Bullet-form update

Summarizing:

• Dressage: Laura remains huge and slow, the heavily shedding glacier of our class. I am a little faster with the whip this time and she gives me better energy, but the bending exercises remain a challenge. I leave limping, hip a-grumble and legs a-sore. "She reminds me of something," says Pat. "Or someone." "A big old lady in house slippers?" "HA. Yes." Even mares of a certain age need yoga, though, and dressage-bound she will stay.
• Western: Chock with dread, I nonetheless return, making a last-ditch attempt to be a good student. Molly, my partner for the day, still refuses to turn right, shoving her head out and bolting toward Sterling whenever I cue for a bend. We try bending her at the walk, at the jog, facing this way, facing that. No joy. She wants to be with him, he is her one true love. We try having her follow him through a figure-eight pattern around two barrels; she will follow him around barrels, but then she figures out that she'd rather cut across and stand by his side to face the world. He is disdainful but doesn't threaten her the way he does other geldings or higher-status mares. Eventually we teach her a cloverleaf pattern, and I stop before each barrel, gather in the inside rein, and don't move her until I've got her pointing her nose inward. This, to my surprise and delight, works. She can turn right! It's hard to tell which of us is more shocked.
  
• Western, the switchening: Sterling's mom and I switch mounts for a few minutes so that I can ride a horse who doesn't have problems turning. Instead I get a horse who eels from side to side with my breathing, as hyperresponsive as a glider in an updraft. I ask for the trot, and he wobbles off, not at all sure why his mom isn't running the show. His trot jolts me out of the saddle with every step, and he responds to my jiggling by moving into a floating canter I could happily ride for days. "Slow him down! Circle him!" calls Mk II. I don't want to, but I do. I'm grinning like an idiot. I ask Sterling's mom how she manages to sit that jog. She rolls her eyes, shakes her head. "Oh, it's only taken me four years to learn how. You've just got to sit and sit and sit." Fun in Western again. I had given up.

Wrangle wrangle

Tickets: Too much money.
Car rental: Not very much money.
Dental insurance: So very much money.
Wrangling cattle for a cowboy who once hollered at you because you declined to bulldog a charging cow: Absolutely priceless.

Which is to say: Tickets to AZ, I has them. Last year's fun was tempered by the need to get up at o-hell-no-thirty in very chilly predawn darkness. This year the weather should at least be warmer, since we'll be down there in May, and instead of layers of shirts I will be toting SPF Avogadro's Number to protect my neo-Victorian pallor. I'm almost more nervous this time, because working later in the season means more of the calves will be big and ornery, while I have not added much mass. Last year there were a couple of times when I had to yell for one of the guys to lean on my shoulders lest the calf on which I was resting my entire weight still manage to get up. I suppose I could line my chaps with lead plates, but that's some spendy smelting tailoring right there.

Dressaging this week was the usual fun. I got there early enough to snag Cappi, hah! And after just one week on Laura, I had to relearn to find his barrel. It's tough having long legs and a teeny horse. He was great, though; at one point he considered going back to his old left-evasion ways, just as I was bending him and asking him to reach down for the bit. But a little leg pressure, and suddenly he relaxed, reaching down like a champ and keeping his energy forward even as his head dropped. Bless. Max the square peg was back in class, doing his usual routine of "oh God, cantering, so much work, two strides is all I got, boss!" riiiight up until his rider slipped the crop behind her leg and smacked him smartly. Suddenly, as twere a miracle, he found all sorts of energy; she never tapped him again, but he had gotten the picture. Turns out he has a very pretty canter, too, so kudos to her for determination and timing.

Western was...well. I love me a Western saddle, I love having a single hand on the reins, give me a smart cow pony and watch me try to hang on. But it is ridiculously frustrating to work with horses that aren't consistently trained to respond to Western cues, and yet be told to improve my cuing. Not sure that this class will stick; I'm having trouble working with this teacher. It would be different, as would so many many things, if I had the money to keep and train my own horse, but for now I'm trying to grit my teeth and be zen with every bone in my body. "You get all tense," says Teacherwoman MkII, and it takes my limited self-control not to snap anything smart-assed back. (This counts as personal growth.) So we'll see.

