Running a Business Part 1

I love to ride, and wanted to learn to ride better. That’s how this all got started.  College left me a bit fried, so I decided to take a year off to ride before going to vet school. So I packed my dogs and cat and belongings into a Budget moving truck and headed south. One year turned into 4, with 3 different working student positions, and when I had enough of those arrangements, I entered the horse world as a “professional.”

Now keep in mind, I went off to learn to ride.  Not to run a business, but to ride. 

In fairness, Claudia Garner, tried very hard to get me to focus on the business side of it – we spent time discussing promoting myself, creating a professional image, etc.  And John Krueger made efforts to go over the numbers of running a business with me.  I paid attention, but none of this prepared me for the hardest parts of running a business.

So I thought I’d write a bit about my process of trying to learn to be a boss. This will take a few posts, so here’s the first.

Staff Skills Part 1

Yea, horses are easy, people are hard.  As any of you that know me in real life know, I’m probably not the most user-friendly person. I try to be, honest I do, but my red-headed sarcastic side dominates most communication.  Combine that with a rather blunt honesty, and I spend a lot of time with my foot in my mouth.  When I was 20, everyone said tact would come with age.  If this is true, at my current rate of improved-tactfulness, I’m not sure I will live long enough.

If dressage teaches us anything, it teaches us to practice, to study, and to get help.  A funny thing about help, it tends to show up on its own time and place. Like this video, about what motivates people, showed up in a French horn blog I follow.  Not exactly what I was expecting when I went looking for advice on improving my horn playing, but cross-training is good, even cross-training of advice.

I watched the marker go over the board (why is watching anyone draw so completely addictive???), he hit the point of what motivates people.  As a boss in the oh-so-lucrative horse industry, his points that increased monetary incentive does not cause increased production is, frankly, a huge relief. 

Then he talks about what does motivate staff.  In short, the video says staff is happiest and most creative when they are left to be happy and creative, without their boss breathing over their shoulder.  This rings true with me.  I am always at my most productive when I generate the idea and have minimal oversight in getting it done.  My inner boss thinks I should follow this idea.

My inner boss has presented me with quite a challenge. 

You see, when I really look at the business of SFD, there’s the boss I want to be, and the boss I see myself becoming.

The pictures don’t really match.

Let’s be real, I’m a Dressage Geek. This defines me as a red-headed, type-A, detail-oriented control freak who knows she is right.  Trusting others with details is tough.  Especially since these are MY training horses, MY business, MY dream.  Heck, I hired Cheryle specifically to help me with the details of all of my crazy ideas.  But do I allow room for other folks ideas? Probably not.

SFD, which turned 5 this month, has grown beyond me.   Somehow, the MY needs to become OUR.  I need to figure out how to inspire ideas, then quit micro-managing, and trust my staff to be as motivated and high-standarded (is that a word? It should be) as I am. 

I write this as I am preparing for a breakfast staff meeting.  The meeting was originally set to go over feed stuff, but somehow I think this topic will trickle in.  I’ll let you know how.

Pictures from the Region 1 Adult Dressage Symposium

Yea, Secret has an amazing canter.

Cara and I watched from the doorway, so we could stand in the warm sun :-)

Charlotte stressed that the walk work had to have lots of forward movement with a round neck, and had us spend our breaks in the extended walk instead of the free walk.

I know my head is cut off, but look at her balance!

Secret and I grooming each other is a regular ritual, at home and away. This horse is such a joy.

Clinic Report - Region 1 Adult Dressage Symposium with Charlotte Baker

Clinics are risky.  No matter how well you do your homework, you won’t know if you, your horse, and the clinician will be a good fit until the lesson actually starts.  In a regular lesson, if it’s a bad fit, you can just head home and forget about it.  But clinics usually come with auditors, so if it goes badly, well, it goes badly in public.

The good news is the Region 1 Adult Dressage Symposium’s clinician, Charlotte Baker, and Secret and I were a good fit.

Secret is not a warmblood.  She is a Friesian/Arabian cross, which means she has the drama of the Friesian with the intelligence of the Arabian. 

