The Voices in my Head

When training, my thoughts tend to be rather free-form and musical, but sometimes words creep in.  Usually, those words came from the amazing instructors who have shaped my skills.  I never seem to ride as well alone as I do when I’m under their careful eye, but I do carry their words with me.

From Maryal Barnett, whose monthly trips to Illinois started my dressage education, to my working student years with Claudia Garner, Gina Krueger and Lorinda Lende, to all of the clinics I’ve taken with Gerhard Politz, Debbie McDonald, Catherine Haddad, and Lendon Gray, and to Jeanne McDonald and Scott Hassler who supervise my education these days, I am shaped as a trainer by their quality guidance. I cannot say thank you enough to these people who shared, and continue to share, their craft with me. Below is a list of just a bit of their wisdom.

“You can view dressage as an art or a craft. If you view it as an art, then you are relying on some elusive thing called talent.  If you view it as a craft, then you are relying on technique, and technique can be learned and taught. I choose to view it as technique.”  Claudia Garner.

“Wow. That was ugly. Want to do it again?” Maryal Barnett’s cheerfully-spoken words have kept me from overreacting to mistakes since my early dressage days.

“What was the purpose of that?” Scott Hassler, whenever I’m not being organized with my training workout.

“What have you tried, and what did and didn’t work?” Jeanne McDonald, whenever I’ve brought her a horse that I’m struggling with.  Her brainstorming questions help me break down my thinking process and get to the bottom of the training issue.

“Roll the wrist, straighten the wrist, roll the wrist, straighten the wrist, and repeat.” Gerhard Politz. His technique has helped unlock many horse who isn’t feeling particularly very obedient to the flexion.

“A circle should be round, like a soccer ball, not flat, like a football.” Gerhard again, whenever I’m teaching accuracy on circles, or struggling with it myself.

“In walk or canter pirouette, the inside hind should always step straight forward to support the bend.”  Catherine Haddad. The lesson was about Eclipse’s canter pirouettes, but that one statement changed the way I approach bending all the way down to the youngsters I ride.

“Entertain with your hands, train with your seat and leg.” This simple statement from Scott Hassler cured my bad habit of using my hands to do what my leg and seat should do. 

“Every horse as their ‘thing’ and will show up over and over throughout their training.” Again Scott, and this is so true.  I applied these words recently to a tough training horse.  Instead of thinking, “What, that again?” to “Oh, yea, this again.  Guess I’m pushing your comfort zone. We must be making progress.” 

“Trot is still trot, even in lateral work. You can’t have a shoulder-in trot, a half-pass trot, a straight side trot. It is all one trot.” Debbie McDonald. Boy, this is hard.

“Left, right, left, right.”  Jeanne McDonald’s voice rolls through my mind whenever I’m struggling with timing of the aids.

“A horse must first yield to the unilateral aids before coming onto the diagonal aids.” Maryal Barnett. This concept clarified putting my little Arab on the bit for me years ago, and every young horse and retrain I’ve worked with since.

“The horse’s topline is like a glass hose. Line it up, then turn on the water to keep it full.”  Lorinda Lende. I love this mental picture for straightness. I use it often in my teaching.

“Horses go as they are ridden.”  Lendon Gray. Keep the standard the same. Every Day.

"It is only trained if it is repeatable" Not sure, probably Maryal Barnett, and completely true.

“The teacher is responsible for the student’s learning.” Claudia Garner’s words lead to many, many lesson plans and conversations about learning style.   

“All seat corrections begin in the middle of the rider. The ends won’t stay put until the seat is straight.” Gina Krueger, whose words have shaped my approach to a rider’s seat.

“When shortening or lengthening a horse’s stride, you can only influence one stride at a time.”  Lendon Gray. This statement really changed my concept of timing of the aids, and quickness of my half halt.

I identify with the sentiment  Dan Fogelberg sings about in "Leader of The Band."  

            My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man,

I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band.

