Through the wonders of technology and social networking sites, I have been reconnecting with some of the people I knew during my exchange year in Norway. Fun, and I have found I can still read and understand Norwegian, albeit quite slowly. Remembering the people I knew naturally led me to think of the horses I rode while I was there. Actually, my first months in Norway marked the first time in my life I ever went more than a few days (or maybe weeks in the coldest part of winter) without riding. While I was living with the first of my two host families, there were a few horses in the neighborhood – not riding horses but trotters, by far the most popular and commonly found horses in that area. Friday evening at the travbane (trotting track) was a popular family outing for many.

I didn’t have the opportunity to ride until spring, when I moved to a farm with my second host family. The neighboring farmer found out I had ridden at home and asked whether I would be interested in exercising his mare, a retired Standardbred who had been imported from the United States (which made her quite the big deal.) Sure, I said I would try her out. When? Ah, well, there was a little problem. She was at another farm, just a couple of miles away, and would have to be fetched home. Okay, let me know when she gets here. Well, just another little problem. The horse trailer had been lent out and wasn’t due back for a while. Maybe it would be best if I just rode her home.

I had some reservations about that, thinking that riding along a road wasn’t necessarily the place where I wanted to get acquainted with a new horse. But, in my youth and fearlessness, I agreed. So one day after school we loaded up an English saddle and a bridle and drove to meet the mare, Miss Go. On the way the neighbor’s son told me she had been sent where she was to be get back into shape for eventual breeding, but that the person who was supposed to ride her didn’t get along with her. Oh, great. And just what did that mean? What exactly had I gotten myself in for?

I found out pretty quickly after we had the rather overweight bay mare saddled and I headed her toward home. Belying her name, she would not go. No way. No how. Every time I would ask her to move off forward, she would either balk or back up. I guess I know why the other rider hadn’t gotten along with her. Stubborn mare. Bad luck for her that I had owned and retrained the queen of all stubborn mares when I was 12. So, Miss Go, I do know this game. Meanwhile, her owners had blithely driven away to await her homecoming. Hmmm. What to do? I could get off and lead her home, but I had very little desire to walk that far. Plus, it had been pretty soundly drummed into my head as a kid that if you get off without making the horse mind, the horse has won and you have created yourself a problem for another day. (Not necessarily my philosophy today …)

So, if the mare wanted to back, we would back. All the way home, if need be. Which wasn’t a speedy trek, as you might imagine. Her owners got concerned when we didn’t show up in good time and did come looking for me. And laughed. And drove away again. It seems to me now that it took a couple of hours to get the mare back to her home stable. But after that, I went many fun and happy miles (forward!) on her without any problems. I thought at the time that she just needed to find someone more stubborn than she was. I earned her respect that first day and then we had a great time riding the forest trails. I adjusted to strange rocking-and-rolling of the Standardbred trot and even taught her to canter in relatively civilized fashion.

Later I was asked to ride Miss Go’s offspring, a two-year-old gelding, to get him legged up before he went to the track to start his training in the fall. Walking and trotting only, though; canter absolutely forbidden. His name was Ami and I remember him as a sweet and biddable youngster with none of his dam’s penchant for testing a rider. I did see him a few times as he started his training in the sulky, but never saw him race.

Those two horses gave me good insight into the “correct” movement of the breed that has come in handy with the few other Standardbreds I have encountered over the years. Tusen takk, Miss Go and Ami!

I recently attended a horse event in a very, very nice area of Phoenix at a very, very high-dollar facility and experienced some very, very appalling behavior by an alleged professional adult person who is a trainer there. Even weeks later, I’m still stunned by the way this “man” behaved.

It all started off well. The place was beautiful and full of high-quality horses. The accommodations for our horses were quite good and the barn staff was friendly and extremely helpful. The boarders in the barn where our horses were housed were welcoming, initiating conversation and generally being super nice. Great. And then came the downside.

Although we were told we would have “half” the arena to ride in, we kept being warned that “the reiners have the right of way.” Clearly that was the party line on the property; I asked one of the boarders who was also riding in the clinic why that point was made so many times. “Surely they wouldn’t ride right through a clinic or deliberately get in someone’s way, right?” The answer was a wry smile and a repeat of the mantra: “the reiners have the right of way.”  Hmmm.

