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.

Checking kites

Kite pics! Photographic evidence to the contrary, I don't wear my stripey Hot Topic-esque gloves all the time, just when it's chilly and I'll need manual dexterity but can't rationalize wearing my riding gloves, or when I'm being very juvenile. Both applicable here.

I spent a quiet weekend, after a long cafe dinner with friends on Friday, napping and cleaning and mulling over what to do about the situation with Teacherwoman Mk II. It seems increasingly likely that I'll end up dropping her class, which will mean having gone from three hours of saddle work a week to one, unless I find another local barn that suits me. The odds of finding another Western class are slim, but more English work, even jumping, would still let me keep the appropriate leg tone and flexibility. Riding is supposed to be fun, and for the last month or so I've had dressage classes that were fantastic, followed the next night by Western classes that have left me wretched with frustration. That's not to say that dressage has been easy and that everything I've tried has worked, but each time I've come out thinking, "Okay, so that worked and this didn't. Next time we can work on this and make sure not to lose that." (God knows what the horses have been thinking, although for Cappi it's probably some variant on, "Sup-sup-suppertiiiiiime!") In Western, though, I feel like I've regressed; all I can think about when I leave is how many things we couldn't do right. Last week was a low point and is forcing me to reevaluate what I'm getting out of the classes versus what I want. Mk II knows how to ride, and many students really enjoy her classes, but she and I may be too similar in all the wrong ways—we're both acerbic, analytical, impatient, sharper-tongued than we mean to be—to work well together as student and teacher.

But lest I leave on a note of repining: The Dupont Circle Farmers Market gave me something of a boost. Not only were there Stayman apples (hey, if Eve fell for them what hope do the rest of us have), there was a bluegrass quartet singing something oddly familiar. "And if fate/ Should break my stride/ Then I give you my Vincent/ To ride." Why do I know that song oh my GOD I know that song! A girl could feel special.

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.

Limping toward Gomorrah

Did you know that horses are heavy? And that the hooves of them are hard? And that standing between a horse and her grain is not smart? If so, you're three points ahead of me and my big toe this morning. I've gotten so much better about not swearing in the barn, which since the place is full of moppets and their parents is for the best, but last night I backslid with a vengeance.

Last week, Heza and I had a horrible time, the kind that you get when the horse is in A Mood and you are in A Mood, and the two of you end up pissing one another off as though you were roommates and the infamous Who Cleans the Bathroom fight had reared its head again, but instead of maturely talking it out or just leaving it alone until you can be grown-ups, you stay in the same room and silently try to tweak one another's nerves. Like that. And my hip was acting up, so I couldn't press him forward without feeling the muscles on that side going numb in a way that portends an expensive visit to the Bulgarian masseuses, and Teacherwoman MkII was not sympathetic. I avoided writing about all this stuff at the time, because the whining, oh my God, the whining would've made all the dogs on the internet (oh yeah, like you don't know they're reading...what else is Sitemeter for?) apply for asylum in Brazil. So what with one thing and another, I was pleased that last night promised a new-to-me match, a short little chestnut QH mare named Molly. Her quirks are inconsistent speed, which I can handle, and not turning right, an issue that caused some of the aforementioned backsliding and swearing and eventually the use of stronger direct rein than I prefer. Sing it with me: Sommmmebody needs grounnnndworrrrk! She also wanted very much to be next to Sterling, which is a problem because he's a gelding and will never be the boy she wants; he knows it and therefore defends his space fiercely. But overall Molly and I handled things pretty well: She does downward transitions on a dime and responds well to soft steady leg, both things that I need to practice more, and I was happy by the end of the class.

But then, of course, back at her stall, I was stupid enough to leave my toes where she wanted her hoof to be, and instead of lifting her foot she tried to press through me as I yelled many loud bad words. The running I did later on doesn't seem to have hurt the toe any further, but if the nail ends up a casualty it's getting blamed on my hard-core fitness routine (*cough*) rather than on my equine idiocy, because after five-plus years I should know better.

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.

Time counts and keeps countin'

I came home from my week of ranchy self-indulgence (ah, the difference a single letter makes) to find a message from the barn letting me know that my lease with Doc is being suspended, effective immediately, for the foreseeable future on account of he needed more time off. Let's see, what's the word...peeved? miffed? ah yes: pissed. I was pissed.