Dinner tonight with Mr. and Mrs. JackZodiac at Restaurant K was a lovely treat. I got the chocolate pie, which comes with homemade sour cream and sour cherry coulis and which The Voice had gotten during our Restaurant Week dinner. It's still toe-curlingly, pass-me-the-cigarette, I-just-got-religion good, but I'd better do a hell of a lot of running around at the kite festival tomorrow to compensate. Swope's recipe makes the kind of dessert that can single-platedly shift your center of gravity. The fact that I had it after an orange/jicama/spinach salad with hibiscus vinaigrette and some luscious rockfish Veracruz did not help. Well, okay, it helped with other things. But I'm betting Danny wouldn't thank me for squashing his calves flat.

Are we gonna need a bigger stick?

Pat's back! Dressage again! Generalized hurrah!

I was just too late yesterday to get either of my regular ponies, with one student snagging Cappi and the other sharking Grayson, although of course to steal Grayson is to borrow a world of potential trouble. I refuse to ride Edmund, because God did not make me with removable pieces or boundless wells of patience and calm, so I settled on Laura, a big gray mare who hasn't been a regular in our class.

It's been about four years since I was on Laura, which puts it back in the days when my teacher was a Slavophilic vet-school grad prone to saying things like, "Let us proceed to the ring, hortatory subjunctive!" Laura had recently come back from an enforced vacation, which had followed an earlier vacation during which she was turned out with a colt who people thought wasn't sexually mature. Oops, it turns out you really ought to check before assuming that. Bomp-chicka had apparently ensued. So Laura went off and had her foal, and eventually the two were separated and Laura came back to the barn. Oh, and she was still lactating. So then the game became keeping her from getting completely backed up and developing mastitis, but not encouraging her body to continue to lactate. Long story short, my teacher turned to me after the lesson and said casually, "Hey, want to learn to milk a horse?" Uh. Hm. Let me consult the files. Nope, nope, never had a weirder offer. But what the hell, nothing ventured nothing made into airag.

When I've seen Laura work in the years since, she's been kind of shlubby and reluctant, though not actively naughty, so I wasn't thrilled about riding her. But by the time I'd figured out how to climb onto her and get my legs adjusted (she' s at least a hand taller than my regulars and considerably rounder of barrel), she had seen the dressage crop and done some mental math. Conclusion: "Better do what the lady with the stick says." Not only did she move out at a solid working walk, she worked her ass off in the maneuvers, managing respectable leg-yields and turns on the forehand and bends to both sides while moving straight. We couldn't quite get the shoulder-in, maybe because by then both she and I were getting tired, she because she's out of shape and me because I too am out of shape and was trying to squeeze her huge bulk forward with my puny legs. All in all, though, the class went very well; it's heartening to find that I can transfer cues from horse to horse without too much trouble. The taste of progress is delicious.

After all the detacking and grooming fun and games, I went home to change and go back out to the gym. What kind of parasite has eaten my brain, I do not know, but it wants its treadmill time. Thank God for podcasts.

Thanks a latte

Fun and games with my favorite bendy boy again. Eventually I'll get around to asking Pat to snap some pictures while we're working together, despite past evidence that seeing those kinds of pictures sends me into insta-despond at how gawky I look on a horse. I've taken some quick shots of Cappi while he's been on cross-ties, but they're never very good: He's always peering around to see whether I've manifested treats, or he's squinching up his face at something, or he's just glaring, ears back and mouth wrinkled, because I am taking pictures rather than FEEDING HIM or GROOMING HIM or otherwise making his life as he wants it to be NOW RIGHT NOW. He's kind of an enormous whiny toddler about the whole cross-ties and photos thing. Which is a pity, because whenever I see him being ridden I'm struck again by how cute he is, all glossy roundy black Morgany body and long thick show-pony tail, and I would like to share the adorableness. One of these days.