Well, our “half’ of the arena turned out to be a very tiny corner, which had the benefit of an open, raised area where chairs could be placed for the auditors. For some reason, that remote corner, farthest from the gate, seemed to be a magnet for one “reiner” (not multiple reiners) who was a complete and utter jackass. Apparently his idea of necessary and appropriate training and arena etiquette included the following activities:

• Riding along the rail into our little corner, getting between the auditors and the clinician so that everyone photographing or videotaping ended up with his head bobbing through the shots. One day he spent the best part of two hours galloping one horse through that area over and over and over with no regard for the clinician or the riders. Rude, annoying, unsafe.
• Running at speed from the far end of the arena into a space just outside our little circle (except when it encroached into the space) and sliding his horse over and over and over. He could just as easily have moved over and slid into an area closer to the other corner, or chosen to go width-ways and stay out of our space completely. At one point, he slid his horse to a stop about 20 feet from our clinician. Rude, inappropriate, unsafe.
• Doing obviously deliberate “fly-bys” of the clinic riders as they were trying to warm up and cool down their horses outside the clinic area so as not to interfere with their fellow riders. At one point he stopped his horse right off my left flank and then yee-hawed to a gallop so close to me that if I’d had the presence of mind to stick out my elbow I could easily have knocked him off his horse. In any discipline, that’s a deliberate attempt to get someone dumped. I’ve done it myself, but not since I was about 10. Rude, immature, unsafe. I wonder what his liability insurance carrier (or that of the owner of the multi-million-dollar facility) would think of the risk he represents?

To make matters worse, he seems to be teaching his young students to be just as awful as he is. The second day of the clinic, the arena emptied out completely in the afternoon with the exception of the clinic riders, the jerk and two of his students, both young girls. They had the entire rest of the 150 x 300 arena in which to work, but he kept sending them right into our little corner. During my lesson, I was riding a 20- to 30-meter circle around the clinician and these girls kept getting in front of me. My horse had settled in by then and didn’t care, so I just held my line and made them move. One of the girls had the good grace to look a little sheepish, but the other had a nasty little sneer. Trainer’s pet, no doubt. Appalling, horrifying, unsafe. And what are their parents thinking?!

I don’t know whether this guy thought he was intimidating the clinician in breeches or showing off for the women auditors and riders. But he should have noticed that the very poised and confident young man from Vienna wasn’t the slightest bit perturbed by or even vaguely interested in his antics. And someone really should tell him that even women who don’t do reining (or haven’t done it in years, but used to!) can tell bad riding at a glance and are not impressed by it.

Sitting so far to the left that your poor horse nearly runs into the wall every time you go careening around the corner is not impressive. Dozens of crooked stops during which you are whacking your horse between the ears with a big stick are not impressive. Spins where the hindquarters end up moving faster than the front are not impressive. A young student with a horse cranked down in drawreins and a curb bit is not impressive. Oh, and I believe the conventional wisdom among real reiners is that a horse only has so many spins and so many slides in him, and when they’re used up the horse is no longer competitive. This guy seemed to be doing his best to use up his horses as fast as possible. Perhaps the conventional wisdom is different in his specialty, Arabian reining.

Frankly, all he did was make a complete fool of himself, make the facility that was apparently catering to him seem poorly and unsafely managed and spark a spirited debate among the participants about what specific physical inadequacy he might be compensating for. Hmmm … what do you think?!

For years, horsewomen I like and respect have been telling me my teaching approach is very “classical.” I like that notion, because I have always been more attracted to the baroque than any other equestrian tradition. But after spending a weekend watching and listening to clinician Florian Zimmermann, a bereiter at the Spanish Riding School, I guess they must be right.

Those three days were a breath of fresh air for me as a teacher and a rider. The methods used and theories presented just made sense to me, right down to my core. Much of it fit into what I already do with my horses and my clients, but with some variations that I will enjoy exploring. Still more showed me that I have gotten a bit lazy in my own riding and in what I ask of my own horses, so it was inspiration to work harder. But in general it was very restful and familiar and clear. I never experienced a single moment when I didn’t understand what the clinician was trying to accomplish or why he was asking what he was of horse and rider.

Watching Florian ride was like listening in to a very respectful and entirely focused conversation between two intelligent beings working together to solve a problem. He exuded calm and, of course, his seat and hands were impeccable, but he also was clearly in charge, the undisputed leader in the dance by mutual consent, which was sometimes challenged but was never enforced with, well, force. The horses interjected their own “opinions,” and suggested courses of action that were quietly shaped and guided, never rejected or punished. The message stayed consistent, the energy stayed consistent and I could see the horses visibly relax, breathe and gain confidence.