But I took a couple of days and calmed down and didn't ask for details until I was sure that I could do it without flying off the handle, and now I've got an explanation that makes me sad but that I can't argue: Doc is getting old and stiff. Like most horses, he can't talk, so he expresses discomfort by misbehaving. The staff are readjusting his meds so that he'll be more comfortable, and he has a new pair of purple bell boots to help him not step on his own hooves (dignity be damned, though—he looks silly in sparkly violet), but I hope like hell that they're also looking for a comfortable retirement situation. Previous retirees have ended up with some pretty cushy billets; irascible but good-hearted Battle, f'rinstance, is living out his days as a practice pony for an equine massage therapist. We should all have it so good. In the meantime, Doc will have less work, and more of it will be slow. Fortunately, apples are not contraindicated.

At Western this week I got Heza, a cute but grouchy quarter horse who is infamous for ignoring any cues not filed exactly as per spec. Despite his pedantic tendencies, I like him; he's flexible and I've learned the hard way to respect his memory. A few months ago I tried him on a barrels course, doing a simple cloverleaf pattern. Sure, he's a former barrels pony, but how much would he really recall? Yes, the hominid, ostensibly the brains of the operation, somehow forgot that prey animals tend to have extremely precise long-term memories.

Teacherwoman sent us out to practice the pattern slowly at first. Heza's got a jackhammer trot, steady and a bit uncomfortable, so I was focusing mostly on my seat and looking for the line as he clopped steadily around the first barrel. Then the second. Then halfway around the third. And just as I was looking toward the gate, he dropped his inside shoulder almost far enough to pitch me sideways into the rusty oil barrel, bucked hard twice, and bolted for the imaginary chute. I got him back in hand (okay, so the fence did most of the work), swallowed my heart, and squeaked, "What was that? Did something bite him?"

"Ah," said Teacherwoman carefully. "He wants his head on the return, and you were still holding his mouth when he got around there, so he tried to ditch you. Try him again, still at the jog, but let him go on the third barrel. And, er, don't forget to pivot out your inside leg and grab that horn. Grabbing is fine in barrels." Which I did, and when we clopped steadily up to that third point he went around it like an oiled silk scarf and pelted home as I clung on and whooped. Arthritic and punctilious he may be, but he hasn't forgotten a damn thing.

He's good times. I vote we rent a cow and let him learn to cut.

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?

Western science is so wonderful

Back in the saddle! The one that is evidence of intelligent design! The one that doesn't make you wake up the next day able to pinpoint your seat bones where they've tried to dig straight through your gluteii and escape! There are many fine things about the English saddle, but my God do you feel it after you've been in one for a while. When La Mère and I rode in Mexico, I was the only guest who chose to use a Western saddle. I was also the only one who did not develop literal saddle sores right in the seat bonular area. Coincidence? Hell no. Hurray for cowboy tack! Hurray for neck reins! Hurray for Western ponies! Oh magical horse list, who'd I get? Who'd I get?

Grayson. Dammit.

A free drink, geography permitting, to anyone who knows the source of the subject line.

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!

Weekend Update

In which I promise not to gloat about having Veterans Day off, because if I say anything else about how much I like the benefits at my job, my dear sweet kind loving friends will throttle me with their bare hands and then go drink bizarre nonalcoholic cocktails that make even a hardened waitress grimace.

Long story short, it was almost a perfect routine with a major flaw on the landing. Among other entertainments, I managed to get some yarn for a new project and get that under way, after a couple of false starts; I ate good food at (damn, wait: "come you back, you British soldier, come you back to ah") Mandalay and Hollywood East on the Boulevard; I caught "Blade Runner" on the big screen for the first time in...twelve?...years ("That's Olmos? Son of a gun"); and I did a lovely session on Doc.

Well, I say lovely: We were cantering beautifully, he had gotten the correct lead on his worse side, he wasn't just bowling along without listening, all was copacetic. But suddenly there was a lot of joggly sideways motion. I couldn't figure it out; had he suddenly switched to counter-cantering? A quick glance down, and oh fuck, the cinch is loose, the saddle is shifting, and I'm already 20 degrees off the vertical. Whoa, Doc, whoa, hands on the reins pull back. He is not listening; he is having too much fun running. Thirty degrees off and not slowing down. Things are going very slowly. Kick free of the stirrups. A stupid impulse to reach out toward the fence to make sure I don't smack my head on it. Instead I wrench my shoulder on it as the rest of me passes the point of no return. Aaand that's the ground under my right side. Put my head down in the sand for a minute and sigh. It's over. I'm okay. Doc, who stops as soon as I'm off, glances over in mild confusion, because a sideways saddle and a sudden dismount are not part of the usual routine. I sit up and then stand up, pleased that everything works and disgusted with myself for not adjusting the tack correctly in the first place, and start trying to loosen the cinch the rest of the way. It's tricky, because the saddle is now sticking out from his ribs and the cinch loop is right up on his spine, but I manage it and have all his tack off before Pat and Sassy, who are working in the next ring, even notice. I explain what happened. "We didn't even hear you yell!" says Sassy. I didn't. All that work on Cappi has paid off; I don't swear as much when things go wrong on horseback anymore. "Are you okay?" Yup. I get the blankets on, rearrange the saddle, swing back up. We walk for a while to relax, and then we go back in. I feel fine but plan to pop some anti-inflammatories and pull out a heat pack when I get home, just to deal with the inevitable stiffness.