Cappi had been nicely warmed up at a jumping class, so as soon as I was in the saddle he moved out with a fine swinging walk, barrel rolling from side to side and helping loosen up my hips and back. He resisted some of the moves once he figured out that I wasn't going to let him just run around (in fairness be it spoken, he will do all the moves at speed), and at one point he thought about spooking at the wind, but overall we did pretty well. We even did some cantering, although to keep him from bolting we limited it to three strides of canter and about thirty of trot, repeatedly. He grumbled but obeyed. At one point Pat called for me to reset my inside leg, which had drifted forward, so that Cappi would bend more smoothly into the canter. "I can't just flail around and hope for the best?" She said no. "Well, hell, that's my whole philosophy of riding; now what'm I sposed to do?" The best part of the lesson was watching another student try to canter the new Halflinger pony, who runs with all the grace and coordination of a crate of beer falling down a flight of stairs. You don't want to laugh, because someday it could be you on that horse, but wow does it look as though cantering is something Max was not designed by God to do.

My reward after class is to spend a few minutes with QC, Pat's big pinto mare. QC greets me with a nuzzle and immediately stretches out her neck, suggesting that I might scratch along her crest and down her shoulders. In return she rests her head on my shoulder or arm and nibbles the seams of my jacket. When I turn to go she looks despondent. Pat is certainly her person, but QC has enough love to go around.

Hello Cappi my old friend

Moohahaha, now you'll have that song stuck in your head for a week.

We're suffering the revenge of February, as a batch of nadger-freezing air direct from Canada keeps us all from enjoying the extra hours of sun. I went to dressage last night all y-bundled up, silk tights and fleece breeches and three sweaters under a fleece jacket and down vest, gloves on my icy claws and a pair of chemical packs tucked into my boots (in vain, because when the mercury drops too far, my lamesauce corpuscles won't be tempted past the knee line for anything short of booze-induced capillary dilation). The indoor ring isn't heated, but it blocks the wind and is generally bearable for the riders if not the instructor.

After my long hiatus from dressage, it was a nervous joy to be back with Cappi. Joy because he's fun, nervous because who knows what he'd been up to while I was off. Smoking! Drinking! Lascivious conversation and crim con! Needless worries, as it turned out. He didn't display any bad habits, even when horse A spooked at invisible tigers, causing horse B to ditch his rider in sympathy, causing the horse C to flee the commotion, thereby convincing horse D that he was next on the bogeyman's menu. But Cappi, who had been trotting along, flicked an ear at the noise, slowed to a walk on my cue, and then sighed. Sighed. This is the same horse who three months ago would climb trees if a deer walked within a mile of the gate? The horse who would panic and flee if asked to work away from the other horses? The horse who to this day gives his Western riders fits? I do not pretend to understand. I am only grateful. I confess that I truly love getting him to bend and flex and show off. Pat's trying to make things more difficult for us so that he has to listen and can't assume he knows what he's supposed to do, so the class is never dull, but Cappi seems to have found his groove in dressage.

Apart from the cold fingers, what I really don't like about lessons in the winter is dealing with the blankets, which cannot be laundered every day and inevitably smell of urine (reason one, there are straps under the belly and the horse can't exactly hold them out of the way when nature calls; reason two, the horses lie down in their stalls, wherein they've usually relieved themselves). The blankets are big and bulky, so you have to sort of heave them up and wrestle them into place, and then you have to reach under the horse's belly to get at the surcingles, and what with one thing and another it's nearly impossible not to end up smelling of horse wee. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

Speaking softly

To my sorrow, I haven't gotten to try out the new dressage crops (thanks, Santa, ya perv) on Grayson. I don't cherish hopes of flogging him into good behavior, but the crops are long enough to allow the tip to rest just behind your leg, allowing you clarify your leg cues by touching the horse's side. Paraplegics and amputees can perform dressage using just two whips rather than leg pressure; it's neat to watch. So I have high hopes of seeing work with Grayson go forward beautifully, at least once I figure out how to negotiate getting into the saddle while holding one without being kicked into next week.

