I am home! I am Home! I am HOME!! For WEEKS IN A ROW! This is amazing.
It isn’t quite that simple. We came home (4 hours late, grumble) from the Finals on Monday night. Thursday, Allison, Johnny and I left for the Young Dressage Horse Trainers Symposium at Hassler Dressage, a wonderful educational event generously sponsored by Harmony Sporthorses. Johnny was a genius; I got German trainer Oliver Oelrich’s boot to my butt about not making excuses for Johnny anymore—yes, he’s a baby, and yes, he’s grown almost a hand in the last year, but we’re not asking him to cure cancer; he can get off my right leg, sit his butt down and bend both directions without an act of Congress; and I got to catch up with friends from all over the country.
I came home with a renewed sense of enthusiasm about training, both of Johnny and of all the other horses in our program. I also came home with the flu, my every-six-months-or-so stress-induced plague that I managed to fend off this Spring by taking zinc and echinacea prophylatically. Did I repeat this technique this fall? Don’t be silly.
So the Plague I had, and it put me in bed for the better part of three days before letting me improve enough to start riding but stripping me of my voice, so I couldn’t teach. I had to cancel the clinic I was supposed to teach in Maryland this weekend, as well as more than a few lessons. I am annoyed.
But I am home, at least, and in a period of relative calm during which, I suppose, I do actually sort of have time to be sick. Other than a few clinics, and a 48-hour vacation (the first vacation I’ve taken since 2012), I’m just home, doing my thing until I leave for Florida on December 31.
This is FANTASTIC.
I get to do things like:
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– teach my clients. You know, that job I have. (Assuming I have a voice with which to teach.) With the end of the show season, all my students want to make the most of the next few weeks before I leave them in Allison’s capable hands, which means it’s playing with their 2015 work. Lots of riders are ready to start moving up to the Next Level, and their enthusiasm and excitement is infectious!
– ride my horses. Oh yeah, them. YDHTS lit my fire for Johnny, who’s always suffered from being the youngest of the group and, as such, usually the one I ride last. But I was already lit up about Danny and Dorian, both six and at that oh-so-fun place in their lives when they’re learning their changes and half steps and finally starting to feel like Big Horses. And Fender is almost back to full work—18 minutes of trotting and 11 minutes of canter, with some smaller circles and the introduction of little nuggets of sideways—and feels even steadier and more organized than before he got hurt.
– do some real training. I have a wonderful group of horses all in the Flying Change Place, which is one of my favorite stages to go through with a horse. It’s like solving a puzzle, because changes are the one thing we can’t do “a little”—we can do baby piaffe or a little leg yield or a taste of extended canter, but we either do the change or we don’t do the change. There’s also the Piaffe Group, who will all approach half-steps in one age-appropriate form or another this winter. (Danny and Dorian are having a contest to see who can make me go “Ohmygodgoodboy!” more times per ride.)
– experiment. Self-carriage and a half halt that doesn’t shorten the neck hasn’t come easy for Fiero, so on a lark, I rode him in a neck rope this week. And I think it might have helped him a little. (Plus it was cool.) This is also a great season for cavaletti work. And while we missed the first two weeks, we’ve also firmly embraced No Stirrup November at Sprieser Sporthorse. (I recommend ibuprofen.)
– have a teensy weensie smidgen of a life. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am for things like Thanksgiving dinner with some of my favorite clients, a hiking trip with my closest friends, and the little things like board game nights and pizza and taking my mom out to lunch.
I know the road to excellence is paved with sacrifice, merciless hard work and a laser-like focus. And I’ll get back on that road in a few weeks. But I need to recharge, and it starts now… or at least it starts as soon as I kick this stupid flu. Now where are my cough drops?