Unfortunately, she also has the upright neck of the Friesian with the tight back of the Arabian.  Many clinicians have seen that neck and missed the tight back.  Those clinicians have coached me to lengthen my reins, with the goal of getting Secret’s neck as long as possible.  But with her tight back, that just doesn’t work.  We end up with her poll getting low, her nose coming behind the vertical, and her strides getting quick. 

But Charlotte wasn’t going to make that mistake. 

Charlotte immediately identified Secret’s problem (and neatly coached the auditors into also seeing) as a need for more suppleness in the back, and set to work loosening the dramatic little black mare.  She gave us several leg yield exercises, from the standard leg yield from centerline to the rail in trot and canter, nose to the wall leg yield in trot, and a nifty leg yield from x to the corner followed by a canter depart.  She followed that up with some lateral work in trot. These worked like a charm, and Secret’s back got softer and softer, and her neck came longer and longer.

Then Charlotte wanted to see our counter canter. Counter canter has been our nemesis ever since last fall, when I started playing with lead changes. I have put the lead changes on the shelf, but Secret, in that wonderful I-can-do-whatever-my-human-wants-if-I-just-try-a-little-harder mare attitude, still wants to show off her new trick.  She will maintain counter canter from the walk without anticipating a lead change, but if we change directions from true canter to counter canter, well, Secret knows exactly where to put the lead change, whether I cue it or not.  The right lead is significantly more prone to random lead swapping. And the more pressure we add (like a clinic or a show), harder she tries, and the more she swaps leads. 

Charlotte has this great technique for when things go wrong.  Instead of trying to push through it, she steps back and breaks the exercise into its component parts – the buttons that need to work in order for the exercise to be easy for the horse.  After a little exploring, we found that, when in the right lead canter, Secret’s reaction to my left leg is to tighten her topline and hurry, throwing her off balance. Then she uses the lead change to correct her balance.

Then Charlotte did something uncharacteristic in a clinician. She broke the rules.  She said “Generally, we don’t want to have a horse go with his haunches in while cantering, but for this horse, this is the correct correction.”  She did an excellent job of making sure everyone understood why this unconventional correction was correct.

We put Secret on a circle and worked with her to get her to give me haunches in on the circle, while maintaining her tempo, and bend, and a soft neck.  This was no easy feat.   Charlotte tactfully interspersed humor when things started to get tight with an “On the bit? Oh, yea, that too.”  Maybe Secret wasn’t the only over-achiever in the ring…

We didn’t get it 100% at the clinic, but the amount of suppleness we did create gave us a much better collected canter. In the week working with this since the clinic, she has gotten much more supple and relaxed about my left leg. I have not tried any challenging counter-canter lines yet, as Charlotte’s advice for me was to focus just on the canter haunches in for a little bit, then go back to the counter canter. 

On day two of the clinic, Secret’s soft back and longer neck proved that Charlotte was on the right path.  We continued with more suppleness work, this time utilizing bend changes in the lateral work (shoulder in to renvers, half pass to leg yield).  We also spent some time playing with transitions within the canter.  Charlotte made Linda, Secret’s owner, and I beam like kids at Christmas with the words “this mare has a lot of ability in the collected canter.” Watch out warmbloods!

In addition to my lessons, I took pages of notes, writing down the different suppleness-generating exercises Charlotte used for each level.  My horses at home have been reaping the benefits.

Thank you USDF, for making this excellent clinician affordable, to OVCTA’s great organizing, and Hassler Dressage for their incredible footing (the barn is nice too).  The clinic was truly a joy.

Here we go Again

Tomorrow I head down to Hassler’s to ride in the Region 1 Adult Dressage Symposium. The clinician is Charlotte Baker. 

When I first heard that Secret and I had been accepted, it was a couple weeks after the Klimke clinic, and my first reaction was “Oh no… not again.”  But this clinic will go better. 

For starters, this week ran smoothly.  It was packed to the gills, which is pretty normal for this time of year, but no major disasters occurred (yet), which is good.  I haven’t slept on the barn floor once this week.

Plus this time I’m going with friends.  Cara was also selected, so she, Linda and I got a room at the guest house.  I know several other riders as well. 

