You Know How to Trot, Don't you?

Recently, I found myself cantering sideways, downhill, looking into a gnarled patch of brush creeping closer by the moment.  In the background, I could hear Denny yelling at me, in that thought piercing, instant tone that anyone who has ridden with him knows.  Good thing, too, because he was getting further and further away.

TROT!  Don't you know how to trot?!  You know, it has two beats!  TROT. NOW.

Touching the bit was fairly useless, serving only to put a very jazzed up mare's head in my lap.  My leg seemed to only add fuel to the fire.  I very much wanted to be trotting, brush looming closer.  While I have occasionally used greenery to stop other horses, the atomic mare tends to nimbly find something to do with her legs (as I learned one day, with one stirrup, when she flat out blazed a new trail out on a hunt by turning too early).

TROT!  Why aren't you trotting?!  POST!  If you were out on a hack you'd know how TROT.  Agoraphobic.  You two are agoraphobic.*

Around this point, the age old wisdom "you'll end up where your look" finally came to mind.  I fixated on the man patiently waiting for us to get our act together, squared my shoulders, and willed the trot into existence.  Actually, the last part I'm a little fuzzy on, but we did end up trotting and changing direction until the fire in Suki's belly slowly cooled down.  

"Broke" in the ring now...
Photo by Lisa Ambrose Cook
Used with Permission

It's time she behave more like a broke horse.  She's a much more broke horse in show jump this year, now she needs to behave like a broke horse out here.

So we did the same thing that cooled her jets in show jump, we trotted and jumped until she trotted, not cantered, little cross country fences out in the field.  We trotted until any muscle I was hold my own tension and failure fearing tension in melted into goo.  We trotted, hopped, and plopped until the state of being wound up seemed far too exhausting for either of us to revert back to.

A valuable lesson was learned... We are not collectively broke for jumping in wide open spaces.  A winding course? Sure.  Lots of terrain changes?  Bring it on.  A jump in a vast expanse of space, brimming with possibility?  Not quite yet, not consistently quiet...yet... but, we'll be that broke soon enough.

*Fun fact: When I was five or six, I was slightly agoraphobic.  It seemed certain to me that, despite the laws of gravity, I would fall off earth into the bleak nothingness of space.  Luckily, I know better