Keep Calm...

This highly praised wardrobe essential can be yours, but only for the next few days -- sales end April 21.  This is a Bonfire Fund Raising Campaign, and the way it works is for each t-shirt sold, $5 goes toward SFD's Instructor Education Fund. But it only goes through if 50 shirts are sold. If less than 50 are sold, no one gets charged and no shirts are mailed out.

I started this drive about a week and a half ago, and it's almost over. As of this writing, we only need to sell 7 more shirts. Who wouldn't want this amazing piece of cheezy horse wisdom?

Click here to buy this gorgeous wardrobe essential.  

But now to the inspiration behind turning me into a salesperson.

As I'm sure you've noticed, education is pretty important to me -- of my students, of my staff, of myself.  Heck, it's so important to me that we give it away for free in our Open Training Demos. 

So now I'm going to ask you to give back.  But you get something for it.  A cool t-shirt.

This an outgrowth of of my crazy idea I wrote about in a blog last August, about how if we really want to improve the quality of dressage in the states, we need to invest in our local instructors.  Of course, the most local instructors I know are, well, Maddy and I.  

Last year I applied for, and received, an awesome training grant from the American Morgan Horse Association.  With it, and help from some of my clients, I spent two weeks at Hassler Dressage really focusing on my skills. I came out of it a better rider, and therefore a better instructor.

I also came out of it hungry for more.  

So this year, I decided, in addition to our normal monthly investment in instructor education, SFD would ear-mark proceeds from our Schooling Show Series, including sponsorships, for instructor education.  

But that did leave a gap, for those who want to help on a smaller scale.  So I found this t-shirt fund-raising campaign, and decided to give it a try.  

The catch is we need to sell 50 shirts for it to fly.  So buy a shirt for you. Buy one for your friend. Buy one for your significant other. Heck, buy one for your dog. 

Then Maddy and I will go get an inspirational lesson, and come come home and pass that inspiration on to you. 

If you want to do more, like use our sponsorships to advertise at our facility during our many educational events and schooling shows, follow this link to more info, or contact me at ange@straightforwarddressage.com

Learning to Ride

This is written by Maddy Mangan, SFD's Assistant trainer. I started teaching Maddy when she was in junior high, and after a break from riding while she was in college, I happily accepted her back as a working student two years ago.  Her work ethic and commitment to her education impressed me enough that after her time as working student was over, I offered her the title of Assistant trainer.  I asked her to write a blog about the difficult process of learning to ride in such a way to improve a horse's overall balance. I hope reading about her learning process helps you with yours. ~ Ange

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 By Maddy Mangan

About a year ago, when I was offered the assistant position at SFD, I decided to take the plunge and go full time in horses. As a young professional, I knew I was sorely lacking in show miles. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a horse to compete on. So Ange so graciously offered to let me bring her big, black mare,Silhouette, back into competition after time off as a broodmare. I was thrilled except that there as another problem. I could not for the life of me figure out how to ride the black mare with a big engine and big attitude.

So the struggle began.

Ange warned me when this started that Silhouette is a tricky ride. She has a sensitive mouth and hates to go on the forehand, so riding her uphill from the seat and leg is really important. When the rider gets it right on Silhouette, she locks into a wonderful, uphill floaty gait. But if the rider doesn’t get it right, Silhouette tells on the rider by nodding her head like a bobble-head doll and squealing in the canter departs.

Ange’s goal, besides giving me a show mount, was to take my riding from the “steady-keep-you-head-down-horse stage” to learning to ride my horses with lowered hips and a more uphill balance.  Which, of course, takes that elusive dressage thing we call “feel.” In short, Ange’s goal was for Silhouette to teach me how to ride.

I took lesson after lesson trying to get the “feel.” This is one of the most difficult parts of dressage. Learning and teaching “feel” is tough because “feel” is a bit different for each rider. Ange had to translate how “feel” felt to her into words, and hope those words translated to something my body could lock into.  So much of dressage is figuring out the right balance and feel for each individual horse at each moment of the workout, so sorting this out at this stage of my riding career is pretty important.

Ange was trying so hard to help me. “Ride her hind end, don’t worry about her head,” “Don’t fight with her mouth.” And the list continues. I just could not figure out the balance of my aids to help Silhouette understand that I wanted her to carry herself more uphill.

It is not that I did not understand how Ange was trying to get me to ride this horse, but Silhouette and I just could not find the right place where we clicked. We just kept fighting with each other. There were some very good rides and I would think “yes I finally got it!” but the next ride I would just not be able to recreate the feel from the day before. I was getting very discouraged.