But most importantly, I know I am a skilled trainer. My happy, progressing horses say so.  And no two-legged authority figure is going to override their opinions.  If it all falls apart and I ride poorly in front of an audience again, the sun will rise the next day, and I put my breeches on, and go to the barn and ride.  I ride because I love to ride, and no one’s opinion will take that away from me. 

I won’t make that mistake again.

And if I do, may every one of you point me back to this blog. 

A barn in limbo

Well, it has happened again.  Once again, SFD is looking for a home base. 

We have been here before. McKinley Hunt, our last home, came with an awesome landlord, Sue Brown.  Shortly after we moved in, Sue decided to retire and build a house in NM.  The sale of McKinley prompted our move to Red Bridge, which, by and large, has worked out very well. That is, until now. 

As most everyone knows, our landlord passed away in late December.  His widow and son-in-law have been doing a great job of keeping the place up, but she just doesn’t want to live in that big house without her husband. I can’t say as I blame her.  So Red Bridge is on the market.

As of now, we don’t have a deadline, but I’d rather be pro-active than re-active.   I’ve been running numbers, comparing available facilities, making my pro-and-con lists.   Each move has given us better facilities than our last home, and I expect nothing less this time.  Red Bridge has some wonderful strengths, and we’d like our next home to have those strengths, plus a bit more.

The shopping list gets clearer with each move.  We need:

                An indoor and an outdoor

                Larger, better ventilated stalls

                Not too far from my main-line clients

                Heated bathroom, preferably with a shower (I can live without this, but I REALLY like not crunching with sweat if I have to do something after my rides)

                A variety in sizes and topography in turnout (some small, flat spaces for the hotter horses, a hilly pasture for weak-stifles

                A place to hack out and do conditioning

                An apartment for my most-awesome-groom, Lynn

                Be priced so I don’t have to charge an arm and a leg for board

The I-wish-I could-have-everything  list includes automatic waters in pastures and easy stall watering, logical tack room-laundry-grooming area set-up, and is designed so we never need a wheelbarrow or hose, but I think that will have to wait.

So that has been my last week or so, talking to people about facilities, looking at spreadsheets, comparing facilities.

On the horse front, the rehabs are coming along really well. Colonel, the old guy who survived a nasty puncture wound and subsequent hock surgery, is beating the odds and coming back.  Venus started light work this week (YEA!!! YEA!!! YEA!!!), and the therapeutic ultrasound has worked miracles in the thickness of her injured tummy muscle.

The competition horses are knocking my socks off.  Adding hill work in the springtime always makes horses more forward, but Eclipse and Secret have really benefited.  Both of them had all of the technical stuff for their levels, just needed a bit more fitness.  The hills gave them uphill, suspended fitness.  When I ride, it feels  like I’m bouncing on a kid’s jolly ball, and I grin as much as a 4-year-old.  Eclipse came through a tough workout Friday with more gas in the tank – a marked improvement from last year. 

We have another spring schooler at Red Bridge this weekend, then Sunday we hit our first recognized show.  I’ll post pics next week.

Michael Klimke clinic March 2010, part 2

This is the second part of a two-part post -- check out the previous post for  the first part of it.
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Which he did, but not until he had valiantly tried to correct my hands and seat enough that she would reach forward and downward.  As an instructor, I understand why he took that approach, and in my stiff-and-stressed-out state, my seat and hands gave him lots of areas to correct. 

The more he corrected, the deeper I tried to sit, the stiffer my back got, and the more frustrated his tone got. Once I heard the frustration in his voice, my favorite “I’m nervous so I think I’ll ride badly habits” showed up.  You know, those pet bad habits that lie dormant for months and months until you are lulled into thinking you have finally banished them, only to find that once you get nervous, they pop right back up.  

For me, when I’m nervous, the neuropathways between my brain and my right side shut down. 

This time it started with my hand position.  No matter what I told my right hand to do, it didn’t do it.  Instead it did all sorts of random things, things I would never ask it to do.  Really, would any self-respecting dressage rider ride with her right hand nearly touching her thigh?  I know I didn’t tell my right hand to do that, especially not in front of Klimke and 80 auditors.  But sure enough, that’s where my right hand kept drifting.  I’d tell my right hand to come back up, and two strides later, like some rebellious teenager, it’d go sneaking down to my thigh again.

