Strength of Conviction

One of the managers at my work the other day said something offhand that was so wise, and had such a visceral impact on me, that I’ve been thinking about it ever since. He said “just because you’ve compromised doesn’t mean you’ve lost your convictions.” At first glance, this seems a rather obvious statement. But if you dig a little deeper, it’s profound.

The conversation started with a discussion of EPA regulation and the impact it has on our industry. It morphed into a discussion of the type of people working at the EPA and the reason it has a public relations problem. (Disclaimer: I have a Masters of Environmental Science from UCSB, and have publicly hugged trees in the past.) Many of the people hired at the EPA have strongly-held convictions. Unwilling to start in a place of mutual dissatisfaction and work in incremental steps toward a goal, they expect bad things to stop happening now. This is the same idealism espoused by college students and politicians everywhere.

I graduated grad school convinced I wanted to work in Corporate Social Responsibility, making corporations more environmentally sustainable. If someone offered me that job now, I probably would not take it. I very quickly followed the stereotypical path of idealist college student/grad student to jaded corporate worker. Sure, anthropogenic climate change is real, but I don’t want to spend my time trying to convince people to flee a burning house. They can save themselves, sheesh! Besides, I can acknowledge the economic reality of changing our infrastructure to actually address the problem, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation (what I don’t understand is the media’s obsession with finding another side to every story, even if there isn’t one, and the self-important individuals who think to eschew years of research, schooling, and impartial scientific analysis for their opinion of how the world should be). The reason for this cynicism is twofold: conviction in the face of apathy is difficult, and I understand the arguments behind the points of view in opposition to my own. The thought process continues, if I understand the other side’s point and am willing to compromise my own opinion, and the other side won’t help work toward my goal, why even bother? At that point, I wonder if I care about anything, then descend into an emo spiral until I’m eating tuna in ennui with Henri the Cat.

As the manager at work pointed out, this is a juvenile reaction and a stupid fear. You can compromise your opinion with losing it. You know you’ve reached a true compromise when nobody is happy.

Do you want your goal, and want it now? Or are you willing to do the hard work of working toward a conviction in reality, beset with doubts and frustrations? Look, it’s easy to walk into Mordor if you are absolutely sure the ring must be thrown in the fire, and all your friends are backing you. The path is clear, even if it is difficult. But life is not Les Miserables. In reality, LeMarc isn’t 100% sure a barricade is the way to go. I sure as hell hear the people sing, but they are really off-tune and I don’t think they’ve agreed on a song. (Besides, isn’t it only Siths that speak in absolutes?)

So what is my trite point here?

1.      @Politicians. Just stop the idealist posturing and fix the fiscal cliff already. Taking a tough stance in negotiations is great; failing to reach an agreement is unacceptable. I promise I won’t hold compromise against you.

2.      @Planet. I think I discovered I still care about saving the world via my career. Hang in there.

3.      @Me. As usual, please try and be more patient in the training of Surya. Just because you have the goal of eventing perfection and the willingness to work to get there doesn’t mean the path is obvious and easy.

P.S. Surya and I had an AMAZING dressage lesson on Tuesday. My trainer confused me with the horse and said “Good girl Alex” as we were trotting around. I guess our collapse was actually deconstructionism. My trainer told me that the usual training pattern is rapid improvement, a period of plateau, and then, while the effort may not be visible, you become good enough to start reaching for the next level. At this point, things fall apart. However, suddenly, when you’ve put it back together, you are three times better than you were before the humpty-dumpty. So here’s to hoping the next dressagexplosion comes soon!

Weighty Thoughts

Newton’s Third Law (revised):

“For every half halt there must be equal or greater leg.”

My Awesome Rider Friend coined this axiom a while ago, but it’s been especially applicable the last two weeks. Surya and I spent the time after Show #2 building a pretty picture, which culminated in Show #3. Then, over the course of three lessons, we took everything apart, scattered the pieces around, and I threw a tantrum in my mind (and okay, out loud a bit) about how I sucked as a rider and our schooling was incorrect.

INCORRECT!

It started during a dressage lesson, two days after the show. In working on getting Surya more supple and in steadier contact with the bridle, my trainer gave me a very simple instruction while we were trotting to the left on a 20-meter circle. “Stop using an indirect inside rein. Use an opening rein.” Surya immediately turned left into the circle. I opened the right rein, brought the left rein back to her neck, and nudged her over with my left leg. This was not the response my trainer was looking for, from me or Surya, and not the reaction I was expecting from Surya. I strengthened the pressure from my inside leg and opened the inside rein a little. She braced against my leg, curved her body to the right, and decreased the radius of the circle. My immediate reaction was to use an indirect inside rein to get her “back on the bit” and on the correct size circle. And that was when it all fell apart and we realized that the pretty picture I was working on was smoke and mirrors.

