canter, did a circle to counter canter, took the diagonal and asked for the flying change from left to right… and got it! The horse was straight, maintained his rhythm and balance and did so without any hesitation. Super fantastic! Until I tried it in the other direction.

I chose too steep a line when asking for the right to left change. He changed late behind, kicking up his hind legs a bit then in the next instant slipped on his left front leg. I thought I was going down, but he rebalanced, took another stride and found a little patch of ice near the arena door. We slipped again and I really thought I was going to bite the dust. Fortunately, I stayed in place, rebalanced myself and tried to cope with a horse that was indeed running away with me. It seemed like forever before I got him back on my aids and not in a panic, but there we were. The next 10 minutes were spent working on relaxation in the horse.

I did ask for the counter canter again, but didn’t go for any more changes. Perhaps next time.

We finished with some passage (trot in slow motion with lots of suspension) and half-steps of piaffe (trot in place) and half-priouettes.

All in all, it was a fantastic ride that allowed me to once again believe that as a rider/instructor I actually do know what I am doing to a greater degree than I give myself credit for. It was very gratifying to work on the upper level movements again, and to realize that I do indeed know how to ask for and execute them.

The downside is that I am incredibly sore today. My back, shoulders, upper arms, abdominals, seat bones and upper thighs ache. It was a workout!

This morning when I went out to do chores at home (with my brain full of possibilities for Mirelle and Duncan’s training come spring) I noticed that one of the automatic waterers had frozen yet again. If I am not mistaken, it is the fifth time already this winter. So, I went to the house, turned the water off, took apart the frozen bits, thawed them back in the house, reassembled, and nothing. Went through the process again and behold! It worked. I need to run more insulation out there this afternoon in hopes that I can prevent this from happening yet again. Cold days are yet to come.

The girls up front have begun a campaign to destroy the new loafing shed that we built them just over a week ago. They are bored and chewing at the wood. It looks as though we have been invaded by very large beavers. Horses are quite destructive little creatures.