So Ange put me on Venus for a few rides. She is quite a different mare then Silhouette, more tolerant and very kind (no head bobbing or squealing or anything), so I felt a little more at ease on her. During a lesson on Venus, Ange had me working on transitions. We started with halt to walk, focusing on keeping Venus’ shoulders up-which is really easy to feel on Venus as the pommel of the saddle practically drops if she isn’t keeping her shoulders up. If she dropped her shoulders, I had to make her halt again. By the end of the ride, Venus was taller and more connected. It was like the front of the saddle not only lifted, it became connected right into my seat.

I took this back to Silhouette, hoping it was the missing piece. It certainly helped, but Silhouette seemed to still be getting trapped somewhere. I just could not carry it through like I could on Venus.

One day, Ange called me into the arena. She was riding one of the training horses and asked if I wanted to hop on a get a feel of her. I never turn down a ride. Ange told me that she had been working on the half halt, very similar to what I had been working on with Venus and attempting with Silhouette--half halting with my back and lower leg, asking her to carry on her hind end, and then release up and out. It was the same feeling of keeping the withers and shoulders up like on Venus, but for some reason on the training horse, the feeling was a light bulb moment for me. I had to hold her on my seat with shoulders and core but let it out in a controlled way. I had to own every step. I had to own the balance. Could this be the missing link for Silhouette? Was I just letting the energy spill out over the front of the saddle, instead of lifting the shoulders up, and letting her fall more on the forehand?

So again I brought this new light bulb moment to Silhouette. Half halt the balance onto her hind end, then own the motion and allow it through, controlling the out. I focused on keeping her shoulders more up and not letting the front of the saddle drop at all. And it finally clicked! Six months of struggling and I finally had found the key to the uphill balance that Silhouette needed to be through and connected.

Of course I was worried I would not be able to carry it to the next ride, but I got on telling myself that I could. And I did.

Silhouette and I still have a lot of work to do but I am happy to say that we are now working together and not fighting. And I certainly know that I have a horse to show this summer.

So Miss Silhouette, you are teaching me to ride!

Searching for Inspiration

I was searching for inspiration (a conscious effort to battle the winter blahs), so I pulled out my notes from the FEI Trainer’s Symposium with Steffen Peters and Scott Hassler in January.  Looking at them now, a little over a month later, let me look at how that trip has improved my training arena. To keep this from becoming another long, dressage-geek diatribe, I am going to discuss 3 areas that I have notes on and how they have improved my rides. Like pretty much everything in dressage, they all come down to basics.

Positioning the neck for the bend

One of the horses in the clinic was a young horse with limited road miles. He was a bit overwhelmed by the environment, and showed it by bracing in his neck and wanting to come too high in the contact.  Steffen emphasized that horses need to be correct in the connection before they can proceed to the work of the day, no matter what was on that day’s training agenda. He had the rider position the horse with inside bend, then flex the horse’s neck to the inside, but not take the neck further than the width of the horse’s chest. Then he had her straighten the neck. When the horse maintained a soft neck bend without excessive inside rein, Steffen asked her use the outside rein to put the horse’s neck whatever height gave her the best feel of the horse’s back and control of the topline.

Throughout the weekend, the topic of a slightly braced topline came up.  Croup-high gaits and unauthorized lead changes were attributed to slight bracing in the connection. 

So I went home and checked all of my horses. Were the toplines soft and easy to position? If I flexed them to the inside, then straightened them, would they hold the bend from all of my aids, every time? I changed my warm up plan – when I asked my horses to flex and soften their topline, if I didn’t get the response I wanted, I replaced my old plan of lengthening the rein and letting them stretch (which is my go-to when I had flexion problems, to make sure I’m not getting the neck to short and blocking the flexion), with repeating the flexion aid again until I got softness from a response to my aid. I probably wouldn’t have tried this plan in the summer as I would worry about getting the necks too short, but since it’s winter, I was months from the judges’ eye and free to experiment.

The experiment worked out.  I began warm up focusing on the flexion and ignoring what I saw in the mirror. When they started to feel soft, then I’d check the mirror.  What I saw was not short necks, it was softer toplines and more open throat latches as my mounts stretched more into the connection. Which meant I could then put the neck at whatever height was best for my mount’s balance in that particular part of the workout.