I knew for a while that Surya tended to lean on the inside rein, indicating that she was falling in on her inside shoulder. But this was not the true problem. The true problem is that she was never really submitting, never bending around my inside leg. Rather, I was using an indirect rein to bend her poll while she braced against the inside leg and rein. I exaggerate slightly. If the problem was obvious, my trainer would have stopped us long ago. We were going well enough to have adjustability, steering, and contact in the trot and canter. My trainer told me a few months ago to stop using a big (emphasis on “big”) opening rein until we gained control over Surya’s hindquarters and shoulders. Surya now travels straight, but I over-interpreted the ban on opening rein and instead developed an indirect rein addiction. The result was Surya and me drawing circles of decreasing diameter while she accelerated in stress. My trainer put an immediate and absolute moratorium on indirect reins, and proceeded to spend the rest of my lesson telling me, repeatedly, as I needed constant reminding, to open the inside rein and use my inside leg. It did not go well.

As in half halts, the legs are more important than the hands. The impulsion, direction, and bend must come from the legs through to the hands. Laugh at my cluelessness if you want, but I finally understood what the hell people mean by that. The reins are used to define the direction of the bend, to increase submission, as backup to the leg, and as an emergency break. If the reins are the main (mane) event, you are riding from the front of the horse. As my ARF recently discovered in her own riding struggles and said in exasperation, “In dressage, everything must go back!”

I was released from the lesson on Tuesday with the mandate to work on bending Surya around my inside leg with an opening rein. Ortogocryinacornerjustkidding. This went terribly for a few days, and then it was time for our jump lesson. Which, spoiler alert, went terribly.

After the success of the show, my trainer had us work on cantering jumps.

Here is a list of things I don’t do:

1.      Anticipate the jump and throw my upper body forward before Surya takes off. Hooray! (this is because I cannot see a distance to save my life, have no idea when she is going to leave the ground, and so just react when she jumps)

2.      See a distance. (see above)

3.      Hit her in the mouth upon landing.

4.      Help.

Here is a list of things I do:

1.      Steer. (I am actually pretty good at this)

2.      Swing my lower legs really far back, especially when going over a jump and landing. (this means I don’t land in my heels)

3.      Land on my hands, on Surya’s neck. (because my legs are still behind the jump and I therefore cannot use them)

4.      Suck at jumping.

According to both my trainer and my ARF, part of the reason my lower leg swings back is because the saddle I am using (an old one borrowed from ARF) is awful and it encourages me to do so. The other reason is because I am terrible at jumping.

Until this week, I didn’t even understand what I was supposed to be doing mechanically. I understood what was supposed to happen as we were going up, and then over, but I was completely lost on the down part. My trainer kept telling me to just sit up as the horse goes down, but for whatever reason that was still mystifying. Sit up?! When?! To what degree?! At what exact point in time?! Is my back supposed to be arched? Curved? Flat? Are my heels and lower leg in front of me? Should I look exactly the same as if the horse is flat, except titled at an angle?

My trainer finally gave me a concrete image that somehow made it all better last Tuesday. “Keep your upper body parallel to the horse’s neck.” And then I added Sally Swift’s maxim to keep your feet under your center of gravity. Obviously this doesn’t work if the horse doesn’t have good form or is jumping high enough to bascule beneath its knees, but Surya is such a Mary Sue at the height we are jumping that the imagery works. I resolved to imagine this happening in my head until it happens naturally IRL. So. There’s that.

Meanwhile, in dressage land, we had another lesson, and confirmed that we still were not getting it (biiiig surprise there). My trainer suggested that perhaps she should ride Surya to give her the right idea if the next lesson does not go well. At this point, after three lessons of disaster, I was feeling like dismounting and punching the wall. It was not so much that things were not going right. After all, we LITERALLY ran into a wall the first few times we tried to canter to the right. It was more the fact that our (my) inability to execute dressage movements felt like a regression. It’s easier to shrug about the jumping. I haven’t put in the work to be good at it yet. But I have higher expectations in dressage.