But for ineffable reasons related to the horse list being blatantly manipulated to favor a teacher who always rubs me the wrong way, I got yet another partner this week, one who is such a nervous squirrel that I couldn't even consider using a crop. Roosevelt is completely adorable, a tiny chestnut Arab pony who looks like he was made by Gund or some other mass manufacturer of the huggable, and there's not a malicious bone in him. But like most Arabs, he's highly strung and tends to jitter. He's got the softest bit in the barn, a simple snaffle covered with rubbery plastic, because he'll stop on a dime if he thinks that something's about to hit his mouth. Nother words, you've got to ride him with perfect balance and featherlight hands, ideally with a zen level of calm and steady alpha waves and a clean conscience and pure of word and deed. Don't get me wrong, I like Roo well enough, because he's trying, but at this point, erm, I could use a slightly broader margin of error. After a couple of months working with my regular boys, riding Roo is like switching from a Civic into a jury-rigged jalopy with supersensitive brakes and acceleration and really woggly steering. He does have a lovely canter, and in the brief interludes between dead stops, he has a floating trot, unusually smooth for the breed, so if he could just be trained into a steadier frame of mind, he might be lovely.The woman who feels about Roo the way I feel about Doc watched the class and confirmed that the problems I had were the ones she has, so at least I didn't damage his fragile psyche further. Yay?

In other news, Restaurant Week, she ees feeneeshed. The highlight was Restaurant K by Alison Swope, where the arugula salad with gorgonzola, beets, and shaved fennel, venison pot roast with roasted root vegetables, and cornbread pudding were perfect comfort foods on a sleety night. Lowest marks to Taberna del Alabardero, which offered a binary choice for each chintzy course, ignored our table most of the evening, and tried to double-charge me for my glass of Molinet 2006 (which, to be fair, was a great recommendation). And now I plan to live on carrots and lentils for a month or two, or at least until it's time to go to Seattle. Shit, that's next week.

The magic horseman's word

Terry Pratchett's kingdom of Lancre is home to a blacksmith who can shoe the fiercest stallion by using the magic horseman's word, which he whispers into the animal's ear and which causes even the rearingest bitingest snortingest of them to stand docilely for shoeing. Upon being pressed by Granny Weatherwax, local witch/wisewoman/incurable snoop, he admits that he's murmuring, "Cross me, you bugger, and I'll have thy goolies on t'anvil, thou knows I can."

Grayson's goolies are long gone ("that most discontented of animals, a gelding," says Patrick O'Brian; "that most useful of creatures, a gelding" says Jane Smiley), so we rely on other magic tricks to get him to cooperate. On Monday Kate tipped me off to a new one: When Grayson is reluctant to leave his hay and presents his formidable feet to anyone approaching with a halter, spin the lead rope so that it catches his eye, then let the rope fly out so that the knot gently smacks him on the ass. After he refused to stir for a palmed carrot last night, I followed her instructions, letting the rope's end just tap his blanketed rear. To my surprise, he turned right around, careful and polite, and stood stock-still while I slipped his halter on, buckled it, and led him out to the cross-ties. Hmm. Submissive horse ISO strict discipline? Best not to think about that too much.

He handled grooming and tacking with his usual ill grace, though, then in the ring nipped my hand and damn near kicked Pat, who fortunately dove out of his way. Some horses kick for show or to express discomfort; Grayson picks a target and aims. Angry and embarrassed, I shoved him out toward the rail, thinking, awright, you dappled freak, beatings beatings beatings it is. And do you know? From that moment he was as fast and light as could be. He did leg yields and shoulders in and bending and even a credible canter, and although toward the end of the hour his motivation flagged and I got a leg workout squeezing him forward, it was one of the best classes we've ever done.

Pat was pleased; I was thrilled. Perceptible improvement! When I started off with dressage last summer, I felt gawky and uncoordinated, hopelessly far behind the other students, a klutzy incompetent who could stay on a horse but couldn't handle short stirrups and two-fisted reins and Cappi bolting whenever I asked him to turn left. But I kept going to class, kept having Cappi run away, kept hearing Pat say some encouraging variant on "that was close for a couple of strides." Dogged persistence. Now it feels as though progress is coming out of the air, with Grayson remembering his early dressage training and my muscles remembering from week to week that to make him go like that, I have to go like this. I'm not even a kindergartener by Spanishe Hoitytoitischereitschule standards, but I'm finishing the classes tired and pleased, already looking forward to the next session. What more can you ask?

Think, when we speak of horses, that you see them

Because it's been years since anyone succeeded in taking a photo of Grayson in which he did not look like devilspawn, ears pinned and mouth snarling and eyes glowing uncanny green. If photos are pictures of the soul, though, that's pretty accurate. Unclean! Unclean! The leopard-print app marks of the beast!

