Lear continues to be sidelined, mostly so that his Grand Prix-bound trainer can get in some intensive work before she leaves him behind forever, sniff sniff. So I was back with Grayson and, for once, the only girl in the class, with El Bandito and Mr. Polo for company. El Bandito is an okay rider and fairly quiet; Mr. Polo is a better rider but is more vocal about his questions. Lately he's been trying to figure out the mysteries of what aids you have to combine—inside leg, inside rein, outside leg, outside rein, weight, hips, and shoulders—to get the various moves done. Part of me sympathizes, because croiky, guvnah, you've got to keep a lot of aids in mind, and all of them have to be independent of one another. The other part says, c'mon, do what you can and eventually you'll realize that you're an effective rider and that your body has figured out what the teacher kept repeating, and that oh, right, it does work if you keep the inside leg on, outside rein firm, shift weight on your sits bones but don't torque your upper body, and look between the horse's ears. And don't forget to relaaaaaax, maaaaan, you can't ride well if you're all tennnnnse.
Some tension, of course, is appropriate in certain circumstances. Pat announced that she wanted us to canter past one another, which is fun when your ring is small and one of your horses will go out of his way to be nasty to the others (*cough*Grayson*cough*). It's a measure of the trust she's earned that we did not back slowly away from her and make for the parking lot. I kept Grayson a healthy distance from the other two, which made for some excitingly banked turns, and I neither caused the harm of any rider or horse nor caused harm to come by my inaction. It was even sort of fun, in a clearing-out-the-adrenal-system way. Grayson has become more respectful; I, unlike his regular rider, don't bother trying to sweeten him with treats during class, but I use the whip mostly as a visual aid rather than hassling him with it. He's still got terrible ground manners, and you have to keep a weather eye out when you're in kicking range, but when he's on he's great.
After class, I stopped by Doc's stall with an apple, his favorite treat. We've got a set routine: If I come bearing one, he waits until I bite off a piece and offer it to him (if he gets the whole thing, he slobbers too much of it into his bedding). He stands politely, though he nickers when he hears the crunch, and he knows that if he steps into my space he'll hear a firm, "Baaaack. Back up," which he obeys...while, it must be said, keeping his eyes on the fruity prize. He doesn't much care about getting scratched on the withers, so this is the only way I can really show my appreciation for him. Some horse authorities point out that treats aren't the way to a horse's heart, that the horse just learns to view you as a walking larder, but since Doc never importunes, I'll ignore them on this one.
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I took the Myers-Briggs with my then fiance R., soon to become my first wife. We did this as part of a church sponsored thing, with about a dozen or so couples, everybody having completed the questionnaire portion some weeks back. We all then gathered for a group weekend to learn/discuss/workshop/journal/etc. the results.
Specifically regarding the perceiving functions, I was a Sensing and R. was an Intuition. The illustration of the differences between sensing and intuition types was demonstrated by having us split up into groups of the two types. We then had to plan the perfect vacation weekend getaway for our group.
We sensings voted for a late-night flight to Hawaii, with a group breakfast on Saturday, individual sightseeing time during the day, a luau all together that night, and so on. We even picked a particular airport, figuring that we'd get the best rate flying in and out of Dulles.
The intutives, we learned when we met a while later to compare, had planned (although "planned" is a generous term) a trip to Utopia, with skiing and surfing and skydiving and spelunking. No times for travel or meals or such mundane things, pretty much just everyone doing what they wanted, whenever they wanted, without respect to terrain or weather or the space-time continuum.
(They also kinda mocked us sensings as anal-retentive bores, I seem to remember. We thought we were being wildly extravagant, knowing that there really wasn't enough time to fly to Hawaii and back in one weekend.)
All this is to say: I think Mr. Polo's very much a sensing type. You, however, seem more nicely balanced between, recognizing the two approaches and knowing that sometimes you go with one and sometimes with the other.
I took the Myers-Briggs at probably about the same time, which is to say long enough ago that I've forgotten how strongly I broke on everything but the first category (which was emphatically introverted, to nobody's particular surprise). At the time I rated as an intuitive, but frankly the group exercise you all were doing would've brought the introversion more to the fore--group work makes my soul shrivel up and blow away. Group work in the service of a group vacation? Good Lord, no, no, a thousand times no.
From a horseular perspective, I sympathize with Mr. Polo, and he's not asking bad questions, but we're training the school horses as much as we're training ourselves at this point, so he has to take a lot of it on faith. The horse may be intended to move away from inside leg, but if it hasn't learned to do so consistently, what do you as a rider make of it? How frustrated do you allow yourself to get? That may be more of why I try not to get too worked up about it, and a session or two on a very well trained horse might help Mr. P. see the difference. God knows riding QC a time or two showed me a new world.
I also have to give Mr. Polo credit: he asks his questions while he works, rather than expecting class to come to a halt for the discussion. I've been in classes that allowed that, and ultimately I didn't find them helpful. You've just got to do it; all the talking in the world won't teach muscle memory.
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