...and Nervous Nellie

This is an old photo btw

Can I eat my words please?  Nervous Nelly was back with a vengeance yesterday at our lesson in Sa Fita.  My instructor over there had asked me to wear spurs for yesterday's lesson and boy am I glad I decided to ignore him.  He had never seen her like this and was completely blown away, and I had to keep reassuring him that she's just like that every now and then.  Spooks all over the arena, gallops I could just barely get under control, freaking out at every sound or movement, rodeo bucks... it was Spooky Starbuck's Greatest Hits and then some.

But... (and you know me, there's always a but) it ended up being a very positive session for us.

After warming up, I wanted to keep doing some halt / walk / trot transitions in the "spooky spots" until she calmed down, but after a few minutes my instructor set up a jump and told me to take her over it.  I was pretty dubious about the wisdom of this but figured I could deal with any contingencies and so we went for it.  And to my surprise, she did fine -  there were still the same spooks, stampedes and bucks that I was getting in trot and even walk, but they didn't make any difference in our ability to take the jumps.  We went up and up to about 2 1/2 feet and then added some scary plywood panels painted with red and black spirals to make the obstacle look like a psychadelic, twilight zone wall.  She dodged it the first time, which both me and my instructor were expecting, but then I took her back around at a trot and after a little zig-zagging hesitation she jumped it.

So I learned two really important things yesterday which I think will really serve us both in the future, especially in stressful situations like a show or a particularly gnarly moment during a trail ride.  1.- Even though she's spooky and freaking out and barely under control, she still IS in fact under control, and 2.- Giving her a job to do, even a high adrenaline job like jumping doesn't make it worse, it makes it better.

Boring Bess

If you're one of the two to three people who read this blog regularly, you may recall that a while back I was a little worried about Starbuck's growing tendency to run off with me after a spook, ignoring all rein aids.  And you may also recall me saying that hopefully in a few weeks I'd be worrying about something else altogether.  Well, boy was I not wrong on that one.  And what, you may ask, am I worried about now?  Surprisingly enough (or not), our new problem is too much woah, not enough go.

Now I'm not sure whether this back-and-forth stuff is common to all mares, or all young horses, or all horses in general, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Starbuck and I are given to extremes.  Even my farrier the other day told me "I just don't understand - sometimes it's like she's an old lesson nag who's been getting shod for decades, then the next time I come out she just can't stand still".  And the same is true for our day-to-day rides - I never know what I'm gonna get.  One day she's Boring Bess, the next she's Nervous Nell.  There are trends, however, and her latest trend is way more in the Boring Bess direction.

Ever since my dressage lesson with my friend José I've been working on riding Starbuck with more rein contact.  Note that I'm in no way talking about pulling on her mouth or forcing her to bend her neck or even asking for flexion of the poll.  I'm simply talking about firm, steady yet flexible contact still allowing her to carry her head however and wherever she wants to.  But if she had a tendency to be sluggish using no rein contact at all, now she's downright Jabba-the-Huttish.  "More leg!", my friend José said in our dressage lesson.  "More leg!", Marina tells me every time I ride with her.  "More leg!", instructs Toni over at Sa Fita.  And I dutifully apply more leg, more leg, ever more leg...  Until I noticed grooming her the other day that she actually has spots on her side where her hair's worn down from me kicking and nudging her so often.  So "More leg"?  I don't think it's that simple.

I think the problem is not how much leg I'm giving her, but how often I'm giving it to her.  After reading around the internet for a while, I'm pretty much convinced that my problem is that I never let up.  And hey, if you keep getting kicked no matter what you do, sooner or later you'll stop trying so hard.  So I made a vow the other day - even though I know she won't respond to a squeeze of my calves, ALWAYS start my leg aid with only just that.  And then simply escalate until she does respond.  And then STOP - no more leg until she slows down noticeably.  No more squeezing each time I post, no more nudging with each stride just to get a decent walk.  And never, NEVER use the crop without using my leg first (sometimes I use them interchangeably).

So does this sound like basic riding skills that everyone should have, and that no one without them should ever attempt to start their own horse?  If so, you're probably right, and I make no excuses for myself except that I'm willing to change.