Oh well. Back to basics. After another rough couple of rides, I think Soy Bean (Surya’s nickname to her barn name when I am happy with her) and I are communicating better. I think things are starting to click again. She moved off my inside leg and bent with the inside rein instead of turning. But she still continually tried to turn to the inside, and I constantly struggled to keep my hips angled along the curve of the circle instead of twisting them to the outside to keep her from turning in. Something was missing. The key “aha!” moment came after I went back and re-read Philippe Karl’s book Twisted Truths of Modern Dressage. Despite the off-putting title, the book is a gem of discussion of riding and training technique. My favorite chapter discusses weight.

I spent many years as a child in ballet being yelled at by my mother to stand up straight, many years as an adult practicing yoga, and the last year being told by my trainer to sit up straight, tuck my pelvis under, and stop collapsing my right side. While I am certainly not perfect, I feel confident enough to say I do not slump in the saddle or lean significantly to one side or the other. However, I do weight one side more than the other.

Philippe Karl discusses how a person’s weight placement affects a horse. Imagine standing facing a wall with another person on your shoulders. The person on your shoulder leans to the right. Do you step left or right to stay underneath them? Right. You stepped into their weight. Now imagine you are holding a heavy suitcase in your right hand, and you are trying to go faster to get to your train. Do you skip with the left leg or the right leg? Left. It’s easier; there’s nothing inhibiting the movement. So, if I want Soy Bean to stay on the outside of a circle while bending to the inside, weight the outside slightly. This also gives her more freedom of movement on the inside.

While Karl does not specifically mention this (probably because he is way too awesome for such obvious instructions), I think it particularly important to note that I try not to weight one side or the other by leaning. Rather, imagine standing up very straight, then lifting up your left foot. Technically, you are now weighting the right even though you are still standing straight. I’m really not quite sure I’m doing this right, since Karl is too much of a horse riding god to dispense such minutiae, but I think I have the general idea.

When I started working on canter with Surya, I paid very close attention to my weight. Since we started consistently getting the correct lead, I let my attention lapse. After re-reading Karl’s snarky proselytizing, I paid attention to my weight again at the trot, and realized that I’d been weighting the inside! I was telling Soy Bean to turn in, and brace against the inside. I shifted my weight to the outside, and all of a sudden BAM! We were trotting in flexed steady bendy circles. Combined with opening reins and better leg yielding, I think I have something.

Things I am unsure of:

1.      If this success is repeatable, and as much of a break-through as I think it is. We will find out today in our lesson.

2.      If I’m actually weighting the outside, or merely am finally balanced and no longer weighting the inside. How can anyone tell? The difference is not exactly super visible.

3.      Apple versus pumpkin pie. If Ryan Gosling would just endorse one or the other…

The past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about the following: a horse is expected to bend into an inside leg, but travel away from an outside leg. The difference between the two is monumental, and key to my current struggle. I think in more advanced training it’s the same concept as the difference between a half-pass and a leg yield.

The Clipper Project

There are two things that Surya truly hates in this world: shots, and clippers. Due to patience, treats, and stubbornness bordering on pathological obsession (I literally dreamed about it a couple of weeks ago), she learned to accept the clippers.

I started by rubbing the clippers over her while feeding her treats. She did not care in any way. The snorting and eye rolling started when I ran the blade through her hair and she discovered it was a bit poky. However, after twenty minutes of bribery, she accepted the new development. The next day, I turned the clippers on and convinced her to not run away from the sound with apples (her absolute favorite treat). By the end of half an hour, she would get her nose as close as six inches for a bite of apple. I decided, however, that having her face them head-on would prove more difficult than sneaking them up on her. The next time I went to the barn, I rubbed the clippers on her, turned them on for less than a second, fed her treats, and continued touching her with them. Snorting occurred, but no running. At the very end of the session, I turned them on and shaved off a 1 inch square of hair! I turned them off immediately, fed her an entire apple, and returned her to her stall.

A couple of days later, I again went through the same process, and achieved some hair removal at the end for a total of five inches of clipped wonder on her left side. I managed to clip her belly (badly) and sides (badly) in time for the show two weeks ago. She looked like she had mange, but I didn’t care because I was so pleased with our progress!

Last weekend, my ARF and one of the women who works at the barn helped me finish the job. And by helped, I mean I held Surya’s head and fed her a constant supply of treats while my ARF did the work operating the clippers. Surya stood quietly, though shiftily, until about halfway through the process when she decided that having a continuous stream of horse treats and grain was not enough, but that she wanted the stockpile ALL AT ONCE IMMEDIATELY and tried to barrel past me to achieve those ends. We established that was not on the menu (literally, get it? hha) and resumed with our initial set-up.