Go from a light, pressing leg

Steffen Peters has a couple of themes that have shown up every time I have watched him teach. One of my favorites (and one I quote regularly, with attribution, of course) is that the only things we have to communicate with our horses is our leg, seat, hand and voice. He insists that they respond calmly to the lightest of aids, particularly the leg aid.  He made it very clear that the leg should stay softly against the horse at all times, and the horse should go forward from a small press of the calf. Not a kick, not a bump, not a spur or whip, but a press. Every time, no matter what, without any tension.

So I went home and checked my horses. At the Debbie McDonald clinic in December, she had focused on getting Secret to slow her steps from my seat. The order of the aids – increase energy with my leg, slow the tempo with my seat, ask Secret to follow the bit into a longer topline, then relax my thigh pressure to allow her to go forward again. Being a good student, I had done that with pretty much all of my horses.  As a result, I’ve seen longer toplines and more control with my seat. But I think all of this emphasis on not running through my seat aid had let them be a touch lackadaisical about a forward response to my leg. 

Since I had spent a month on “stay with my seat no matter what,” when I added “forward energy with every press of my leg,” I found I had a bit of a hole.  Most responded, but not in the next instant. They went, but a stride or so after I applied the aid.

So for 2 days I kept my leg steady, and without taking it off, added a gentle press. If I didn’t get an immediate response, I gave a REALLY strong press-to which, of course, they hurried away from. I’d bring the tempo back under my control, and apply a gentle press again. Most of them got the point within a few repetitions.  I tried to be a good student of Steffen and Scott and not use my whip (which Scott emphasizes is for collection/cadence), or the spur (which Steffen emphasizes is for engagement). 

The result after a couple of days was, of course, my horses were more responsive to a light aid.  In addition, insisting on an immediate response created a feeling of the withers pushing the pommel up every time I pressed. This isn’t an unfamiliar feeling to me at all, but the 95% consistency of it was really nice, especially with so little effort from me.

So I kept that standard as a tool in my toolbox, and watched what it did to the other work. Slingshot, who I have been focusing on exercises to create shoulder freedom for several months now, took that shoulder freedom upward into his medium trot to create a reliable, rideable medium with very lifted front legs (I have video proof!). 

Three components of pirouette work

Pirouette work always comes up in FEI clinics, because pirouettes are, frankly, hard. They take a long time to develop.  And like most things in dressage, the pirouette is only as good as the basics. Scott specified the three areas of the basics that often create problems in pirouette work: compression, suppleness, and balance. His advice is to figure out which of the three is creating the limitation, then fix that part, then go back and work the pirouette as a whole.

With his emphasis on simplicity, Steffen addresses both the canter pirouette and the walk pirouette pretty much the same. They are all about control.  If the horse backs off at any point in the approach, go forward out of the pirouette. Only stay in the pirouette as long as the quality is good, if I can’t get out of movement, I’ve stayed in it too long.  Once the horse understands the compression, balance, suppleness, add the turning aids. Once the turning aids are understood, polish the approach. If the approach isn’t controlled, the movement won’t work, so repeat the approach.

So I went home and checked my walk and canter pirouettes. I tend to start walk pirouettes pretty early in a horse’s education, so they all do them to some degree. I love walk pirouettes for teaching bend without swinging the haunches out, lifting of the withers, and shoulder freedom. But when I added the element of ‘control every part’ and ‘go forward at any moment,’ I also got the benefit of, well, control and forward.  That control carried over to the next exercise, and the next, and the rest of the workouts. 

Using Scott’s plan of deciding where the problem was, working that part, and then putting it back together made a big difference in Secret’s canter pirouettes.  She went into the winter understanding to rebalance and carry more on her hind legs on a straight line or a 20 meter circle, but I was having trouble maintaining the quality of the canter when we started turning. Her compression and balance seemed ok, so I spent a few days working on improving her suppleness during the compression.  Then I went back to asking for the turning steps, and boy did it work. I went from the spiral in exercise to Steffen’s pirouette diamonds to working pirouettes on the centerline, and when I kept the suppleness in mind, she could make big-girl pirouettes every time.

So even in this hard, long, snow bound winter, with all of my usual help enjoying the sun in Florida, using the resources I do have, I’ve managed to keep my guys progressing. I am looking forward to everyone returning north so I can get familiar eyes on my horses this spring. That, and warmer spring weather.

My Personal Trainer made Headlines!

Several years ago, I suffered a whip-lash injury to my lower back. While it was healing, I began to understand why riders gave up riding. I REALLY don't want to be one of those people, so I started looking for a personal trainer to help me stay strong in the right places, so I wouldn't wear my body out riding horses every day.  

