Falling off the Tracks

That's French, if any of you were wondering.

Some time last week (or maybe it was the week before, it's hard to remember when you've been babysitting four children over the course of one week), I mentioned that I had ordered Philippe Karl's Classical Dressage (volume 1), and that I would share all of the wondrous things I gleaned from the DVD.

Well, I didn't glean much.

When you watch the DVD at 10:00 at night after a long day of work, your brain gets a little...


fuzzy.

I tried. I really, really did.

But I kind of lost focus.

(post concussion syndrome will do that to you).

I did, however, have a breakthrough with Grim using Philippe Karl's method of lunging.

All my life (okay, that's an over-statement) I'd been taught to plant my feet in the middle of the circle and do. Not. Move.

(I can feel myself getting dizzy already)

It was fact. Just stand and let the horse go around you, because if you move the horse will think he's got the upper hand (or something like that... I'm honestly not sure what the point was). So when I saw Philippe Karl walking his horse up the long end of the arena I went HUH?

Then I went

I am a certified Yahoo!Answers stalker. It's purely for fun because, let's face it, you never know what you'll see on there. Some of the questions are so ridiculous that you just can't help but wonder at the ignorance of some people, and then you start to wonder how they could possibly so uneducated. Then you start to feel bad for laughing at it.

All of that aside, I do enjoy skulking around the horse section. You see a lot of repeat questions on there: Critique my riding; am I too big for this horse; daddy won't get me a pony, what do I do; etc.

And sometimes it's something I'm very familiar with: "Should I change barns?"

This is a question relating to something which I've learned the hard way - that if you're unhappy, you should probably get the heck out.

I'm one of those people who doesn't like to disappoint their friends (and I like to think that most people are this way), so when I'm uncomfortable in a situation, I just shut down. I start to get passive, and I start to get anxious at the thought of dealing with the situation. Much to my chagrin, and no matter how much I vehemently disagree, I've been told often that I am "too nice" and this is why I always get into such situations.

In 2009, I began working for a local trainer. She had a reputation of being both hard on her students, and being extremely good at instructing. I started out just feeding horses and mucking out stalls, plus a few odd jobs. It worked out well - we got on just fine. As my employment with her continued, I discovered that she would make careless comments.

"My daughter is bipolar, and that's way worse than your clinical depression." (Yeah, I was a dramatic teenager...).

"God takes care of old women and idiots. If I'm the old woman, then you must be the idiot."

"At least you didn't make a fool of yourself this time."

Over the three years I spent with her, I discovered that her "honesty" had no bounds; and she took to insulting not only my intelligence, but my horse, my tack, my trailer, and my house as well. She found it her place to deposit her opinion on how I spent my money, on how my parents (graciously) paid for my riding habit, and on how I make a fool of myself in front of others. Her daughter once, very loudly, informed me that I would fail in riding one of her ponies.

Looking back, I cannot fathom how I put up with her. I cannot figure out why on earth I allowed her to continue the insults and the bad mouthing (oh, yes, I wasn't the only one she insulted, and some of the things she and her daughter said about the other students and their families behind their backs would make your skin crawl).

During the last year of my employment with her, I began riding her Oldenburg mare Mikailah after selling my paint horse (which I loved and would have kept without the prompting of instructor to sell, sell, sell because I'd outgrown him). The mare was green. She'd only had a handful of rides when I first got on her, and so I taught her everything (the good and the bad). We were a golden team: Both oddballs who didn't fit into our discipline, and she tried so hard for her inexperienced rider and put up with my mistakes in a glorious fashion. I wanted so badly to buy her.

But Mikailah was difficult. She was reactive and quick, and I'd never ridden a horse like her before. I was scared of her big movement and speed, and it took us a while to get the ball rolling. As we progressed, my instructor started to expect more of us. More lead changes, more perfect distances to the jumps, more, more. We weren't ready for more.

