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Today was one of those days at work where I didn't want to talk to anybody - I just wanted to keep my head down and work and get the day done. I even chose to sit at my desk and eat lunch rather than accept a girlfriend's invitation to go shopping. And I wrote this. Finding my "happy place", I suppose.
High: Only two classes left of Physics!
Low: The last class falls on the same night as Marie's 8th grade graduation. Coordinating this should be fun.
I'm not really obsessing over anything right now.
Someone at work forwarded me a video file titled "How Women With PMS Park". It showed a woman who had pulled up alongside a curb, a car's width distant from it. She got out and bodily shoved the car into place, doing a little flip at the end ala "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon". Years ago, if someone viewed that, you could have fooled them into thinking it was real. Now we just question "I wonder how they did that?"
Days go by
and still I think of you...
Daydreaming what I would do if I won the lottery.
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May 21, 2002
The Lessons of Horse
An On Display collab
I've nursed, cultivated, and cherished a Horse obsession since I was very small. I don't recall how it came upon me, or I upon it. I do remember my Grandmother signing me up for horseback riding lessons soon after my mother passed away. After the doom and gloom the school counselor had been preaching to her about suppressed this and buried that, I think she was glad I was showing an enthusiastic interest in something.
So, the summer that I turned nine years old, my very first experience was with a horse named Sunny (a Palomino mare). I took lessons in English riding at a stable that was perhaps thirty minutes away from home. My Grandmother carted my butt back and forth, dutifully and generously; perhaps not realizing the pattern she was setting herself up for, which would remain consistent for years to come.
The lessons at that particular stable were short-lived. All it took was for my Grandmother to observe one particularly explosive lesson on Sunny, during which she (the horse, that is) would either go only *backwards*, or erupt in a series of rocking-horse bucks that deposited me firmly in the sand of the outdoor arena, and deposited her firmly back in the barn where she wished to be. Sunny was not blessed with a disposition to match her name.
I believe it was a telling sign of the fore-ordained success of our lessons that the very first thing my instructor taught me was how to fall off without getting hurt.
A not-so-polite discussion ensued between my Grandmother and my instructor, during which Grandma called into question the quality of horseflesh, the quality of instructors, and the general standards present throughout that particular establishment. The upshot of the discussion saw myself and Grandma propelled off the premises. I was embarrassed and blushing painfully - Grandma wasn't bothered a whit about causing a scene when she felt she was justified.
Somewhat more careful research revealed to Grandma a riding center of high quality and high standards, just down the road from that ill-fated stable. Sarah, the instructor, suggested to Grandma that she drop me off on a Saturday morning, early, so that Sarah could determine how much I'd learned and begin my (proper!) instruction.
Thus began the first Saturday of many that saw me dropped off at 7:00 in the morning, and picked up at 4:00 in the afternoon. The Highland Dressage Center, and Sarah's tutelage, operated under the philosophy that one doesn't learn how to just *ride* a horse - one needs a full-rounded education in anatomy, history, care, stable management, behavior, and basic veterinary. During my days there I did everything from mucking out to learning shoeing from the farrier; from grooming the horses to preparing the trailers and loading the horses up for shows. I learned how much grain, hay, and bedding was required to maintain such a large stable. I cleaned every scrap of tack at one time or another (including the driving harnesses - miles and miles of reigns) and learned what they were all used for. I helped care for sick and injured horses, and learned what to do in many emergency situations (even, horribly, right down to where to exactly place a bullet in the skull to ensure a quick and humane death). I fed and watered, brought in and turned out. I watched other students' lessons and, finally, for the last hour of the day, at last got to actually *ride*.
When the owner of HDC, Larry, first bought the property, he inspected the grounds and surrounding acres with care. He came upon a paddock in the middle of the woods, far away and hidden from sight. Contained in the paddock were three very pathetic, very malnourished, very neglected horses. They had apparently just been left there to die by the prior owner. Larry promptly reported the prior owner to the Humane Society, and undertook the task of bringing these poor horses back to health. He discovered in them all a very sweet disposition, and they were very well trained. They were also ancient (apparently the reason why they were abandoned), so Larry decided to put them to only very gentle work.
I learned the basics on Charlie Brown. He seemed immense to my nine-year-old perspective, but he was only perhaps 14.2 or 14.3 hands. Just barely a "horse", by height standards. As the name implied, he was brown, with a white blaze down his nose and one white sock on one of his hind legs. His back was immensely swayed, and his coat was coarse and thick even in the summer.
I adored him.
He was blessed with such unshakable patience that, regardless of the gymnastics I performed while learning to stay on his back, he remained solid and spook-proof. He stood stock-still while I mounted and dismounted, and stopped in his tracks if he felt me lose my balance and deposit myself at his feet. He would nose me gently while I'd lay there blinking up at him, and only huff an enormous sigh every now and then as the lesson went on.