I hope to one day, for a brief, shining moment, ride worthy of all of quality instruction I have received.

January Blues

I am writing this on the last day of January, and am fighting the January blues.

January blues seems to be an annual event. Every year,

Note the air conditioner in the tack room window.  In January.

To help inspire my winter training, I went to the FEI Conference in Wellington. The conference goes a long way towards keeping my training fresh. But it also creates another problem -- I'm not Florida. Seeing how the other half lives is fun, but coming home to look at my snow covered pastures, cold arena, and ice covered roof is decidedly underwhelming. Somehow, every year, I need to keep my chin up.

This year, the January blues hit fast. We had beautiful weather, and then we have 30 inches of snow. My ride list currently includes many inexperienced horses. And the snow is falling off the roof.

That small red dot in the distance is the
stop sign at the end of our road.

About the time I started to get comfortable on what my mom refers to as “the pity pot,” I wrapped myself in my electric blanket, turned on my little space heater, and huddled l in the corner of the arena to teach lessons.

Snow on the roof is, well, terrifying. 

As I sat there, talking about the different components of dressage, I watched my students ride.  I watched one student, after struggling with canter confidence for years, learn to put her horse on the bit in all three gaits. Then I watched another student have a lightbulb moment over the feel of correct flexion, and bring her young horse from first level to a solidly uphill balance. Then I watched another student begin to understand how frequent, small half halts translate to riding the hind leg on her schoolmaster.

After I finished teaching, I wandered out to the field to check on the young horses. As the young men are fighting for my attention, I am finding it very, very hard to be blue.

Plus, we added this to our lives. That should dispel the January blues.

The 'as yet unnamed' puppy

Good Fit

When I started keeping this blog years ago, my goal to tell the stories behind the blurbs that show up on SFD’s Facebook Page.  I still think this is a great platform to do that, but I find a lot of my writing these days has more of a musing manner.  Sometimes these musings are related to the day-to-day events, and sometimes they are related to more general events in the dressage world. As I’ve been unsure if these musings apply to the original goal, I’ve been a bit reluctant to share them. But heck, it’s my blog, so I think it’s going to evolve a bit.

One of my recent musings has been about how different dressage professionals gear their business, and how that affects the type of clients they attract.  Some horse professionals build their business around their personal competition goals.  Others, me included, built their business around client support.  Neither plan is inherently wrong, and both business models need to incorperate elements of both in order to be sustainable.  I have been extremely fortunate that my client-support business model has, thanks to some amazing clients, allowed me to continue to achieve my personal competition goals.  But not all client-support-based trainers have been so lucky.

What I find interesting is the dressage community’s assumptions.  For some reason, many dressage students believe a business built around the trainer’s competition goals to be superior to a business built around client support.  Which I find ironic, as students are coming in as clients. 

From where I sit, it seems most goal-based businesses started with a springboard –  a nice horse or two, a family farm, an investor.  Often, that is the main difference. Because I promise you, every one of us who have dediated our careers to developing dressage horses, deep in their hearts, wants to be in that CDI victory gallop and in the latest issue of Dressage Today.  Every one of us works hard to hone our craft, improve our seats, and polish our skills.

Which comes to the topic of which model is better for clients.  I know many pros with goal-based businesses that do a great job supporting clients, equal to or even better than some client-based business models. I also know many client-centered-business pros that are overlooked because they are so dedicated to supporting their students that their own show goals go by the wayside. 

So which model is better for the AA student?  I think, at the end of the day, it comes down to good fit.

The hard part is figuring out what comprises a "good fit."  Sometimes the right fit is about instruction, or showing, or training. Sometimes the right fit is more about the barn itself – location, society in the barn, accessibility to hacking – than the trainer.  When looking for a barn, determining what is "good fit" takes a bit of honest evaluation.  A rider who knows not only their goals, but also their limitations will have the best chances of finding "good fit."  