There were basics my inexperienced brain knew Mikailah was lacking. I didn't like jumping courses and flinging myself at her for the lead change we had barely schooled. And I'd get hammered for it. My instructor was vicious. I stopped enjoying the ride, and Mikailah knew it. I was washed out, despondent, and tired all the time. As my instructor's impatience with my riding grew, so did her impatience for my work. She began swapping things around - moving horses, changing feed, and she wouldn't tell me. Lord help me when I found out I had been doing it wrong.

I got sick.

Anxiety about work and disappointing my instructor made me physically ill.

Regardless, I went to ride and work every day. The quality of my work disintegrated beneath my nausea and lingering effects from a brain injury that seemed to worsen under the stress. The more tired I became, the more muddled my brain was. I could not focus, I could not remember, and I was oh, so exhausted.

My instructor wanted me to buy Mikailah, but when approached about the sale, she would not talk to me about it, saying that she morally could not since my parents were paying for lessons (keeping in mind that I was, at this point, an adult and I, not my parents, would have paid for the horse). I had no idea what she was asking for the horse, or how much she would charge me for board. My parents' response? "Well, what do you want?"

I didn't even know if I could afford the horse; how was I supposed to know what I wanted?

When I finally informed my instructor that I could not afford her, the situation degraded rapidly. She informed me that she had turned down a buyer for the mare and had been charging us for lessons based off the expectation that we would buy the horse.

I rode Mikailah one last time, and that weekend I packed up my equipment. My instructor offered me a pay cut, and work in exchange for lessons. I could barely afford gas for my truck as it was, and so I quit.

Looking back there are so many what-ifs. What if she'd communicated to me about the horse. What if I'd pushed harder for the sale price. What if I'd taken the pay cut. What if I'd bought the mare and moved her to my property.

Part of me bemoans the loss of such a great education. Part of me knows I am better off. And the largest part of me has realised that I should have left a long time ago.

It is thanks to this instructor, and her daughter, that I will not ever allow myself to be in such a poisonous relationship again. I allowed her to verbally abuse me without reproach; I was her punching bag to take out her stress and frustration on. She finds her happiness in putting others down, and so I pity her.

Six months later, she is still the bitter and hateful woman she was when I met her.

I learned a lot from her, but the most important thing she taught me is this: I will not ever subject myself to such a hate-filled "friendship" again.

The May clinic was super informative (and I felt slightly less stupid this time... only slightly). Here are the notes Miss Sherry took for me; her comments are in bold and my additions are in italics.

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May 2012 - Grimsey

How much weight in seat vs. thighSeat (60), thigh (40).

Heel back

Knee down - right heel really does need to come back
See my previous post for an explaination of "knee down."

Transitions - lift bloody stumps
Okay, if you haven't read my blog on the April Clinic, you're probably going "uh, what?" So, please see the introduction to bloody stumps and then come back and read my explaination. 

So, it's pretty much what it sounds like. For transitions, Sherry asked me to "lift" my bloody stumps, otherwise described as lifting the knee (more of a feeling than an actual movement). For the transition to work, the rider must have a tight tummy (or engaged core). Once the Bloody Stumps are lifted, you are already asking for the upward transition, so if the horse does not respond, calf, and a cluck.

Put your chest over front edge of seatbones - over your lap
This is a comment in response to the fact that Sherry told me I was sitting behind the vertical (if you had drawn a line from my heel to my hip to my ear, my ear would be behind the imaginary line). In response to me leaning backwards, it was creating an arch in my lumbar (probably facilitating my already chronic back pain). Sherry's solution was for me to shift my weight more forward, and in doing so centering my chest over the front of my seatbones (over my lap).

She then asked, "do you feel like you're slouching?"
My response: "Yes."
She then informed me that I was not slouching, but was perfectly vertical (straight) in the saddle. She did comment, though, that I have the tendancy to drop my shoulders which creates the illusion of my slouching or leaning too far forward.

Next time you're told to "sit back," rotate your shoulders open, and rotate forearm.
This was an interesting concept to me, and so I was able to glean a little more factual information in reguards to riding and rider position. The reason Sherry had my rotate my forarm (so that my palm was facing more upward, my thumb pointed out) was because it would open up my shoulders more, and make it easier to actually rotate my shoulders open by pulling my shoulder blades together.