I brought Grayson around and out to his halter with a cube of alfalfa, which depending on your school of training is either rewarding bad behavior or a sensible way to keep the horse happy. I don't care which it is, I'm too damn old to be proving my foolhardiness by attempting to wrassle or sweet-talk him out of his stall. While I was grooming him ("How did you get mud on your eyelids, you glaikit creature?"), I discovered that he loves having his forehead and the skin over his eyes rubbed. Nothing loath to do something that might him in a better humor, I went to town. He leaned into the brush...but kept his ears flattened even while he closed his eyes in apparent ecstasy. He is determinedly sulky, this one. He did his level best to bite and kick as I cinched him up and got ready to put foot to stirrup. Once I'd gotten into the saddle, with Pat keeping him from twisting to kick the mounting block, he even tried to kick her, keeping it up until I pulled him into a series of backing steps. Having to back up seems to keep his brain occupied. Another useful thing to file away in the dossier labeled "Horses, fucking bastards among."

And then, as has become standard, he turned into a pretty good partner. We managed a slogging canter ("Come ON, you bugger, come on, sweet boy, canter UP ah finally"), and he pricked his ears at a fox as we passed the door, but his bending and crossing were lovely and he picked up his knees nicely as we went over cavaletti. At the end of the class, Pat showed me how to pick him up onto the bit, and after a few minutes of twiddling the reins I found myself looking at a glossy arch of neck and holding the lightest contact on his mouth. Satori. Doing it on a regular basis will be a real trick, but it's good to know that we can do it at all.

The jumping class that follows our dressage lesson took Grayson, so I didn't have to clean him up and was free to go a-visiting to my crew of favorites. I also got to chat a little more with Pat, who gave me some positive feedback and generally made me feel as though there's hope for my riding.

And in other news completely, covetousness is a sin in most major religions. Don't care. Want Bat Smaks!

So we meet again, my furry friend

Progress! Last night's work on Cappi was excellent, all things considered. We're getting to the point where he's stopped the major misbehaviours and I can notice subtler problems in him and in my cues, which is the first step toward fixing same. Man does it feel good to come out of a lesson without having ridden through a bolt. Pat was very chuffed; she says that Cappi's getting much more flexible through his back and neck ("Look, he's letting you compress him and stretch him out like an accordion!" For my next trick, I will play "Lady of Spain" at the trot). She also thinks that he's working harder to do well in this class than in others, although since I rarely see him in other work I can't tell. He still speeds up a lot given half a chance, especially if he's behind a horse he thinks he could beat in a race—which is to say, any horse at all—but he's listening to cues and responding more promptly when I tell him not to be Speed Racer. He even reaches for the bit, stretching down and forward as the reins loosen, rather than fighting the contact or trying to evade contact by going sideways. In other words, I'm feeling somewhat warmer toward him than I used to, and it may be mutual.

This time I was S-M-R-T about putting him away: I untacked him and groomed him one aisle away from his stall, so he wasn't constantly trying to duck out and check on his bucket. Like most of the schoolies, he knows enough about tailoring and human nature to recognize the potential of pockets, and I was loaded with candy cane frag. With that to distract him from his missing dinner, I got him cleaned up (and smellin' minty fresh, too) in record time. He's shaggy at this time of year, but with indoor riding and its lack of mud he isn't too hard to keep neat.

Doc got the rest of the candy cane. It may not be as high on his list as apples, but he knows enough to whicker when I reach into a pocket. Then when it was gone he tried to nip me on the hand and I decided it was time to go. At least he hadn't pinned me against a stall wall so that I knocked a water bucket onto my breeches, Grayson. (ETA: I wasn't the one who ended up wet. Grayson has tried that with me in the past, but I've been lucky or fast or both, and these days I bribe him to keep him facing the right way. Another student was not so fortunate.)

Pony onner string

A tip of the hat to the famous Mr. Pratchett, for his "onner stick," which became hilariously real to La Mère the moment that her roommate bought a deep-fried starfish on a stick at the Wanfujing Night Market in Beijing.

I got Cappi again tonight, and even taking him out of his stall I could tell he was going to be a handful. The chilly weather had filled him with energy, not that he's a poky creature at any time. I cinched my helmet a little more tightly, adjusted his martingale, and hoped for the best. We didn't do too badly during most of the class, what with the trotting and bending and even a laudable shoulder-in. He's listening better or I'm riding better or both.