A big part of determining "good fit" is the goals. If your goal is to earn your bronze or silver medal, boarding at a barn with a relaxed atmosphere, full of AAs who enjoy a paper chase one weekend, a dressage schooling show the next, and a hunter show the third, may be a great barn, but will, in the end, leave you dissatisfied with your goals.  Often, an all-around rider, who would thrive in the more relaxed barn, will feel pressured in a more competitive program, even if that program is right around the corner from their house. 

The hard part is when in your heart, you want those medals, but your comfort zone is with the more recreational program. That’s when some serious soul-searching needs to happen. Are you willing to push your comfort zone for your goals, or sacrifice your goals for your comfort zone? That is a personal decision each rider makes at some point in their riding, and neither decision is inherently wrong, and therefore shouldn’t be criticized.

 The second part of determining “good fit” is limitations.  If a rider has a goal of competing GP, but has a 20-year-old 2^nd level horse they won’t part with and budget for just one horse, the horse becomes a limitation on their goals, not their trainer. Switching to a trainer who has developed several GP horses won’t change that.  If a limitation is 2 kids and a full-time job, the limitation becomes time, so a trainer willing to school your horse a couple times a week becomes a key component to “fit.” 

Regardless of what creates fit, I think all students should not settle until they find a fit that fulfills them as riders, trainers, and people. Regardless of if the head trainer dons a magazine cover.  

Recharged

I am currently on a plane headed from sunny FL, returning home from a couple days watching Johann Hinnemann teach at the FEI Trainer’s Conference.  I debated attending this year, but in the end I decided to buy my ticket. 

My debate was a bit based on the nature of my business. SFD’s business model is helping adult amatures achieve their dressage goals. This means a majority of the horses I train are “shared rides,” meaning I ride a few times a week, and I help the horse’s owner from the ground a few times a week. Which means my training goals are about consistency over brilliance.  I want the horses I develop to have such a clear understanding of what I want that they are able to help their owners out a bit.  How do you make a horse consistent, you ask? Well, consistency in the training. 

Normally, I have a few horses that are not “shared rides,” temporarily or permanently. These horses I don’t have to be as careful with. Yes, I want them consistent, but I also have more freedom to develop the expressison in their gaits.  In order to do that, I often need to push the boundary of what they are currently willing and able to offer, which means I risk tension.  I think it’s most fair to the horses to help them get to the other side of that tension before I ask the horse to teach that new skill to their rider.

The FEI Conference is generally all about creating the best balance and gaits that a horse is capable of, so I debated whether it was worth the time and money for information that, in theory, only applies to some of my horses, some of the time. Plus right now, for various reasons, I have fewer non-shared rides than normal, so I wondered how much of what I saw I would be able to use every day. 

But even as SFD is about helping riders develop their horses, Ange-the-trainer, wants to see the best my mounts can offer. As I watched the horses and riders in the conference, I realized that routine has been winning over expression lately.  Which is not bad for business, but it isn’t everything. 

I took Johann Hinnemann's words to heart -- "That’s really our job as trainers, to always think about something, every day how to make something better, better ideas to school the horses and teach our students.”

So I am now recharged, refueled, and ready to see how many of the techniques that develop the best gaits in horses can be applied to my “shared rides,” and how I can help coach my students to when tension is acceptable and when consistency is better.   

Let the winter training begin.

If you are interested in details about the FEI Conference itself, here are a few blogs about the rides themselves:

http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/transitioning-top-adequanusdf-trainers-conference

http://www.chronofhorse.com/photos_videos?page=0&nid=64330

http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/exercises-dressage-horserider-adequanusdf-trainers-conference

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Pas de Deux

I was planning to write about the Pas de Deux, but Chronicle of the Horse beat me to it.  My 15 seconds of fame, and they picked the photo where I look like my head is falling off. Oh well

The 2015 Show Season

The 2015 show season is winding down. The last overnight show is history. My whites are drying in the basement, to be sorted as to which has too many stains to see another season. We hosted our last schooling show, the local schooling circuit’s year-end show is coming up, and there’s a handful of one-day local events, but the big, high-stress-don’t-choke-for-at-least-7 ½-minutes shows are over.  