Then there was my right leg.  On a normal day, my right leg is my weaker leg. I know I’m riding well when my right thigh is slightly more tired than my left one. Which thankfully, is more often than not.  But I wasn’t riding well, so my right leg didn’t even join me on the horse.  I might as well have been wearing a prosthetic.  My calf wouldn’t stay connected to Secret sides, no matter how hard I tried.  The more I pushed my knee down, the more my calf would pop off and slide forward.

Then my inner critic kicked in.  Every time Klimke tried to improve my position, my inner critic destroyed it.  By 15 minutes into the lesson, I went from being on top of the world for being selected for this clinic, to feeling like the weakest dressage rider in the clinic, to feeling like the weakest dressage rider ever.   

While I’m beating myself up, Klimke decided to try using transitions within and between the gait to get Secret more through her topline.  She reacted by getting tighter in front of the saddle, doing a very effective impression of a chess piece.  I could practically hear her thinking, “Aunt Ange, this isn’t what we usually do, but if this is what you want, well, ok...”

Klimke, being German, was not one to mince words.  He made it clear what he thought—“Your hands and your seat are not good enough.”  This, of course, got my inner voice screaming, “Well that advice doesn’t really help, does it???” But I kept smiling and riding, hoping my thoughts didn’t show too clearly.

Once we got to the canter work, things improved.  Secret has an amazing canter, naturally very uphill and balanced, and my canter seat is better than my trot seat. As the work improved, I was able to gain control of my right hand and leg, and began to think maybe I was letting Secret show everyone how awesome she is. We worked on the canter-walk-canter transition, and it improved significantly by the end of the ride.

But by day two, Secret was tired of my stiff back and the different training approach. She came into the ring tight and fussy, and seemed determined to stay that way.   Klimke kept changing exercises in a vain attempt to get us to settle.

But nothing really worked.  I tried to ride all bent lines in shoulder fore. I tried riding the lines straighter.  I tried a lighter seat.  I tried a stronger seat.  Klimke kept stopping the lesson to talk, which I quickly learned is Klimke-ease for “this isn’t working at all.”  My mind was going 100 miles an hour, between “c’mon Secret, please” and “Ange, friggin’ ride better,” and “Can we try something else? Like tennis?”  But nothing worked. 

We had one shining medium trot mid way through the ride, but when we got to counter canter, she was through with all of us. 

Klimke started the counter canter work with Friday’s exercise. Secret did the same as she had done on Friday—counter canter nicely to the corner, then swap leads (cleanly, I must say).  So he had me bring her to walk, then counter canter again.  And she swapped leads again.  And again. And again.  And again.  The movie “Groundhogs Day” was playing right there at Riveredge West.  My inner voice was screaming, “enough already!”  Secret kept getting more and more tense.

After what seemed like hours, Klimke finally simplified the exercise enough that we could at least end on counter canter instead of an un-cued flying change.  At the end, he patted her on the neck and said he hoped he hadn’t messed up her canter. 

Then Scott Hassler picked up the microphone and said “I want to commend Ange on her composure and tact.”  And with that, my red-headed-bad-ass facade cracked.  I cried.

Yes, me. 

I wanted the ground to open and eat me alive. 

But of course it didn’t.  I survived.  We watched a few more rides, then packed up and headed home. 

After the clinic I was in a funk. 

I looked at the still photos, and I really didn’t look that bad, but that didn’t help. I watched the video snippet on the Internet, and Secret looked good, but that didn’t help either. I couldn’t get past Klimke labeling my seat and hands “not good enough.”  I was second-guessing my aids, picking my seat apart, and generally feeling sorry for myself. 

With all of this negative mental baggage, I continued to pretty much ride for crap until I saw Scott for a lesson two weeks later. By then, my trainer-ego was battered from my unending self-flagellation.  But Scott had watched the same lessons, and he saw tough training sessions, not embarrassingly ineffective riding.  His words helped me put it in perspective.  In typical Scott fashion, he ended it with “You be you.” 

