You know that feeling you get when you know something’s about to go wrong? It’s just a little tickle, a little gnawing in the back of your brain. And I started feeling it Friday morning. All my horses were good, all my lessons productive.
Then it started.
First it was the 7 p.m. email from one of my FAVORITE junior riders, who was due to ride with Michael the next day. In a fit of teenage klutziness, she’d broken her foot and couldn’t ride. (Not on a horse, but apparently just walking around. Oy vey.) Cue the frantic attempts to fill the clinic; by 9:30 I at least had a warm body to fill the spot, so I went to bed.
Then I’m awoken at 5 a.m. by the sound of my garage door opening and lights coming on in the barn. Of course, in my almost-awake-haze, I immediately assume that someone is trying to steal the horses, so I arm myself (with a sweatshirt; that’ll stop the hoodlums) and sprint downstairs to find… one of my working students. She realized she’d committed to judge a horse show months ago and needed to take the day off, but she felt bad leaving us hanging, so she decided to come in early to do stalls.
And shortly after THAT discovery, we discover an extremely flat tire on the Gator we use to clean stalls. And by 6 a.m. I’m totally frazzled.
The second horse in the clinic loses a shoe, and we have to reschedule for Sunday, but the rest of the weekend runs fairly seamlessly. My horses are great. With Ella, who hasn’t been overwhelmingly great, Michael reminded me that she’s trained and knows the work. Now it’s time to focus on the quality of her reactions to the aids, the quality of the gaits, and the quality of the transitions. She needs time to get strong enough to make the Grand Prix test easy. So we worked on the little stuff—little transitions within the gaits, changing her shape within a particular tempo. And by the end she felt the best she’s felt in weeks, way better than she felt at the show.
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Midge was his usual fabulous self, and Michael encouraged me to get on with it—stop riding big schooling pirouettes and sit him down, push forward on the ones. And I had a HUGE ah-ha in the piaffe-passage. I knew in my brain that they are the same thing, just big and small versions of trot, but I’d never felt it kinesthetically until Sunday. VERY cool.
The best thing? Feeling like I have a plan. I’d let them both relax and come down a little bit after the last show, of course, but I was still feeling like I was swimming, not sure where to go from here to move them both up to the next level. Being the Type-A dressage weirdo I am, I really like having a plan!
So on I press towards my departure for Florida, which I realized is a terrifying six weeks away. Yikes, yikes, yikes. It’s plenty of time, of course, to get them on their way to fitness, and to get all my ducks in a row. But it does seem awfully soon, and as it’s my first trip there since moving to Virginia and taking on all the responsibility of my own farm, it’s pretty intimidating.
But this week it’s a holiday, with extended family and l-Tryptophan induced comas. I’m trying to cast the worries aside and focus on the important stuff: EATING!
