Getting Back Into It

The last time I can remember the jumps going up in the show ring and my riding improving I was fourteen.  Something had possessed me to enter the high jump competition at a local show having already eaten stone dust at 2'6".  Ben, my trusty steed, was a massive 17.3 h Selle Francias/QH.  What he lacked in good conformation, he had in heart.  We cantered down to that big cedar fence, my mom freaking out because I refused to gallop down to it as the other competitors did, and my horse sailed over the fence time after time.  A rub knocked us out at 4'2".

Fifteen years later, the heights I'm jumping aren't glamorous and my horse is a 16h OTTB I picked out and rebacked myself.  But, I don't think I could be having more fun.  I went to Tamarack for the jumper show on the 31st.  Suki was a good egg at 20".  She was a better egg at 2'.  She was better than I could have hope for at 2'3".  A few people were surprised I entered her at 2'3" in the end.  I think the quote was, "I know you said that you were going to, but I wasn't sure if you actually were."  But, I did.  I did because, for the first time I can remember in a long time, when the jumps got a little better, everything got a little better.

When I let my mind clear, and somehow when I'm on her it actually does, I get a little bit hypnotized by that feeling of 3-2-1-jump you get when it all comes together.  This is the wonder of having a horse that jumps like she has crosshairs, of a horse that sight sees a bit around the ring, yet isn't fazed by the shock of "suddenly" facing a jump.  If Suki were a human team mate, she'd probably have been happy I finally gave up and drank the Kool-aid.

Speaking of that Kool-aid, I wandered by Denny's today and I watched a XC school.*  He was joking with an older male rider about how he, the rider, had gone to type-a rehab.  Suki is my type-A rehab.  Cause, g-ddamn it, she's going to jump the jump and if I want her to jump it nicely I need to relax. And relax is the one thing you can't do on command unless you make a habit of it.  The only way to make something a habit is to repeat it over and over again.  I guess I'll just have to jump my horse.  Darn.

*This to could happen to you, if you're willing to give up whatever world it is you understand, move to VT, and pick a brand new career so you can stay like I did.  I just hope you like your winter to potentially go from October until May with some odd extra season called "mud season" crammed in there.

Cut Yourself Some Slack

The other day, having heard my grumbling about my poor performance during a dressage test, a good friend of mine asked me how many events had Suki been to...

"Four"

...

"in the past three years."

...

"and she is only six."

Throw on top of that the last test I put in was in 2011 on a horse I had been riding and heavily competing for five years.

This would be an instance when I ought to cut myself some slack.  Generally, I err on the slide of being a little too understanding of my horses... but me?  No slack what so ever.

I am my own worst enemy and it gets a little bit exhausting after a while.

Schooling on the flat can be a mental work out.  Not just all the little bits of adjusting, deciding when to try something new and what exercise will set a horse up perfectly for what I wan;, but, not becoming so frustrated with the gap between what I am physically doing and what I know I should be doing that I start in on internally berating myself.  For example, my left hand ends up sitting down and locked.  I'm trying like crazy to pick both my hands up more.  I watch videos and the trainer at Huntington, Deb Dean-Smith, trying to imagine what it feels like to ride that way.  Whenever my left ring finger hits my saddle because it's too low it takes everything, and I mean everything, to not scream at myself.

Or when I can't get the left lead on my notorious to pick up the left lead on mare, I have to choke down the thoughts such as, "why do you bother riding at all, obviously, you're no good at it, you still have this damn problem" (though I am making a lot of headway: tonight we nailed it first try).

All this negative self talk is horridly counter productive.  Conditioning myself to not produce these thoughts is really difficult.  I am have found putting what I'm frustrated with in perspective really helpful.

For example, frustrations with Suki's flat work can be put in the following context: she did nothing but foxhunt her 5th year and has not been doing "serious" flat work for all that long: since February, after having almost five months off.

Prior to that, whoah, go, and a vague notion of moving leg into hand was all she had.

This is slack I am allowed to give myself.  Enough to accept where I am, but not so much I am satisfied with stagnation.  Much like fat shaming does not lead to weight loss, ripping myself a new one whenever things don't go well wont motivate improvement.

It's also why I find the most peace working with really green horses.  It's based on building expectations and allowing plenty of slack with new things.  There are no expectations to start.  Then I put down some very basic boundaries.  We build from there.  Tonight, I worked with a youngster just starting to longe.  He was allowed to figure out "walk on" was different from "yield your haunches."  He was cut no slack on "whoah."  This is something I can expect him to know at this point based on where we are at in the sequence I use.

Now, I just need to figure out how to scaffold my expectations of myself.  It's so easy when it comes to the horses.  I wasn't mad at the mare when she pulled an Idontwanna moment at the water at HPF until we got the big E and she stepped right in.  How do I put less energy into beating myself up over the improper placement of my right seat bone, for example, and more into fixing it all from the bottom up?