I tried several different trainers, and they wanted to either make me into a body builder or an anorexic gymnast. Carolyn was the first one who actually listened when I said "if this doesn't make me ride better, I won't stick with it." And best of all, she's the first one who actually let me put her on a horse. 

In addition to my workouts, Carolyn has developed an Equestrian Boot Camp that we run here at SFD on Saturdays. Between her own riding (yep, that first ride was not a one-time event!!) and my feedback, she has created a system that incorporates cardio, core work and balance work. Believe me when I say this -- I can tell which of my students are in her class and which ones aren't.

So when the reporter from Suburban Life asked if I'd be willing to be interviewed for an article about Carolyn's fitness work, of course I agreed. Below is Carolyn's article. It's a bit hard to read, if you want me to send you a more legible digital version, e-mail me at ange@straightforwarddressage.com

Vocab lessons

 Recently, I have had an influx of new students. Whenever a new rider comes into my program, vocabulary plays a big part in the first several lessons.  Creating a standardized set of terms to communicate about training is crucial. Which got me thinking about of how much dressage-ease differs from standard English.  For example:

Relaxed = Attentive

Light = Steady

Submissive = When the horse lets you control of each of their body parts easily.

Suppleness = Adjustableness.  In other words, can the rider control the wiggle?

Connection = When the reins have a steady taughtness to them that allows the horse to use their topline correctly to re-circulate the power from the hind legs over a swinging back.

In front of the leg = The horse’s energy is under the rider’s control, regardless of the speed or the tempo.  The test of “in front of the leg” is when the rider puts the leg on the horse should make a polite change in the feel in the hand.

Behind the leg = The rider is not in charge of the energy. Sometimes it presents as the horse going too slow, sometimes it presents as the horse getting quick and running from the leg.

Bend = Creating and controlling an even curve along the entire horse’s spine, and placing that curve in front of the inside hind leg. Some parts bend more easily than others, so sometimes creating bend means straightening the neck. When the curve is placed in front of the inside hind leg, the power of the hind leg helps push the withers uphill. The amount of bend is determined by the line of travel – ie, a 10 meter circle needs more bend than a 20 m circle. The most extreme example of bend is walk and canter pirouettes. In those movements, the inside hind leg always steps straight, never crossing the outside hind.

Collected = Lots of power held back a bit by the balance and angle of the rider’s seat.  Since the horse really wants to GO, the rider sits with their core tight and pelvis angled in such a way so the horse’s desire to GO becomes uphill balance.

Uphill = When the energy created by the horse lowers the croup and causes the withers to lift. Sometimes it can be felt by a change in the balance of the saddle. Sometimes it can be felt by an increase in shoulder mobility. Sometimes it can be felt by an ease of the movements. Sometimes the mirror is your best indicator.

Plus there are a few golden rules of dressage in our barn:

When in doubt, do the opposite.   When the horse feels stiff and all you want to do is hold the bend, move them in and out of the bend. When they feel quick and you want to hold them back, put leg on and push the energy forward, then allow the horse to come back.

It takes more leg than you think.  Particularly when the horse is learning collection. Or learning leg yield. Or pretty much anything, for that matter.

This is a sport.  There are times you’ll be tired, times your abdominal and thigh muscles will be sore. Times when the best thing to do is spend some time off of the horse cross-training your balance and core muscles.

This is supposed to be fun.  No matter what, enjoy the ride.

FEI Conference Through Different Eyes

I flew home from the FEI-level Trainer’s Conference in Florida last night. On the ride home, as I was thinking about how to organize this blog, I tossed around a few different angles-- how Steffen Peters and Scott Hassler clearly showed all of us the lessons each horses had for us, how the inspiring lessons make me want to come home and train with more clarity, how re-setting my standard this time of year is so crucial in the hard-to-stay-motivated cold, how sitting in front of such clear communicators makes me want be a better teacher, but really, all of this has been covered so beautifully on other blogs, such as:

http://usdfdressage.blogspot.com/2014/01/trainers-conference-2014-message-that.html

http://usdfdressage.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-song-remains-same.html

http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/building-dressage-horse-bottom-top

http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/seven-horses-seven-concepts

Then I thought of what made this experience different from last year’s trip south, and I had my angle. This year I shared the inspiration.