The same was true for the riders, who also visibly benefited from his calm but uncompromising approach. The horse would fall out of the gait. “It doesn’t matter. Do it again.” The rider would lean forward and drop the horse in a transition. “It doesn’t matter. Do it again.” The extremely rude reining guy (more on him later) or his students would blunder right into the rider’s path and break her concentration. “It doesn’t matter. Do it again.” All the while he was quietly pushing each rider to pay attention to every transition, to ride every step, not even to slump in the saddle when we were walking on a long rein or resting and listening to critique and instructions. An interesting combination of aiming to make every movement as good as it could be, but not getting hung up on any individual failure. Stay in the present. Get on with it and do it better the next time.

Florian talked a lot about “showing the horse” what to do, never about “making” the horse do anything. He emphasized the basics – straightness and throughness and straightness again. Transitions, transitions, transitions. Help the horse do what you want, and when he does something else, no big deal. Show him again. Pet him and tell him when he does well. The single most uttered word of the weekend was “connection,” which was presented as the absolute and necessary basis for everything else. Those of you who know me and have worked with me or heard me teach know that is a word I use again and again; it is the overarching goal of everything I do with horses.

I generally glean some useful bit of information from every clinician I see, but the sorting out process always seems to include some squinched-up-forehead-incomprehension time and some outright winces when horses and their riders are asked to do things in ways I know are either biomechanically impossible or that seem unnecessarily harsh to me. I inevitably come home with a body sore from “feeling” tightness and bracing and pain from the horses. This time I came home relaxed and certain that my theory is sound even if my execution is less consistent than I would like. No aches and pains, only the inspiration to keep exploring and working. Whew.

For much of my life there has been a “there but for the grace” person in my world, someone whose goodness and determination in the face of adversity could inspire me and provide some healthy perspective in my own tough times, great and small. And this influential person was never just a generic “starving people” in some third-world country, but a real, live person whose example jolted me a bit when I was feeling sorry for myself or whining about my life or just generally not doing my best.

For the past few months, this role has been played by a horse, an Appaloosa gelding named Chester. At 24, he was retired from a long and happy career as a trail horse, crippled by founder so bad that one of his front hooves looked like it had been twisted a quarter turn. Every time I interacted with this horse I marveled at his spirit, his calm acceptance of his lot in life and his unwavering good humor. Was he in pain every day? Absolutely. Did that stop him from enjoying his life. No way.

He was always bright eyed and inquisitive, interested in everything going on in the barn and, most of all, he was  very, very sweet. I got into the habit of dropping by for a visit most days I was at the barn, and I always got a happy, eager greeting. If he was lying down, which he did quite often to take the weight off those feet, he would roll to sternal position and reach out his nose to greet me. If he was standing, he wouldn’t usually walk to me, but he always made some gesture – a shift of weight or turn of the head to face me right on – to draw me to him.

For a horse who could barely move, he engaged his world quite fully and he certainly didn’t spend a single moment feeling sorry for himself. He’d stand in the corner of his run and play games through the fence with his neighbor, sometimes nuzzling or just touching noses and then a few minutes later engaging in mock battle, with ears back and snaky neck and all manner of threats. He loved his food and waited just as eagerly as all the others for his lunchtime pellets and supplements. He would stretch out flat on his side in the sun, soaking up the warmth while giving his feet a rest and enjoying the extra-fluffy shavings his owner bought to keep him from rubbing sores on his bony prominences.

And even though he could no longer do the job he had loved, carrying his human on miles and miles of trails, he still had plenty to contribute. The afternoon I met Chester and his owner, she had him outside the barn grazing and as I passed back and forth it became obvious she was upset about something. I made some banal comment about the horse enjoying the luxury of grass in the desert, introduced myself and talked with her long enough to find out that she was grieving the loss of a beloved pet dog and dealing with the stress of a husband deployed overseas. So where did she go for comfort? To her horse, of course.

I was also party to a small miracle, initiated and brilliantly executed by Chester, that drew out a young girl who had been traumatized by some awful, insensitive treatment by a teacher. She had withdrawn from the activities she once loved and refused to engage with any new people. But Chester, while standing innocently getting a massage, pulled her right out of that shell and got her involved in the massage process. She turned out to be a model bodywork student – bright, curious and with a talent for “feel.”

Anyone who knew Chester realized he wasn’t going to get better; in fact, he was steadily failing physically in spite of his bright spirit. His vet had recommended he be put down before the stress of summer heat took its toll, and his owner was slowly resigning herself to that plan. But suddenly last week the tendons in the worst of his forelegs started to shorten, causing him to knuckle over pretty severely in the fetlock. Nothing was going to fix that, and the risk of a traumatic injury was just too great. (Here’s where all us horse people cringe a little, imagining the painful mess that leg could become pretty easily.) So, Chester’s friend and caretaker of 22 years made the decision to end his pain, and he died very peacefully after a day of treats and loving attention and tearful good-byes from his many friends.