But then Pat had us canter one at a time at the end of the ring, and that's historically been a troublesome thing with Cappi, who tends to get to where he's supposed to turn left away from the other horses and keep working on his own, decide that they're having more fun, and bolt (see also: adventures in unplanned jumping). I was nervous, because while I've always stayed on it's a bit stressful and makes me feel lame for letting him get away from me, but Pat had a plan. She snapped a longe line on the inside corner of his bridle and sent me out.

Boy HOWDY did Cappi find that confusing. We started trotting, and Pat twitched the line to remind him that she was there, and although he was a little confused, the nudging was fine. Then we got to the Magic Trouble Spot, he bent his head and bolted...and you could have drawn a cartoon thought bubble full of exclamation points right over his ears, because suddenly he was having to spin back around at the pressure of the line, all, "Whoa! What the hell was that!" I clung on and tried not to swear. We slowed down, I got my stirrups back onto the balls of my feet (in times of stress, the human reflex is to go fetal, legs contracting and upper body curling inward to protect the squishy bits, which leads to my stirrups turning into anklets), and we began again at the trot. This time when Cappi bolted, Pat's line almost caught under my foot and pitched me sideways. "You're trying to make sure I fall off this horse someday," I accused her. My adventures in horse-spooking are becoming a barn joke; I really hope that correlation isn't causality here, except in the sense that I'm taking on more problematic horses. She chuckled and promised to look out for the line, now that we had a good fix on Cappi's reactions. And it was only five or six times after that that we got a solid circle at the canter, with no running away or other evasions.

My seat is still not very solid in the English saddle. It's mental, because I do fine bareback and in a Western saddle, but Pat agreed that some more longe work, where I don't have to worry so much about steering and can focus on leg position and seat, will go a long way toward improving my riding. It will also, and this is the BIG SEKRIT, help Cappi be a better partner. If he learns that it's more fun to do what he's asked, rather than whatever he wants (which is followed by people hauling on his mouth to make him stop), he'll be a much better school horse. Fingers crossed.

Correcting scurrilous rumors

I hope the three people who read this site regularly don't get too tired of horse gossip, because they tend to get the intel about my job and personal life over e-mail and what's left is largely equine scuttlebutt. People who don't spend a lot of time around horses may well wonder how much you can really say about a horse's personality and exploits, which is something I can't correct without first-hand stories.

Each day, a barn assistant draws up the horse list, assigning horses to each class in a balancing act between making sure that the horses are appropriate for the class level, that nobody injured is on the list, that a horse that's been out several times already gets a break, and that any other problems are addressed. Which somehow is why I didn't get Cappi for dressage this week; I got a choice between Lady, who I've never ridden but who apparently comes with the bound set of Issues, and Grayson, a black-and-white leopard Appaloosa who I've mentioned before is a grumpy bastard with a rep for bad behavior. He is also the only horse at the barn who has thrown me, back in my early days in English training: got out of balance at the canter, he waited until a corner and then threw his head down as though scratching an itch on his knee, and, following certain inarguable newtonian laws, I went right over his shoulder into a full somersault. He then had the nerve to come nuzzle the pocket where I was keeping a pack of mints, all, "Hi! I put you on the ground! Treats now?"

Grayson's ground manners are infamous: He tries to turn his butt toward and kick anyone who comes into his stall (the options are either to offer him a treat first, to bring his head around, or, more riskily, to duck in fast up to his shoulder, grab his mohawk of a mane, and pull his head toward you as hard as you can, after which he will behave perfectly for about five minutes), pins his ears and snaps while he's on cross-ties, rolls his eyes and wrinkles his speckled mouth at anyone who passes by, threatens to kick other horses if they get too close, and will certainly cow-kick at anyone who approaches with a crop in hand (he's bad but not stupid). So why do we put up with all that?