So, what else does rotating the forarm do?

Flat hands (otherwise known as "puppy dog paws" or "piano players hands") cross the bones of the arm over, and take the elbow away from the body (think chicken wings). Turning the thumb over (rotating the forearm) stabilizes the elbow and uncrosses the ulna and radius (long bones in the lower arm) and opens and brings the rider's shoulder back. This softens the forearm.

This is also a method useful when trying to achieve an inside bend (and even turning), but instead of rotating both arms, rotate the inside arm (so that your thumb is pointing the direction you want to go). It positions the rider's upper body in a way to facilitate the bend and softening of the inside of the horse. It makes the "funnel" you are riding into larger, it raises the hand slightly, it closes the elbow to the trunk (body), and it prevents the use of a fist agains the mouth. For the horse, it works on the corners of the mouth instead of the bars to help mobilize the jaw.

Trot - check balance by staying up. Post from middle of thigh (bloody stumps).Goes back to the exercise in which Sherry had me standing at the rise of the trot.

Walk - drop stirrups - feel thighs rotate. Feel one thigh fall against him, then other.This was one of the most difficult concepts for me to master because I have an impairment between the movement of my body and my brain (from a TBI several years ago). It takes an immense amount of focus for me to associate a feeling and time a movement to that feeling.

The idea is to feel the swinging of the ribcage. With my feet out of the stirrups, I could let my thigh relax and fall and feel the way Grimsey's ribcage swings and pushes my thighs in and out. As his inside hind is getting ready to come forward, my inside thigh will fall against his side. This will be important for the Bowties exercise (disribed later).

As the inside thigh falls in, the outside thigh is lifted off.

Bowties - "horsey sit ups"
1) Pattern - inside rein (hitch hike!), inside leg push as it swings (as thigh moves in, that hind leg is starting to come forward).
This one may be a bit hard to explain in words; however, I will do my best to make it as clear as I can. The image below is the pattern for Bowties:
So, as the name suggests, you're going to be creating something of a bow tie with your movements. Start out walking on the rail; as you reach the centre of your arena, begin yielding out until you are about 15 feet off the rail. Open the inside rein, and as you ask your horse to come around, go back to the "Thighs" exercise (feeling the shifting of the thighs in accordance with the horse's hind legs). As the inside leg is getting ready to step forward, press with your inside leg and ask him to step across. Do so until you are facing back the other direction, walk on, and once you reach the centre, begin yielding over. Wash, rinse, repeat.


The goal of the exercise is to engage the horse's tummy muscles.

Turn on forehand (in hand)
This is an exercise Miss Sherry did with me while I was on Grimsey's back. Though I've schooled a turn on the forehand with him before (and he's always been quite proficient, being a fast learner), it wasn't the type of turn on the forehand Sherry had in mind. Our turn on the forehand was more of a pivot, whereas Sherry wanted him to turn as though around an axis; stepping across both in front and behind. 


So, with me mounted up, Sherry took my riding bat from me, hooked a single finger through the bit, and began very lightly tapping his shoulder. The pressure increased based upon any lack of response, and if he got "stuck" and refused to move, she moved the crop to his barrel (again, beginning with light pressure and increasing) as she asked him to move his hindquarters.


Think of it as a big circle around a central point.


This was our big homework assignment from the clinic; I am to do it every day until June 20th (our next meeting), and then we are going to try this under saddle (for the record, I already did, and Grimsey had much less pivot, and much more stepping around in the front end).


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There you have it: The May clinic. There aren't many notes to be had, but some pretty helpful stuff was included in the lesson. The next clinic is June 20, and so I will try to post notes from that clinic as soon as possible (which, knowing me, will be in July).

In other news, I just received a DVD: Classical Dressage: 1, The School of Aids by Philippe Karl. I'm SO excited to watch it, and hopefully I can share anything significant I learn from it. I also have a new book on the way - The Search for Collection by Paul Belasik (and I suggest any book by him, he's wonderful) - which I will hopefully receive within the week.

Cheers!