Rest well Chester, and thank you for cheering me up on many sad days. I’ll miss your bright eyes and sweet presence.

Horse people can be so impatient. They want their skills and their horses’ training to progress on a predetermined schedule, often based on a competition calendar or a chronological list of some kind.

This is a mindset I used to endorse, but which now just makes me smile. (Sometimes grimace, sometimes chuckle.) Why? Because I know that developing a physical, mental and emotional partnership with a horse is a process, not an event. You can’t just complete a set number of lessons or schooling sessions or shows and then declare that you are “there,” that you are now an accomplished horseman or horsewoman.

You can try, of course, but I’m betting your horse will have something to say about your personal milestone. And it might just not be what you want to hear.

When I ran a traditional lesson and training barn years ago, prospective clients almost invariably asked during our first conversation, “How long will it take before I can jump?” That usually came after they had told me at length how many lessons they had taken with which trainer or how many times they’d been on a dude-string trail ride or some such. At first I made the mistake of trying to give them an estimate based on what they had told me about their past experience. (This was before I learned that almost everyone inflates his or her experience at first!)

After I wised up, my standard answer was, “Anything from six lessons to six years.” That tended to be followed by a moment of mutual silence, which I generally followed with a laugh and the statement that although I was joking, I was also serious. This led to an explanation that every rider and every horse progresses at a different rate, and that my focus was on teaching good basic skills to keep both members of the partnership safe, sound and happy. The people who just wanted to run fast and jump high never called back. A good number of the sensible folk who actually wanted to learn to ride as well as they could showed up and generally did stay safe, sound and happy. Seemed like a fine business model to me, and it still does.

This approach does, however, present more of a challenge than you might think. Over the years a number of older riders, those lovely folks who take up riding in their 40s or 50s or even 60s, have lectured me about my firm insistence that they practice and master all the basic skills. One particularly prickly older gentleman got quite heated during a session in which I was focusing on improving his abysmal sitting trot despite his wish to lope circles at varying speeds. He informed me in no uncertain terms that at his age he didn’t have time to trot around and around until he was no longer bouncing on his poor horse’s back like a sack of potatoes. (Okay, my words, not his!) He was only interested in practicing the skills he needed to go work cattle. I was being unfair to him, wasting his precious riding time on things he didn’t like to do.

My response was that while I understood his sense of urgency, it wasn’t really relevant. The one who was putting up with his rotten seat was his horse, and she didn’t care how old he was. In order to work with her, instead of hindering and annoying her, there were certain things he needed to learn. And he couldn’t learn the advanced skills without mastering the basics any more than he would have been able to read classic literature without first learning the alphabet.  “See Spot Run” before “War and Peace.”

Your horse doesn’t care that a month from now there’s a show, a cattle drive, a group trail ride or your 50th birthday. All he knows is that today, in this moment, you and he need to come together – body, mind and energy – to build on what you learned yesterday and the day before and the day before. Learning is a progression – one thing leads to another leads to another. That’s true for horses and for humans.

And it’s not a straight line, either, no matter what some calendar or checklist might indicate. During the good times, it’s one step forward at a time. In challenging times, it’s one step forward, three steps back. It takes as long as it takes. And if you skip a step along the way? You might get away with it for a while, but I guarantee holes left in the basic skillset will come back to haunt both rider and horse one day.

Wow, while I’ve been focused elsewhere a lot of spam has accumulated in the ManeStream. So, if you’re in the market for Indonesian cigarettes or cialis or bootleg louis vuitton handbags, I can hook you up. On that note …

Looking to buy a horse? Here’s a website that will sell you one … or maybe not. This is so clearly a scam, from the language error on top of the very first page. Realizing that, you can relax and just enjoy the humor.

I especially enjoyed the horse care tips. Seems young horse owners are required to experience horse grooming lesions as part of their education. Hmmm. I once pulled the manes of a dozen half-wild yearling thoroughbreds by hand all in one day, and I did indeed experience some lesions. Ouch! But I don’t recommend that sort of experience as a general rite of passage for my young clients.

And in the “Testimonies,” a satisfied customer writes “delivery was prompt and assembly was a snap.” Cool. Someone has figured out how to disassemble a horse for easy delivery. I wonder how many of those priority-mail flat-rate boxes it takes to ship the average 16-hand horse? Gotta be cheaper than loading one in a trailer and driving cross-country. And just think how that opens up the international markets!

I’m not sure which is the more disturbing question: who would put up a site like this or who in his right mind would buy a horse from a site like this. The fact that the first happened must mean the second also occurs, otherwise why do it? Yikes.