As I sit staring at the blank screen, I feel like I need to do something to commemorate this year’s season. I haven’t written much about it, because clear goals + working the plan = success doesn’t lend itself to good narrative. But it does lend itself to snapshots.  So this blog will be my word-snapshots of my favorite moments this season.

Personally, I had my best season ever. My mounts achieved, or exceeded, the goals I set for them, whether it was learning to relax and stay rideable in front of a judge, or winning a fancy neck garland at some big show.

My students, many who were either new to showing, moving up to some monumental level, or had young horses, also had a very good season.  I watched them learn to manage their show nerves, plan and execute their warm up routines, and learn what their horses needed at both day and overnight events.  I am super proud of how far all of them came this season, and I have a ton of great memories with them, but those stories are theirs to tell, not mine.

So here’s mine.

Toenails and traditions

Linda began a new tradition this year-- painting her toe nails blue whenever we were headed to a big show.  I found this really, really funny, and joined her for second half of the season. I swear my blue sparkly toes made all the difference at the BLM finals.  Plus it seemed much more innocent than our tradition of dead birds, but ironically the dead bird thing continues to follow us.  I kid you not, at one show I’m chatting with a vendor, and she tells me this story of when they were setting up at the show, their dog ran off and (you guessed it) killed a bird.  She, of course, knew nothing of our strange superstition. Subsequently, my mounts had quite a nice show.

The Pas de Deux

My friend Aneesa and I competed in Pas de Deux this season on our red mares to (of course) music from the 2014 Annie remake.  Putting the choreography together and competing it created enough fodder for a blog of its own (and, thanks to some amazing photos, probably will be). But my favorite moment was after the shows were over, Chronicle of the Horse called to interview Aneesa and I about our ride (it won the BLM Championship class with a whopping 82%, with one judge giving the ride a 9 on "performance as a pair").  Aneesa’s text to me after the interview – “this feels unreal.”  The whole experience from working out the choreography, to the first run through with music, to the competitions had a magical, unreal quality to it.

The perfect mare

Secret was impressive beyond my wildest dreams this year. Linda and I didn’t look closely enough at the calendar while planning her show season, so she ended up going to Sport Horse Nationals one week (an 8 hour haul), coming home for 2 weeks, then heading to Dressage at Devon, then home for 2 days, then away to the BLM finals.  Despite with this aggressive schedule, she exceeded my wildest dreams.  She took home ribbons in every show, ending up 5^th in the PSG and 10^th in Fourth level at Sport Horse Nationals, 4^th in the 4-3 and FEI test of Choice at Devon, and 8^th in PSG and Reserve Champion at 4^th level at the BLMs. 

 I have 2 favorite moments with her – first one was coming home from Good Times farm in July, where she had won both the 4-1 and 4-2 classes. Half way home, Linda looks down at the two blue ribbons sitting in her lap and, with a look of surprise, says to me “That wasn’t an Arab show.” Yes, Linda, your little half Arab doesn’t check prize lists or pedigrees, she just does her job. Quite well, I must say.

The second moment was at the BLM finals. Our group had classes Thurs-Sun, and since Secret had such a crazy schedule, we decided to not enter her in any classes on Sunday.  In the morning she looked a little tired, but by lunch time she was dragging Linda all over the show grounds, clearly looking for her turn in the sandbox. Gotta love a horse with that kind of heart.

Super Pony

Capitano, Shelley’s wonderful young German Riding pony, came into my life last year last May as a 5-year-old. Last year we got to know each other in the show ring, with quite a bit of success. So this year we decided to make a few more goals for him. He had a solid season, winning his all-breeds on a 70% median score, which landed him 57^th out of 585 First Level Horses nationwide.  My favorite moment was at the conclusion of a ride in Lexington, I look over and Shelley is giving me the two thumbs up – and her first words when we left the ring “you two didn’t leave any points on the table in that ride.”  He’s such a rideable young man, and I can’t wait to see how he develops.