This year my assistant trainer, Maddy, joined me on the trip.  I wanted Maddy to come because, although she has watched Scott teach me many, many times, she has not had the opportunity to watch the progression of horses from first level to schooling GP back-to-back like this before. Also, when she watches my lessons with Scott, because I have been working with him for many years, the lessons aren’t filled with as much explanation as when he takes the roll of facilitator.  I wanted to give her a crash course in the training approach I have been trained in.

Additionally, this year again I was able to spend a very brief time watching Catherine Haddad train. Maddy got to see not only good training and riding, but also Catherine’s assistant take the roll of her eyes-on-the-ground, a role I want Maddy to learn to take.  I haven’t had an assistant that was confident enough to take that role in a while, and now that Scott’s barn goes south for the winter, I’m really feeling the lack. 

Monday and Tuesday, we watched and let our cognitive learning absorb Steffen’s effective, quiet seat while he and Scott’s words explained the order of their priorities in each phase of the training. We took pages of notes, and Maddy even stole a little cell phone video to watch Steffen’s canter seat over and over again.

 

After watching all day, we had dinner with our friends, Lauren and Fiona, who had also came down for the Conference, and discussed what we saw. Fiona has a gift for starting conversation.  I loved watching Maddy start in role of listener, then, as our conversations confirmed her ‘eye’, begin to contribute to our discussions.  We talked about Steffen’s training approach -- how he was willing to use more advanced movements to improve the overall thoroughness of the basics, and how the basics improved the movements themselves.  We talked about his rather short training sets, and how they would work in our colder temperatures. We discussed his amazing ability to get the horse to offer the movements. 

Fiona asked what we were going to do with this knowledge when we got home, and Maddy right away answered that she was going to bring Silly’s talented canter more uphill, and use it to make her “just overall better.” She also said she was eager to go back in the show ring on Venus, who has been helping Maddy find her show-ring skills after being away from the competition ring since high school, and really think about working the show ring to make Venus really shine.  

Needless to say, this all made me quite proud. Educating horses is my passion, but I can only train as well as my teachers have trained me.  As a thank you to all of the wonderful instructors who have not only taught but mentored me, I feel an obligation to do the same to the next round of professionals.  Maddy is not the first young professional I have helped, nor will she be the last, but since I taught her to canter when she was a kid, watching her turn into a confident, skilled horseperson is a particular joy.

P.S. I want to say a special thank-you to all of those at home who made it possible for Maddy and I to both be away, particularly with the Polar Vortex descending in our absence.  Doug, Joyce, and Aneesa, you are all wonderful people and I am truly in your debt. Thank you again.

Now out to apply it all in the balmy 14 degree weather. 

Dressage Boots

  

Usually when I get the opportunity to do something really exciting and special, there’s some kind of back story.  That back story comes up over and over again when we reminisce about our horse experience, i.e., the clinic where I misread the directions and went to the organizer’s house in a downtown Washington DC subdivision instead of the barn, the show where I was 4 hours from home with 2 horses to show and no girths in my trailer, the dead bird story, well, you get the idea. 

These stories also make great fodder for the blogs. 

As I was thinking about this weekend and organizing the amazing lessons I enjoyed with Debbie McDonald, I thought I would tell the story of my boot saga, complete with me somehow agreeing to be part of a fashion show.

Us crazy dressage riders, in addition to putting ourselves up against the impossible standard of “the perfect 10,” with the equally impossible standard of trying to not stain really expensive white pants in a very dirty barn, insist that our very tall boots are much stiffer than the boots of our other equestrian friends. Much, much stiffer. Like you can bang on them with your knuckles and they sound wooden stiff.

The boots are all leather, and like all good leather shoes, there is a break-in period. The boots are fitted so that when they are new the leather hits the middle of the knee cap, so that when the ankle area softens (the only part of the boots that will soften, by the way) and the boots “fall,” they are still tall enough to come to the back of your knee. Needless to say, until the ankle softens, walking around, mounting, and riding is painful, often bloody torture. But once broken in, they mold to the legs like chocolate on caramel.

So, obviously, we dressage riders will go to great lengths to avoid breaking in new boots. We will repair, resole, replace zippers, anything to delay the break-in period. I bought my show boots 10 years ago, when Silly was 5, after Dressage at Devon.  I was SO STUPID EXITED to get to ride at Dressage at Devon.  After 4 years as a poor, hard-working working student, I was finally getting to ride at A BIG SHOW. 

