Hey everyone. Long time, no see. I’ve been radio-silent for a few weeks because nothing all that compelling has happened in the last few weeks. I ride, I teach, I work out in some capacity, I go home, I go to the shows, I make teensy increments of improvement, I repeat.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not learning. It’s just that the wheels of progress were moving at a snail’s pace. A plateau at worst, a tiny smudge of an upward grade at best. And that’s how it goes, sometimes.
I joke with my students and friends often that the best reason to have multiple horses is that it’s increasingly difficult, as the number of horses increase, to have them all stalled out, naughty or lame at the same time. It dilutes the odds of disaster, making each blow less painful. No one is lame. No one is naughty (even Danny’s been on the relatively straight-and-narrow, though there’s high winds today and I haven’t ridden yet, so this is tempting fate). And all the young horses and all the clients and all the clients’ horses have all been terrific, totally on the rise. Ella and I have, too. It’s just been a much shallower rise.
I’ve had plenty to be grateful for, and plenty of good going on. But when you get laser-focused on One Monumental Task, it’s easy to get tunnel visioned, and to see each learning experience, each “teachable moment,” as a devastating, crippling disaster.
A few weeks ago, I bottomed out. It just all felt so terrible, like I was getting nowhere, like I was killing myself and my bank account for these tiny nuggets of underwhelming, like I was letting down my coach and my team and my horse. And I went to bed, and I woke up the next morning, and in my sleep, I’d had this paradigm shift. I’d love to tell you all what I did or thought to turn my head around, but I don’t know what happened. There I suddenly was, feeling grateful for the tiny improvements, relishing in the butt-kicking I was getting, and giving myself permission to be at this place at this time.
I am a trainer of horses. I bring them from dewey-eyed babies into the Grown Up World, teaching them life skills as well as dressage-ring skills, finding what helps them to understand. I am endlessly, endlessly patient with them. I’m far from perfect, but I’m awfully good (and always improving) at knowing when to kick on and when to cool out and wait. And I’m awfully good at not letting the inevitable plateaus in any given horse’s learning process eat me up; I don’t despair when Baby Horse X doesn’t grasp his changes, or makes the same mistake in the transition a trillion times, or takes six months to grasp a half halt, or whatever, because I can see the whole chessboard, moves and countermoves, and how it will pan out.
ADVERTISEMENT
So why is it so hard for me to cut myself the same slack?
I don’t know, and who knows if I’ll ever know, so I soldier on. But mercifully, I seem to be there now. And sure enough, my rides on Ella are improving. We had our best competition ride yet on Valentine’s Day, taking second in the Consolation Grand Prix; today we had a tragic (and SO out-of-character) calamity in our two tempis, just making a hash of them, which was annoyingly expensive, but also made little improvements in all the things I’ve been working on. I finally feel like I’m about 90 percent in control of her pushing into the bridle; I can keep her from dragging me around almost all the time. I’m still learning how to add power back without getting held hostage by it. But it’s better, step by step, day by day, all the time.
It’s irritating, finally feeling like I’m ready to start the season just as it comes to an end. But I have learned so much and will put it to use over the summer in some national shows. And man oh man, is it ever making Danny and Dorian better, and will make Johnny and new baby Hurricane even better still.
And mostly, it’s making me better, better able to handle pressure, to not crack (er, well, maybe crack LESS) when things are hard, to be gritty in the face of what feels like disaster and is really just a bump in the road. I’m learning. I’m learning. I’m learning.