Once we were done with everything except the underside of her neck, we paused to evaluate and discuss how to convince her to let us get that close to her head. Smart Barn Woman tired of the discussion, picked up the bucket of grain I had been taking handfuls from, and shoved it up Surya’s nose. She snorted in surprise as her snout up to just below her eyes was suddenly encased in plastic, but then dug in with gusto. Smart Barn Woman immediately lifted the bucket high into the air to expose Surya’s throat, and said “Go quick before she runs out of grain!” ARF quickly ran the clippers up her throat. Surya rolled her eyes to freak out at the clippers as her nose made chomping noises fuckfuckfuckwhatthehellareyoudoingstopitohbutthisgrainisSOGOODICAN’TSTOP. ARF finished clipping the underside of her neck at about the same moment Surya finished the grain and flipped the bucket into the air as she decided to object, and then we all collapsed on the floor holding our stomachs in laughter.



Surya, clipped and full of grain.



Show No. 3!!!

One blue ribbon in dressage and a 61.5%, and a clear round of jumping! I consider this show a resounding success. This is the first time we’ve competed in dressage doing a walk-trot-canter test, and the first time we’ve competed in jumping. I set the goal of doing the w-t-c test and jumping back in August, and we achieved it!

The morning started a 3-day's drive from perfect. Surya was agitated and excited by the activity at the barn and grounds, and trotted even when walking in-hand. She did not stand for mounting, and I ended up doing a flying leap onto her back and then adjusted my stirrups and reins jockey style. She is normally a very calm horse. While not pokey, she does not try to run away. This morning, though, she put on an OTTB attitude and charged around. She bore down on the reins in the trot and flashed her black legs as fast as they could go. When I asked for the canter, she decided I was Mel Brooks shouting “Ludicrous speed! Go!” and leapt into a gallop straight toward the show photographer (who subsequently leapt into a gallop in the opposite direction). That made me mad (I really like our photographer- she rides at the barn, and is ridiculously talented at her art), so I shortened my right rein, dragged Surya’s head around to her side, and made her trot in tiny circles until she started letting my legs and hands dictate speed and direction.

By the time it was our turn in the ring, I had control of her, but she was still locking her jaw against the bit when I asked for contact with her mouth. I went into the arena nervous that she would explode at the judge’s box, or whistle, or lettering. However, I was determined, and rode in with purpose. We achieved a lovely halt at X, and I breathed a little easier. The rest of the test went well, but I spent the time forcing her to maintain a slow, steady pace and perform the correct geometry. She tried to spook a few times, but I caught her with my legs before she had the opportunity and put her back to work. She bent off my leg, and kept reaching for contact, but did not maintain it. I did get both canter transitions, at A, on the correct lead! The transition back to trot was also good from both directions, though we were a bit late to the right. By the end of the test, my calves and thighs were trembling from the effort of containing Surya and implementing the required movements. I gritted my teeth as we trotted up the centerline and willed her to a slightly crooked (but still square!) halt. I still grinned in triumph. The judge told me, “great impulsion, work on maintaining contact with the bit and suppling.” Yeah.

When I exited the ring with a giant grin on my face, my ARF told me, “that was a great test! You did an awesome job, but Surya didn’t help at all…that was all you. [laugh] You looked like you were riding for country.” So we got a 61.5% on our first walk-trot-canter test, in the Starter Horse Division. My goal for the next show is to get at least a 70%. We have until March to practice.

After dressage, I untacked Surya and stuck her in her stall to relax for a few minutes while I went to scope out the jumping situation. My trainer told me to walk the course, and then jump the warm-up a few times before going to the ring. “Ok.” Then I stood in front of the arena while my head exploded. My ARF came up behind me. “What do I do?” She looked at me weird and said “Walk the course?” Sad to say, I then shouted at her, “I don’t know what I am doing! I haven’t been doing this since I was 12! How do I walk a course?!” Because she is my ARF, and by definition awesome, she stayed calm and showed me how to walk the course. It’s really not that hard.

I tacked up Surya in her jumping gear and we headed to the warmup. My ARF stayed to coach me through trotting and cantering over the little jumps. With one reminder to land in my heels, I was off. As soon as I entered the ring, I wasn’t nervous. The plan was to trot everything, but canter the combinations if things were going well. We trotted the first jump and cantered away on the correct lead. Even though Surya was excited by the show and very hot, she came right back to the trot and put her business face on. We jumped the second jump neatly, cantered five strides, and jumped the third. We came back to the trot and approached a vertical with a bending line to another vertical. We jumped the first one well, and went to the second at a canter from a slight angle. Back to the trot, and we headed toward a two-stride. Because we didn’t have quite enough impulsion going into the two-stride, Surya landed the first jump, took two small strides, realized she couldn’t jump from that distance, bulged slightly on the right, added a short third, and then jumped perfectly over the rails. We trotted the last vertical, then the plank, and we were done with a clear round! While the dressage might have been all me, the jumping was all her. She is just absolutely brilliant. I don’t know what I’m doing, so I sit up, give direction, and she figures out the rest. She is so incredibly smart.