We arrived the night before, and my old boots didn’t have zippers. I put them on to ride, and because it was evening, my legs swelled. I couldn’t get them off.  On the advice of Silly’s breeder, I laid on my back in the barn aisle with my legs in the air to try to get my swollen legs to un-swell enough to remove my boots.  Yea, this is big time horse showing at its best.

My next pair of tall boots had zippers.  I didn’t want to go to the expense of full-custom, so my semi-custom options were really tall or just at the knee cap.  I went with the knee cap size. Once they had broken in, they were a tiny bit on the short side, but not floodwater geeky-kid short, and they were broke in, so in mind they were perfect. 

As they aged, the ankles got a bit softer.  I replaced the soles.  Then I replaced the zippers. Then I did the the soles again. Then the zippers.  A few years ago I lost a bit of weight, and I needed to have them taken in.  My boots came back, well, not my boots. The widest part of the boot wasn’t really lined up with the widest part of my leg.  But they were still better than breaking boots in, so I wore them. 

The advantage of boots with zippers is they are much easier to get on and off, but the zippers need regular repair. Sometimes it’s the zipper that gives out, sometimes it’s the stitching around the zipper, which lies against the saddle, and therefore is subject to a lot of friction.  Plus leather is weakened by the stitching holes.  So after much riding and zipper replacement, the time comes when the leather is just too weakened, and the boots just need to be retired. Since my faithful boots also had developed holes in each ankles (I was dumping sand out of them daily), it was time. 

So it was time to start the whole cycle over again.  Again I had the choice of a little too tall or just at the knee, and this time I went with too tall.  But of course that size was on backorder. No biggie, show season had just ended, I could easily come up with 4 or 5 weeks between October and April to break them in.   

Then Secret and I got selected for the December Debbie McDonald clinic at Hassler Dressage.  And I had boots with big holes in the ankles and zippers that were failing. 

I called the store, and they promised to have them drop-shipped as soon as they could, but no promises as to exactly when I would have them. 

As I couldn’t very well ride for Debbie McDonald in my sneakers, I took my boots to my cobbler yet again. He said he would patch the holes and replace the zipper, but he wasn’t sure the stitching would hold. 

I picked them up and sure enough, on ride 2, the leather gave out.  Of course it did.

But good news -- that day the tack store called. My  boots were in. They arrived Thanksgiving week, giving me a whole whopping 2 weeks to get them broke in enough to ride effectively in front of 100 auditors. 

Did I mention that I ordered the extra tall boots?

I added heel lifts, and walked like the Tin Man to the mounting block until my thin chestnut-mare skin needed a few days off. Linda reminded me of the “sponge trick,” putting small, round tack sponges at the back of my knees to soften the stiff top edge of the boot. 

This helped a lot, but I really didn’t want to ride around with yellow discs at the back of my knees in front of auditors, then Maddy came up with the idea of using the black foam poll-protectors.  Perfect! I was still mounting with something far less than grace, but by the Friday before the clinic, I could bend my knee enough to move my leg back without grimacing. 

My Tin Man days were over. Or so I thought.

As part of this clinic, Hasslers was having a Christmas Shopping Extravaganza on Saturday night. Susanne Hassler asked for volunteers to help. I, of course, offered my services, hoping she needed someone to refill wine glasses. But no, she needed people to model clothing for one of the venders.  Me, who lives in fear being called by “What Not to Wear,” modeling clothing? All of us at the barn were quite entertained by the idea.  But the shop owner agreed to let me wear that brown tail coat I have been drooling over for 2 years, so ok, fine, I’d do it.

Then she hands me the boots to go with it. They looked great with the coat – they were tall, chocolate brown, a bit of bling on the top, and just looked expensive.  And they are really, really, really tall. Like over the top of my knee tall. 

And I am supposed to walk down stairs in them. 

Um, well, ok, I guess.

Just to make matters all the more comical, the DJ starts playing “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” just as I begin my lurching, rail-clutching descent.  It was all too much, I burst out laughing. 

I did my loopdy-doop around the audience, and then I was supposed to walk back UP the stairs.

Remember, I couldn’t bend my knees in these boots.

So I elegantly, in the most awesome runway-models strut, I crab-hopped sideways up the steps, hanging onto the banister for dear life.  

I don’t think the runway holds much of a career for me. 

The rides? Yep, they were awesome. I’ll give you the low-down as soon as I get caught up  enough watch the DVDs -- we ended up spending another night at Riveredge, since the snow came early causing traffic mayhem (my students who came to watch made the 90-minute trip home in a record 5 ½ hours). 

More later.