Sa Fita

A couple of months ago I bought a Groupon for classes at the stable down the road from mine with the idea of giving Starbuck and I some new experiences and perspectives on our progress.  I've been busy getting my Spanish driver's licence (yep, I even had to take lessons all over again) so I didn't start right away, but I finally passed my driving test and as a reward called up to see when I could have my first lesson.  So this past Sunday at 10:45 a.m. Starbuck and I set out for Club Hípico Sa Fita with butterflies in our stomachs and determination in our hearts for our first ever time riding at another stable.

I had a hangover, having had dinner at a friend's house where liberal amounts of amaretto were ingested with dessert, and had only slept about 5 hours (the irresponsability of this didn't occur to me until the morning after) and on top of everything it was even more blustery than usual, with enough wind to have to hold the numnah on her back until I got the saddle on top.  So I was really skeptical of how things would go.  But of course as my dad has commented more than once, when I have relaxed expectations often Starbuck performs much better than I expect her to, and this occasion was no exception.

On the walk over (it's about a third of a mile) she gave a little spook at some styrofoam panels the neighbors had put up to reinforce their fencing (classy!) which were creaking in the wind, and the last 300 yards were a little stop-snort-start-y.  Aside from that she behaved really well, with very little prancing and no rearing or other craziness, walking through puddles and giving the bikes, cars and roadside goats, chickens and dogs little more than a passing glance.

I used the rope halter and short longe line to lead her over, so when we got to the stable (right on time!) I took advantage of that to longe her a little bit in their arena, especially by the places she seemed worried about.  After about five minutes or so of that, I switched out the halter for her bridle, mounted up and started exploring their ring.  It's maybe 50 x 35 meters or a little less and has lots of brightly painted, interesting obstacles set up in different formations - there are some basic "traditional" jumps, some plastic traffic barriers, cavaletti stands, painted panels to keep the horse from dodging a jump sideways, some plastic "water obstacles", traffic cones... you get the picture.  There's also a big puddle in one corner thanks to the recent rains, and in the other corner right outside the arena there's a little wooden gazebo type thing with coke and snack machines, which makes creaking and cracking noises.  There's also a kind of warehouse on the far side of the arena where people load things into trucks noisily and then drive the trucks off.  She was a little jumpy with both the gazebo as well as with the trucks, but seemed to realize that we were there to work and got right into it.

My instructor is a young guy - maybe 20 years old - named Toni who obviously has lots of experience jumping but gave a few "quick fix" suggestions which raised some red flags for me - like using side reins while jumping so Starbuck would be more collected.   But he ended up giving me some really great advice about my posture and specifically about improving my release of the reins when Starbuck moves her head forward to jump, as well as pointing out that I could praise her more often.  And he gave me lots of compliments on how well muscled Starbuck is for her age, and how well behaved, etc... so of course I ended up absolutely loving him.  After a few minutes of walk and trot weaving in and out of the obstacles and getting closer and closer to the scary stuff, we did a couple of laps in canter to warm up and started jumping.  We started with a little cross-rails obstacle which he quickly changed to a vertical and then we just started going up and up... after 6 or 7 jumps to the left I could tell Starbuck was starting to get worn out (and me too!) and asked him if we could change to the other direction.

So we turned around, lowered the jump again, and did the same thing heading right.  At one point when it was pretty high, she struck the bars with her hind legs.  On the second try, she struck again but we just made the circle again with a little more energy, went into the jump superstraight and jumped the same height again and she cleared it nicely.  Since she had done so well and I wanted to make it very clear that she had done the right thing by giving her the best reward I can think of (stopping work), I told him that as far as I was concerned we were good to go on the jumping.  "OK", he said, "by the way, do you know how high that is?"  It was 95 centimeters - in other words three feet!  I'm fairly sure we've never jumped that high before, and it wasn't even a big deal until I knew about it.  So I gave Starbuck lots of scratching on her withers and neck which she loves since she's so itchy, cooled down and walked her back home with the biggest smile on my face in years.

I'm going to cut this off soon since I could probably keep writing about it for ages with how elated I am at this demonstration of our progress, but I just want to add a note that on Monday we had another lesson which is where the videos are from - she was obviously a little tired and we ended up hesitating a little before some of the jumps which we'll have to work on, but we did a course of 6 jumps at 80 cm height, twice!  The videos are from the end of the lesson when my friends Virginia and Belén came by to give us their support.  And to cool down we went for a walk in a huge field they have behind their stable with no other horses, and aside from a spook when a partridge burst out of the brush like 6 feet away from us she was very calm and centered.  It really felt like she was looking to me for reassurance that this was all OK, and getting it.

What a good little mare I have!