It seemed that I circled him for endless hours, over endless days, on the lunge line - until I was sighing as heavily as Charlie. I learned to rise to the trot, and I bloody well learned to *sit* to the trot. I learned to hold my hands gently on the reigns, as if I cupped two little baby birds within them. I learned to keep my hands steady by holding two full cups of water and trying not to let any splash out as I circled and circled and circled. I learned to have an "independent seat" by learning how sit without stirrups, and I learned how to rise to the trot without stirrups.
Sarah would go through a drill of instructions, calling them out from the center of the circle as she lunged me. "Drop your stirrups!" "Find them again without looking!" "Get him to slow to a walk using just your seat! No reigns!" "Tighten the girth while you're mounted!" "Emergency dismount!" "Drop your stirrups and turn around in the saddle until you're riding backwards!" "Face forward again!" "Lie across the saddle!" "Sit astride again!"
All these instructions were designed to cultivate my confidence in the saddle. I knew that no matter what the circumstances, I could always find my balance, or get off in a hurry if I needed to. Once Sarah determined that I was well balanced and secure, I was finally allowed off the lunge line. Glorious was the day when I could ride the full circuit around the arena, independent of anyone's control over Charlie but my own. Walk work lead to trot work, and eventually cantering - first on the lunge line, then off. I learned basic Dressage - 20 meter circling, half-halts, correct leads, the correct "shoulder" for rising to the trot. And even, as time wore on, tentative ventures into half-passes and flying lead changes.
I rode at HDC for about two years. I got to thinking of Charlie as "mine", even though I shared him with a handful of other kids taking lessons at HDC. The long days of that first summer progressed into short, cold winter days spent banging the ice out of water buckets, shaving working horses of their winter coats to allow their sweat to dry, and then "rugging them up" again to keep them warm in their blankets. The tack room became a haven against the cold, the space heater present to ensure the leather remained supple and didn't dry out or crack. Toes froze in our riding boots as we sat in the indoor riding arena, huddled under horse blankets while we sat on the benches and watched the show horses being exercised. Some days Sarah deemed too cold for poor old Charlie to be dragged out of his nice warm stall for a lesson. So on those days I'd prepare a warm mash with apples chopped up in it, and commiserate with him in his stall as he ate. Grandma would always recognize when those days came along, based on the mash Charlie slobbered down the front of my vest.
Then, the changes of the seasons occurred, and winter activities gave way to spring and summer's frenzy of horse shows, barn repair, and battles with the ever-present flies. Hours were spent sneezing along in the dusty indoor arena, or baking outdoors in the sand arena. When time permitted, Charlie and I would go for slow rides in the woods and fields surrounding the stables. He seemed happiest when I would just sit astride him and let him pull up the green grass he normally didn't have access to from his paddock (thereby making his bridle a foamy green mess). He'd drink straight from the hose as I'd rinse him down and give him a bath - in the end I'd end up as wet as he. "The dirtier the groom, the cleaner the horse."
One summer morning I arrived at the stable, my mind occupied with memorizing "Walk-Trot" - an entry-level Dressage test. I was eleven years old by that time, and Sarah was preparing me to ride in my very first show, on Charlie. Another of the students hurried up to me - one that I didn't particularly get along with. She owned a horse (a showy Morgan with more looks than brains) which she stabled at HDC, and looked down on the "lesson kids" as a sub-human species. "Guess what?" she said. I could tell she had some news she seemed pleased to impart.
"What?" I played along.
"Charlie died last night!"
Aghast, Sarah came striding up. "Take off, you hear?" she snarled at the girl. The girl tossed me a smug look and huffed off. I started to cry, and Sarah embraced me and lead me into the tack room. She sat me down on one of the trunks and explained to me that he was really very, very old - over thirty, as far as they could establish. He'd died quietly and peacefully in his sleep.
"You, and the other kids who rode him, made sure his last years were very happy ones, Laura," she reassured me. We sat together for a few more minutes, but then Sarah had to teach a lesson. Heartbroken, I hung around listlessly for a while that day, but finally gave up and called Grandma to come take me home.
Grandma, too, was very sorry to hear of Charlie's passing. She'd endured so many one-sided conversations where I went on and on about "Charlie this" and "Charlie that", that she'd come to be as fond of him as I was. Beyond that, though, HDC had no other lesson horses that would suit me (the other "rescued" horses were a teeny Shetland pony named "Tonka" and a poor old nag so spavined that he was turned out to spend the rest of his days at pasture) and didn't plan on purchasing any for the stable. Horse boarding is big business and they didn't want to occupy a stall with a lesson horse when they could make more money with a lucratively paying client. They had no other horses they could teach me on. I was devastated and convinced that my riding days were at an end.
Grandma, however, already had a plan.
(stay tuned for Part Two of "The Lessons of Horse"!)