And then I realize that somewhere in the deep, soft, poorly lit sand of the ring, I have lost my keys.

Update: The muscle soreness materialized as expected. More surprisingly, given that I didn't hit my head or have any abnormal neuro symptoms in the immediate aftermath, so did some nausea and a right bastard of a headache. I hied me to a doctor this morning and was told that things look fine but to take it easy the rest of the week. Can I ride tonight, I ask, thinking about Cappi. "I just told you to rest!" says Serbian doctor lady, exasperated. "No horsing. Just cold packs on the muscles and rest." [ETA: The barn has found my keys, oh sweet miracle, and I will watch tonight's lesson even if I can't ride. Technically that counts as not horsing.]

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.

Cultural bleed

About five years ago, La Mère and I went to Mexico where the warm winds blow for a week of riding with Cabalgatas La Sierra, Day of the Dead touristing, and DF sight-seeing. The riding was spectacular, right from the moment when Pepe, splendidly photogenic in a huge sombrero and ignoring his black horse's capers as he lit a cigar, met us in front of the stable's arched plaster gate. The cigar lit and installed to his satisfaction, he nodded to the grooms, said mildly, "Bueno, vámonos," and spun his horse on its heels to bolt out onto the roads. I wanted to look around for the film crew, because surely nobody was this much like a 1930's movie, were they?

Although my horse was a true prince of his race and kept me from several nasty falls on loose ground, spending long seven-hour days in the saddle is hard if you're not used to it. So it was that I found myself wandering the cobblestone streets of Valle de Bravo in search of some bandages and tape for a twisted ankle (trust me, you need strong ankles to ride mountain trails). The town had a gracious plenty of small storefront pharmacies, but one after another was flat out of bandages. Was it a translation error? Was I missing the right word? No, the women behind the counters assured me, they knew what I wanted, they were just out of stock. Each recommended that I try the next place down the street, maybe they'll have some. After five or six of these discouraging conversations, one pharmacy came up with a tiny roll of narrow-gauge gauze and some athletic tape, which I eked out to last the rest of the trip. It was weird, though: How could they have so many medications in stock and yet not carry something as basic as two-inch bandages?

Now, Day of the Dead proper starts October 31, with children traditionally given treats on November 2, but there is growing concern at the increasing popularity of Halloween, trick-or-treating, and associated American-type rituals among the Mexican youth--who, no dummies, know that multiple days for getting candy are better than just one. The kids are even starting to dress up for Halloween itself, although they're still asking for calaveras and noshing on pan de muerto. The costume choices are also pretty traditional: witches, vampires, the occasional Frankenstein, all thick with makeup and costumes made from day-to-day clothes. There were one or two Power Rangers in plastic store-bought outfits, but they were the rare exception.

Oh, yes: And there were mummies. OLD-school mummies. Homemade mummies. Mummies dressed not in commercial costumes or skeins of toilet paper, but in yards and yards of carefully-arranged layers of...have you guessed yet? Those damn missing bandages. We found the town's entire stock on the hordes of kids roaming the central plaza with their parents. These kids had gone Method; some of them could barely walk for trailing gauze. I couldn't do anything but laugh--at them, at my confusion, at the image of grabbing a spare end and spinning someone like a top. I hope that the kids keep up the effort. And these days I bring my own first aid kit when I ride.

Happy Halloween!

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.

Training pays off

Or so I am assured it eventually will, but after an hour of arguing with Doc about whether he was going to be allowed to run around like a mad thing or whether he should run at a more measured pace, I'm a bit disheartened. He's a sweet sweet horse, but he needs more speed work than the barn affords such a calm fellow, so he takes advantage of chances to run. Better he do it with me on his back than some terrified moppet, since I not-so-secretly get a kick out of how much he's helped improve my seat and ability to relax at faster gaits. But still, I was hoping to lay down some good foundations for the next western class, when we're supposed to run a pattern that tests your control of transitions from trot to canter. Our mutual taste for speedy work may have put paid to that idea for a while.