Take the time
in this busy season
to hang out
with family
and friends,
to relax, recharge
and prepare
for a new year
filled with
infinite promise.

Happy Holidays!

I was in Ace Hardware today, trolling the housewares department for gifts for a friend, and was witness to three instances when men came in to return Christmas lights and decorations. The explanations were all the same, some version of “she didn’t like these.” What I found so interesting was the obvious fact that none of the men seemed upset or angry to have been sent on this errand. They didn’t act like they felt inconvenienced or picked on. They laughed and joked with the cashier while explaining and it seemed when I thought about it later that I could even hear in their voices the underlying fondness they had for their wives. One guy said he had been there twice already today, taking home different things on approval. He talked about this calmly, smiling and in quite good humor.

With a recent change in my living situation on my mind, I couldn’t help thinking how nice it was that these guys seemed to have made peace with the fact that their wives cared way more than they did what the holiday display looked like. It was just part of their lives and not cause for a single ruffled feather. It wasn’t about them, even though it involved them. Nary a comment about “the old ball and chain,” even. Mind you, these men were all older, gray-haired and probably retired, because they were free to run errands for their wives in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

I left the store with a good feeling, sort of heartwarming and hopeful. If I can keep working and working on being more patient and giving and flexible, I should be able to face whatever comes up in my life with that same calm good humor. How nice.

Afterward, as I drove home, I was thinking that some of the conflict between the sexes stems from the very different pressures our culture brings to bear on each. I know for a fact that the way I prioritize my time and the things that cause me to feel vaguely (or very) inadequate are at least in part programmed by the household and culture I grew up in. I mean, my mom still wipes the tops of all the stinking door sills every time she cleans. “It doesn’t take very long,” is her stock statement about it.

I was raised with the ‘50s housewife as the paragon to emulate, and I have never, ever managed to meet that standard. The sane part of my brain doesn’t even want to. But it’s always there … the little voice that says “the vents need dusting” and “the windows need washing” and “the baseboards are covered with lint” and, and, and. Being the perfect cook and cleaner and decorator and laundress and groundskeeper and gardener is exhausting, especially when we also have to go out and be successful businesswomen. It’s too much for one person to do alone, to run a “proper” household and still have time for frivolities like sleep, fun, relaxation. I don’t think we necessarily even know who we’re trying to please anymore, but we still keep at it, day in and day out.

It was such a relief today to imagine having a partner who will pitch in and help lift some of the burden of chores, someone to cheerfully run to the hardware store to return the “ugly” lights. Sigh …

One of the exercises I focused on when riding Ichobod recently involved sending him straight forward into pretty strong left-rein contact to get him connected enough on that side to release and stretch into my hand. Compress, compress, compress, loading the spring by lifting his back and asking him to push from behind into a firm hand. Then the magic connection happens and that loaded spring expands into an exquisitely balanced, elongated, elastic spine. It was the same exercise I coached a student through recently on her lovely Azteca mare, who is finally supple enough to actually start to telescope her heretofore stubby neck. And the student has developed enough feel and a stable enough seat to load the spring and soften just right when that release happens. Contact and connection in that fascinating and frustrating balancing act.

When I was done with my ride and cooling out, I got to thinking what a paradox correct riding presents. I know from my own journey of learning and from working with students in many disciplines how many of the basic skills are completely counterintuitive. How nuts must it seem to novice riders that they have to compress in order to lengthen? Maybe if they are students of muscle physiology, it’s completely understandable. But for the rest of is, it was hard to make that connection – mentally and physically.

Let’s see, what other paradoxes can we present? How about the way bending and lateral work are so imperative in creating straightness. Or how you need to shift the horse’s weight back in order to send him forward in balance? Geez, no wonder it takes so long to learn to ride. I’ve been at it for (don’t tell anyone!) 42 years, and I feel like I’m just starting to have a meaningful and useful understanding of the physical process in the horse and the human.

Along the way I’ve had a whole string of “ah, ha!” moments, some of which I remember vividly even decades later. One of those was the day a very hard-working dressage clinician (who had bravely agreed to teach a bunch of western riders!) instilled in me the importance and correct application of the outside rein. What? I have to keep my outside rein solid, solid, solid to pursuade my chunky quarter horse mare to soften and stretch into my inside rein? Mind-blowing stuff to someone who had pretty much only ridden made horses that neck-reined with micro-pressure.

So, what was your biggest counter-intuitive challenge – the riding or groundwork concept that made (or still makes!) your brain feel like it’s twisting inside out when you apply it?