The whole barn clapped for us at the end. A woman from another barn asked what breed of horse she is, and where I got her. Justified, because she’s special!

We got our clear round jumping ribbon, and then smiled for a photo op. I think I will remember this show forever. I will post pictures and videos in a few days.

Hurricane Sandy Was a Bitch

Surya and I have been improving our jump work in leaps and bounds (literally by leaping and bounding, ha). We are also putting in some very consistent and productive dressage sessions. This is good, because our third show is a week from today! I don’t have plans to go off the farm until the spring, so this show is still at the barn. However, this time we are going to do the Starter Rider Dressage class, Starter Horse Dressage Class, and Clear Round Jumping class! Excitement will be had by all.

Not that additional thrills are needed. This week already produced plenty of drama when Hurricane Sandy passed directly over the barn. Thankfully, my trainers are well-prepared, responsible, knowledgeable barn-owners and horse-caretakers, and the horses and property made it through the storm without a hay bale out of place. Even so, all the horses, even Surya, were very full of themselves during the deluge.

I don’t blame Surya for her wildness. I felt like running myself. Last year I moved to the East Coast a few weeks before Hurricane Irene. The day the hurricane hit the city, I went for a run half an hour before the rain started. The air felt unbelievably heavy, muggy, and hot, and I was pretty sure I was breathing in water instead of oxygen. This year, the hours before it started raining were scarier. As I was returning Surya to her field for her last few hours outside on Sunday, the barometric pressure dropped until I was gasping, and the lack of atmosphere pressing on my torso gave me space to leap and spin and buck and run. The roiling clouds were steel blue, and the air was cold. A very faint but steady wind blew from the east, belied only by reluctantly-shifting dried leaves and a barely-heard whistle. Surya snorted and flagged her tail, and we trotted circles around each other. The few birds in the woods around the farm that had not already migrated south were silent, and I felt like holding my breath. Later, driving over the river back to home, I watched the stalwart city skyline with some trepidation.

The wind started that night and then rain within the gusts. I worked from home the following day and stayed inside. By Monday night, the 20-foot trees outside my apartment were bowed and maelstroms of autumn leaves partially obscured the torrential rain. Across the river, the horses spent Monday night in the barn with the storm doors closed. Surya is spooky at sounds; she was not happy with the noise and threw hay around her stall. Tuesday dawned calmer, though still rainy, and all of the horses were turned out. They ran all day in the wind. When the rain finally stopped, most of New Jersey and the barn were left without power and with overwhelming destruction. In the city, thankfully, there were no power outages and no irreparable damage. But the storm did shift our civilized reality to a baser state. I emerged from my apartment Tuesday evening to puddles of water in every depression in the pavement, and tree branches blocking the one-way streets. Hesitant people bundled in coats against the chilly air cleared debris from the sidewalks. While my neighborhood usually lives up to the description of the City of Brotherly Love, people were especially friendly as I ran down the leaf-coated cobblestones. The reminder that we do not live in an artificial bubble, that water, and food, and heat are one gust of wind from gone, was also a reminder that society’s basest function is mutual support. The next day at work the first question we all asked our colleagues in the office and on the phone was “How did you fare in the storm? Is there any way I can help?” I am grateful my family, my friends, my horse, and I are all okay.

I finally made it back across the bridge Wednesday after work. It was evening when I got to the barn, but still light from the full moon and the orange glow of the city to the west. After a brief ride, I took Surya outside to graze on the drenched, browning grass. The fields stretched away into the dark, and it was very quiet. On the horizon, there were thin strips of dark blue clouds, like stacked layers of ragged silk. The Little Dipper was oddly prominent in the clear sky. Surya and I were both somewhat…languorous. The air felt like it had a long, hard cry, or sex – drained, calm, and a little bit smug.

After a while, she lifted her head, and we just stood for a long time, breathing puffs of frosty air. My dressage-educated mustang can still act feral when the mood strikes. At least in New Jersey, it’s going to take a little while to return to normal. Hurricane Sandy was a bit of a bitch.