Gaining Confidence

As my personal horse, Venus often ends up on the back burner, particularly when it comes to shows.  She has tons of clinic and quadrille miles, but when it comes time to head down the centerline, generally I’m astride a client’s horse – which matches with the business purpose, but that’s another (currently half-finished) blog.  When she was a 5-and-6-year-old, SFD was smaller, so I was able spend time teaching her to get over her baby-show-horse nerves.  Then I got busy, and as a result she only saw 6 shows from 2009-2014.  As we were committed to the Pas de Deux, I needed to make sure she was solid enough to fill her job as confidence-role-model to Ming.  So we hit some schooling shows, some recognized shows, day shows, overnight shows, etc.

Venus has always shown me her insecurity by taking over a little – when she’s confident, I’m clearly in charge of the steering wheel, throttle, and balance. When she gets insecure or overwhelmed, by the environment or the level of work I’m asking of her, she never does anything bad, she just gets ahead of me. When she’s worried, she knows best.  In the show ring, the tests generally go better when I can prepare her balance for the next movement, so that was my goal for her this season: to have her confident enough to let me stay in charge.

She got much, much better with each outing, and it goes without saying this was reflected in the scores and placings.  My favorite moment with her was in a test in September. We had just finished the canter half pass, and the next movement was a flying change.  She did the change without me, then she realized I was still sitting in the left lead, so she swapped back. We did a third change, grossly after where it was supposed to be but on my cue, then recovered fast enough to save the next movement and finish the test relaxed, with me clearly in the driver’s seat. The multiple changes did not earn us any brownie points, but Venus’ making a mistake and correcting it without getting  flustered really showed me how much more relaxed she had become in the stress of a show environment.

 Ham-bone

Rocky is Liz’ quirky, expressive Morgan gelding. Liz injured her knee last year, and subsequently he ended up on my ride list while she had surgery and tons of PT.  As she was just back to riding in the spring, I was his jockey for the first show this season, the Mason Dixon Classic, a local Arab Morgan show.

On a lark, we post-entered him in the Morgan geldings in-hand class. I gave him a 15-min crash-course in running the triangle, which he clearly understood.  Then it was our time, and the silly horse pranced round the triangle like voguing drag queen, complete with a snort on the halt.  He was clearly having a ball. The judge loved him too, placing him high-score in-hand of the day. Conklin Photography got some amazing shots that really captured Rocky’s look-at-me attitude that day.

Baby Cakes

Campione, who I’ve nick-named Nibs, came in to my life in July as a gangly 4-year-old. His owner, Elaine had him backed by a cowboy the previous summer, and on the advice of the backer, gave him a year off to grow before continuing his education.  I lunged him for a couple weeks, then carefully climbed on. He seemed quite agreeable to me being up there, so I proceeded to teach him how to stop, turn, go, and how to wander up our big hill.

By mid September, he started to feel like he was ready to take it on the road. The problem was the calendar--by then we were down to Dressage at Devon, BLM Finals, and Region 1 Championships, all three major shows.  Devon show grounds is such a tense, claustrophobic environment and SFD already had 9 horses headed the the BLM Finals, so that left the Region 1 Championships—a huge, high-stress 7-ring show 5-hours from home. Plus the forecast was for 30 degrees each night with wind each day. If he could handle all that, he definitely has the makings of a show horse.

If you follow SFD on Facebook, you already know that he was a super star at the show. My favorite moment was his first trip down the centerline, where he sprawled into a halt, with his left eye rolling around to figure out where Capi was grazing. Once he located Capi, Nibs flipped his ears back to me, as if to say “ok, I’m ready, let’s do this” and proceeded to head around the ring being the obedient, good kid that he is.   

After the season

Now that the memories are made, the show clothes packed, the ribbons displayed, I’m heading into my favorite time of year – fall training. I get to play with next year’s skills, spend time on the big hill, and relax in the training until the cold comes and steals flexibility.  And bask in the memory of a good show season.