He is right.  I am me, and these hands and seat are my tools, tools that have a track record of serving me well.  That weekend, I was not at my best.  That weekend aside, my tools have brought a lot of horses up the levels, many who lacked the natural Warmblood balance and looseness.  Heck, several weren’t even born with clean gaits.  But somehow my “not good enough” hands and seat taught them how to become solid competition horses with piles of year-end awards.

So what did I get out of the clinic?  I don’t ride well when my world is crumbling, but then who does?  And my daily track record of riding well, using and re-using and re-using all of the lessons I have learned, trumps one weekend of riding poorly in front of a big-name expert. 

And Venus?  Now, seven weeks after her accident, we are pretty sure Venus will return to a dressage career.

The Honda, though, will forever wear the mark of my horrible week.

The Michael Klimke Clinic, March 2010, Part 1

The short version -- I was not the rider Secret needed me to be during the Michael Klimke clinic in March 2010.  And the clinic had different, unexpected lessons to teach.

The long version —it all started two weeks before the clinic, with Venus, my spicy-red-hot mare.  She handled our snowbound February fairly well until she came into season.  Hormones tend to tighten her back and shorten her attention span, but since she hadn’t been able to roll and buck, she was particularly tight and distracted.  On Sunday, I decided to let her run it off in the indoor arena.  I pulled the barricade across the doorway, hung hopefully-scary stuff on it, and let her loose.

Yeah, that was a bad idea.

She bucked one 20-m circle, trotted up to the barricade, stopped, and jumped it from a standstill.

Well, there’s a reason Venus is not a show jumper.  

On the way over, she shattered the barricade with her left stifle, twisted as she almost fell, scrambled back up, passaged through the snow up to Eclipse’s stall, spun around, and double-barreled the stone wall by his door.  She, of course, was quite lame and swollen from this wild escapade.  When she failed my The Three Day Rule (Simple soft tissue strains resolve quite nicely with three days off and a little anti inflammatories.  If things don’t resolve in that time frame, I call the vet.), I began to worry and scheduled a lameness appointment the following Tuesday. 

But Venus had other plans.

By Tuesday, she was beyond bored, and she started munching on straw. Combine that with sudden inactivity, Venus was working on a bit of constipation, which became the priority.

I didn’t want to go to New Bolton unless Venus looked like a surgical candidate, which she did not, so Dr. Crowley, the-most-amazing-vet-ever, and Leslie, her faithful sidekick, rigged an IV set-up in Venus’s stall.  I spent Tuesday night changing bags and making sure the IV was running freely.  Around midnight, Venus rewarded me with a beautiful pile of poo. 

Wednesday morning’s rectal exam showed a clear colon (which, for anyone who has dealt with an impaction, is really quite fast for it to resolve), so I started the slow process of reintroducing food.  Thanks to Carol’s help, I managed to go home and take a nap in the evening, then was back to the barn Wednesday night to give her small hay feedings every 2 hours.

So this takes us to Thursday, the day we leave for Klimke.  After sleeping on the cold barn floor for two nights, I’m tired, stiff, and worried.

Then, to add insult to injury, I backed my truck into my I-love-this-car-and-will-drive-it-until-it-drops Honda.

Just great.

So with all that baggage, Secret and I headed down to Maryland to ride for one of my idols.  Between rides, I ran back up to PA to check on Venus, and bounced between worrying about impaction colic and worrying she had damaged herself beyond a dressage career. 

Shocker, I didn’t ride well.  Not either day.

Day one began with Klimke asking about Secret’s breeding.  When I said Friesian Arabian cross, his eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped (really, I have it on video).  My stomach sank.

We started with Klimke’s “forward, down over the back” warm up.  This works great on 90% of horses.  But then there’s Secret.  Given her breeding, her tight shoulders and big neck don’t take kindly to that plan.  Lateral work early in the ride loosens her quite effectively.  I know better than to argue with a clinician, so of course I did what he directed, expecting him to see her reaction and adjust the exercise accordingly.