Well, strangely enough, the evil creature is almost perfect under saddle. He used to do high-level competitive dressage, and if he figures out that a rider is the boss (not the case all the time, due to fear or lack of skill), he is a complete dream to ride. I wasn't sure where I fell on his spectrum of respect/ignore. The first few minutes of class weren't promising: Grayson poked along, appearing not to notice my legs, even as I squeezed him so hard that my hip popped. After about five minutes, Pat nodded in my direction: "Want a stick?" "Yeah...this isn't working." And lo, as soon as I had the stick in my hand, he moved out at a fine pace. I never even tapped him with it, but with it in his field of vision we did a full hour of fast and slow trots, moving from one speed to the next at a touch of calf or rein; leg-yields and shoulders-in flowing smoothly to and from the wall; a 90-degree turn using only the hind legs; and even an uneventful canter circle. We also avoided unpleasantness with the other horses, which given that two are young and undertrained and the third is herd-bound and spooky was quite the accomplishment. I felt practically charitable toward him afterward, and his efforts to bite me as I rubbed him down seemed half-hearted. Perhaps there's something to this practice thing after all.

Oh hell and death and yay!

I sometimes get very frustrated in dressage. I've been working steadily with Cappi, who as I've mentioned is tiny and makes me feel sometimes that I'm trying to balance on top of a tootsie roll, which is a problem because I've got relatively long legs and find myself having to pretzel myself up just to get some contact with him. (Wow, after that sentence I suddenly want a ton of junk food. Back in a sec.)

But he still runs away, and sometimes he's not responsive, and it's tough to tell whether I'm not getting the right results because I'm doing it wrong or because he's confused or both. No cabe duda that I've managed to improve my seat and hands, vide my ability not to fall off when Cappi takes off in terror of invisible cthulus, but basic stuff like bending the horse at the walk, getting the leg yield, and turning smoothly so often evade me. It's a little like those annoying yoga teachers who tell you not to compete with other students, but when the intern on the next mat has tucked her heels into her armpits and looks transcendently smug, you always do anyway (it's either that or reach over to tickle her to see what happens); I am trying to be happy with my own progress, but I want to be doing more. In other words, I'm perfectly pleased with how I'm doing, I just wish I were doing better faster sooner.

Tonight went fairly well, with only one runaway, and we tried some bending work that I kind of sort of managed. But after class, as I was rinsing off Cappi's bridle, Pat came up and said firmly, "Put your helmet back on and come ride my horse. I want you to see how the shoulder-in should feel." I couldn't decide between "ohshit" and "fuck YEAH," because Pat's horse is (a) enormous, (b) super sensitive, and (c) highly trained. She's universally popular, because she loves spending time with people and will happily snorgle you for hours, but Pat's told us enough stories about her training adventures that I was a little nervous about putting a heel wrong and finding myself hanging from a treebranch. Pat snapped on a lunge line, though, so I probably wasn't going to get a fast trip anywhere exciting and therefore had no excuse to chicken out, and I climbed up feeling like I was reaching the third story of a building (Cappi: 14.2 hands; QC: 17+, or about a foot and a half taller). We did some simple bending work that was noticeably different from Cappi's intermittent responses to my confusing signals. It was like dancing with other dance students and then briefly getting paired with an experienced partner; there was a real clarity and sense of relief from having my signals interpreted correctly or at least seeing QC react when I fixed my hands. Cappi is probably not the best horse for me (Seesterperson: "I do not trust this Cappi. He seems to be a wild one"), but my goal is to understand him better and make it easier for him to do what I want, so each step is helpful.

But it still feels like I'm building a sand castle one grain at a time.

It's easy, there's a trick to it

I am pleased to report that Cappi did not have a jumping fit about boogers in the woods during last night's dressage lesson. He did, however, strongly object to being told to stay on one side of the ring, doing spirals at the trot, while the rest of the horses stayed on the other side of the ring. After his initial arguments met with failure but seemed likely to be repeated on appeal, Pat put up some low poles to remind him of where to work. Confident that he would get the message, what with seat and leg and rein and fences, we began again, Pat coaching from the center and me riding from the top.

Which is approximately when we all learned that (a) Cappi loves to jump, (b) Cappi is quite good at jumping, and (c) Cappi believes that the safest place to end up is about 2 inches from the butt of the barn's most ill-tempered horse, whither he will run at speed. Sweetie, you're supposed to be smarter than poor young Edmund; chasing death at Grayson's heels with a shell-shocked rider on your back is no way to go about proving that the years have made you wiser.