I have to take a moment to acknowledge the owners of each of these horses, who trust me to develop and compete such wonderful mounts. I'm honored and humbled that you selected me to ride for you.  I can't say thank you enough. 

Walls

This summer SFD has been crazy-busy.  This, of course, is a good thing.  Maddy and my ride lists have been full, SFD’s Forward Movers prepared a record number of kids for Lendon’s Youth Festival (we took a dozen, up from our normal 2 or 3), I’m preparing to re-test my l judge’s training, and this season, in addition to helping students, I have three horses I am personally campaigning.  All of this is quite good, enjoyable, rewarding work, but it does make for a busy summer. Which means “schedule the work, and then work the schedule.” Theoretically, all things will go smoothly.

But this is life, so ‘smoothly’ rarely happens.  Messy is more the norm.

As summer continued, additional messy stresses started piling on. I did what I do when in high-stress mode--I firmed up the walls of the schedule, made sure to include pockets of “refuel Ange” time, and kept to it, but now the walls were wall-papered with to-do lists. Somewhere around this time, I suffered a minor injury, which took my escape-from-the-world jogs and bike rides off of the agenda, making life inside of my walls a bit more brittle. 

Then, the week before I was to head to Saugerties with the kids, I lost a close friend. The fact that he was a horse should surprise no one.

I met Pikasso back when I was a working student in GA. He was only 7 then, and a complete southern gentleman. His owner and I became friends, and later, after I had moved to PA, Pikasso sold into my barn. I did not own him, but as a stable manager and trainer, once a horse is in my care, it’s a remarkably short trip from there to my heart.

When a horse passes, few people consider the horse’s stable manager’s need to mourn. But the caregiver spends more time with the horse than anyone, even his owner. I know the horse in a completely different, but no less rich, way than the owner.  When I lose a horse, I feel the loss very, very sharply. The hard part is while I am processing all of those emotions, I have to be support for the owner, often without any support of my own. Crumbling, ranting about the lack of fairness of it all, or just crying about how much I’ll miss him just isn’t an option. Owners can do that, but stable managers don’t get that privilege, because in the eyes of everyone else, he wasn’t my horse.  Which really doesn’t make sense--it’s like saying the only ones who can mourn a human’s passing are their blood relatives. This, of course, is horse pucky. Having known, trained, taught with, cared for, and worried about Pikasso for 17 years, I felt his loss sharply.

Or I should have, but not this time. The rigid walls I’d built to keep my schedule going wouldn’t allow time for mourning. By now the brittle environment inside my  walls had completely sapped my sense of humor, so I started keeping my distance from everyone for fear I say something inappropriate.

I went to Dressage 4 Kids, and all went really, really well.  I competed Capi and Secret the following weekend, and they were awesome.  On the surface, all was wonderful.

But the problem was the walls. They just didn’t want to come down.  Living inside walls isn’t fun. It feels distant from everything and everyone, emotions feel muted, opinions dip towards apathy. In short, it’s not a happy place.

Months ago, Doug and I had discussed going away for a few days in Aug. As usual, 150 reasons came up why we should skip our getaway, but the getaway was on our schedule, and I was working my schedule, so we went.

We purposely did not plan anything. We booked a hotel near the beach. We slept in until the scandalous time of 7, then looked at a map and decided where to wander. 

And without a schedule to hold the walls up, they began to relax. I began to relax. I caught myself smiling and laughing with my husband.

Our final morning, I went to watch the tide roll in one more time.  I stood, and as the waves crashed around me, I felt the tears finally begin to flow.  There, watching the sun come up, I said goodbye to my friend.

Then, in a messy, delightfully disorganized manner of life, a pod of dolphins began to leap and play. The balance of that free, wonderful play against the sadness of my loss reminded me that although the bitter cost of losing a horse is very high, the joy of loving them and sharing life with them is worth it.