Crunchy spine

The stranger tides of the horse list last night said that Lear was back, and me without my tacked gloves. That horse puts a lot of effort into getting his teeth on, not just the bit, but also the noseband, his cross-ties, a dressage whip, my gloves, and—with lamentable success—my arm. Good thing he got mostly polarfleece (it's terrible, hearing a horse try to spit), but I still made him think that the wrath o' God was about to fall upon him. Not the right day to forget the tacks for the gloves. Pat, who saw me get nipped, sighed. She thinks, to coin a phrase, that the vet who did the gelding done it on the cheap and left a chip, because most geldings are nowhere near this mouthy. Stallions, on the other hand, are constantly looking for things to gnaw on. (Well, I mean, that's not all that they're looking for. But it's what's germane to this discussion.) If Lear is in fact suffering the effects of residual testosterone, he'll be the second such horse I've ridden; the other was less nippy but was head over heels in love with a mare who wanted nothing to do with him. He pined. I think I'd rather that.

Once I'm in Lear's saddle, at least he can't bite. Pat had us doing a sadistic exercise at the trot: post for two strides and sit for one, or the reverse. Getting into a balanced three-beat rhythm during a two-beat gait is, and let me phrase this carefully, very very difficult for those of us with limited natural grace. Her point was that we could, by doing the waltzy beat, learn to control the speed of the trot, but what I mainly learned is that I still do not post very well. It needs much practice to keep my legs from woggling about.

Pat also had us work on half-halts, which are used variously to tell the horse to rock back onto its haunches, to slow it down, and/or to ask it to pay attention before something new happens, by having us go from trot to walk and back ten or twelve times, then go from trot to almost-walk and back. Tricksy work, requiring very delicate hands and seat, not to mention a horse who can remember where he put his feet half a second ago. Lear did pretty well, all things considered.

The be-saddled low point was when we worked on the canter. I hadn't done any canter work with him at our previous session, and I certainly didn't know that he has a ticklish spot a about half an inch behind where the standard canter go-button is. If a foolhardy rider lets her leg slide back there, she gets to hang on through an extraordinarily balletic (or so say witnesses) kick-to-the-four-winds equine flail before Lear gets down to the business of cantering. The immediate adrenaline rush masked any soreness in the short term, but the compromised integrity of my erector spinae showed up with a big shit-eating grin and a suitcase this morning. I'll live, but I'm-a whine.

The barn's been doing a trick-or-treat event ever since 2002, when the DC snipers made people nervous about letting their kids go outside at night. It's continued since, mostly because it's enthusiastically silly. Over the years, the costumes—evil Grayson in a pink tutu, pinto QC as an Oreo cookie, Sterling as a plumber (complete with XXXXL butt-revealing jeans and a pair of boots)—have raised the bar to the point where plans among the private boarders are closely guarded secrets. The sugar is almost secondary to the giggling. Pictures, we hope, to come.