Here, however, is an example of what good training can do. Cutting is a rodeo sport derived from standard cowboy work, when you may need to cut individual cows out of a herd for doctoring or other herd maintenance. In competition, a rider cuts a cow out of the herd and is judged on how well the horse works on its own to keep the cow separated from its bovine fellows. A good rider with a well-trained partner will just sit calmly in the middle of the horse, letting it jink and dive to block the cow. In this video, the rider apparently fell off not long after pointing his horse at the cow he wanted. The horse clearly feels that that is just details, people, details. There's a cow to thwart! Yow.

Doctober

Mother Nature spent this week acting like someone who misplaced her appointment book and then had to scramble around catching up, all, "Oh, shit, it's supposed to be autumn, I totally overslept, damn damn damn." So the weather went from summery hot to crisply autumnal in about 20 minutes, without the benefit of rain (which, and oh God do I sound like my raised-in-an-epic-drought grandmother, we need). I love the crispy time of year, but did I mention being nervous about the horses when the mercury takes that kind of dive? I was nervous.

As if it weren't enough that we were facing frisky ponies, we also have a new teacher for the Western class, Teacherwoman Mk 1 having taken a job that will involve too much travel during the week for her to keep up a regular class schedule. Mk 2 is a very different woman, and her insistence that we use three-quarter rein rather than one-handed neck reining will take getting used to, but it sounds like she's going to be better about having plans for each class. God knows she made Thursday's hour a workout. We were down in the lower ring, where the wind and cold were making Doc see giant boogers in the woods (he had already dropped one rider that day, and a crashing sound in the trees sent him skittering, head high and nostrils flared, to the other side of the ring), and Mk 2 had us doing jog/lope transitions. The problem with that plan was that Doc, once he gets to speed up, doesn't always want to come back down right away. The idea was that we would do five strides of jog, three or four of lope, and back down, repeating it all for several turns around the ring and being sure not to cut corners, drift, get the wrong lead, jerk the reins, bounce in the saddle, or commit a multitude of other sins, any of which was quickly pointed out. By the end of my time on the rail, I was panting, but Doc was doing his transitions just as I'd asked rather than pitching headlong down the track. Quoth Mk 2, "Too many people at this barn think Western is about sitting back and looking cute. IT AIN'T." Yes ma'am. "Although it helps if you're cute to start off." Heh. The barn is planning an informal show in early November, so we're being urged to pull out our most cowboy clothes and make it look flashy. Maybe it's good thing that I haven't yet gotten the fringe trimmed off my chaps (me to Seesterperson on buying them: "Great, I'm the only person in the family with assless pants." Seesterperson: "That you know of").

There may finally be a new student joining our Western class, after years in which Sterling's mum and I were the only constants; one of the guys who works at the barn and has been riding English is interested in crossing disciplines. He's completely sweet and very good with the horses, which are points in his favor, but he's so young that I feel like a granny lady around him. It doesn't help that he's ridiculously polite to his elders, which is laudable in theory but turns out to be somewhat discomfiting in practice. I'll just have to make peace with that.

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.
  

Synchronicity

In our adolescence, in the brief five minutes between our death-or-glory sibling battles for Lebensraum, Seesterperson and I agreed on the genius of Margaret Cho. To this day, we quote her quoting her mother on heteronormativity Back Home versus in the Castro: "So many gay! Every country have the gay." Long pause. "But not in Korea!"

Or in Iran either. Hm, so the Axis of Evil (or at least their near neighbors) has achieved the stated goal of the GOP's xenophobic bottom-feeding base? For anyone in the reality-based community, that's 100% unsurprising. But hearing that news on the same day that a straight-faced "senior administration official" (gotta be Cheney, yeah? what with the rest scuttling for the hawsers) accuses Obama of insufficient intellectual rigor to be Prez, and I start to wonder who the hell is taking the piss here. (To all of you who reflexively said, "Larry Craig," shame on you; clearly "David Vitter" is the correct answer.)

But I didn't have to overload the weary indignation circuits, because Doc time is an automatic mood recharger, excellent for the mental health. At this time of year, every drive over to the barn is a race with sunset, and after this week I think the dark will win. We got out for a little trail time under a glowing gibbous moon, then came back in the hazy deer-infested twilight for ring work. According to barn scuttlebutt, a masseuse came in to work with some of the ponies this weekend, and Doc enjoyed some extra attention in his hamstrings. That might account for the fact that he was way, WAY up once we started working on trot and canter stuff in the ring. No bucking or other egregious misbehavior, but he was emphatic enough about fast go fast that I wished I had put a saddle on him after all. To quote the cartoon character, "C'mon, horsie, whoaaaa!" The webbing loop on the front of a bareback pad is pathetically insufficient for fine work. I forgive him for oh me achin' hip, but next time will definitely involve stirrups, because there are only so many times a body wants to go sliding sideways at speed. I think I will go lie down.