On the plus side, I'm told that I looked less spastic than might have been expected, given that I don't do much jump work. It turns out that Pat really has improved my seat; now we've just got to work on learning to control the horse.

Adventures in Cappi-sitting

Things wot I am learning in dressage:

• How to handle a fast sitting trot.
• How to use my legs more effectively to control turns and straightness.
• That I'm rubbish at getting a leg-yield to the right at the walk.
• That Cappi will do almost anything I ask, including the infamous right-side leg-yield, at the trot. "Almost"—he is very reluctant to stop once he gets the chance to be speedy.
• That bareback Western work is helping my dressage seat. Cappi's back is so wiggly that I feel like a hula dancer half the time, but thanks to Doc I can keep my hips in contact with the saddle without getting seasick.
  
• How to identify Rock Creek fauna from fleeting glimpses during Cappi's apparently mandatory panic-induced skitters. (Last night it was a fox and a 20-meter leaping bolt.)
  
• That it is high time to go back to the massage place for a lil hurts-so-good tuneup. The bastard leg yield uses exactly the set of muscles involved in all the SI aggro, then we did some balance work involving resting mostly on one leg, and what with one thing and another my left hip is filing some serious whinge with the central office. I am going to hit the anti-inflammatories but good before tonight's bareback Western class.
  

The wrong trousers?

Automating actions such as applying an image frame is time-saving at best and embarrassingly catastrophic at worst. Somewhere in the middle, there's...well, judge for yourself: Search inside!

Dressage did its usual thing for me and relaxed a bunch of the sore muscles, and although Cappi did display a few of his problems, we did not go flying sideways across the ring on a buzz of deer-induced adrenaline. The low point was cantering a 20-meter circle, where the Cappo di Tutti Cappi tucked his shoulder, ducked his head away, tried to speed up and completely lost track of his feet. You hate to see that sort of thing at this level of play. Of the two other horses in the class, the relatively young retired racehorse had a similar problem, while the old dressage App decided (as is his wont, the cranky SOB) that he didn't want to exert the effort. So at least I wasn't alone in feeling like a screw-up, and that's something of a comfort.

It sounds like there will be quite a crew cheering for Seesterperson tomorrow night, and the first flurry of scary planning is past. Now the pressing question is what to wear, darlingks, what to wear?

The zen of activity

When the world is too much with my level of indignation, as when Michael Chertoff gets up on his hind legs to prate about how we, by God, need another way to say, "Ihre Papieren, bitte," to potential terrorists and anyone who doesn't look sufficiently anglo, or when the White House deals with Jose Padilla's verdict by announcing Jenna's engagement, I am glad to have physical action in my life. John M. Ford's advice about dealing with stress--"Find a distraction and allow it to distract you"--is straight to the point.

I was the only student at last night's dressage class, so I got a serious workout; inside of ten minutes, sweat was trickling down my face and my legs were aching. Private lessons are great, because you don't have to keep tabs on other students and whether their horses are about to be unpredictable (or whether yours is going to be so in their flight space), you get lots of direct instructor feedback, and you can work on your weak spots. The downside is that you can't hide or slack or learn from other people's mistakes.

I was paired again with Cappi, a plump little Morgan. He's not a bad critter, but he's smart enough to have learned the trick of ducking out of a turn and running down the long side of a ring when he doesn't want to do something. Unfortunately for him, I am learning a trick known as not letting him do that. In a way, his spastic attacks are even helpful: I have to pay more attention to him and read his intentions, I damn well better be balanced on his back to handle his lateral moves, and I eventually have to be able to bring him back to wherever he might have freaked out and make him do the move correctly. Also, the adrenaline rush after he bolts down the ring, maybe veering a little too close to a pile of jump standards ("Not the face! Not the face!"), clears the nervous system out a treat.

To balance out the inevitable "whoa, about to die" moments of excitement, there are the long stretches of hanging out the horses in the barn. You still have to be careful, because they're still large skittish prey animals with big teeth and feet, but within those limits it's possible to decompress a lot. Contact with a large relaxed animal, just leaning into a shoulder and maybe giving them a good scratch along the neck where they can't reach, is very good for the blood pressure.

Orrr you can go home and attack the chilly peach army using strategy e-mailed from a friend. It's like Sun Tzu, only with more brown sugar and almonds!