Lily

Lily has been doing really, really well for me under saddle the past month. I had given up hoping she would ever do this well. She is doing so well that I have an almost superstitious fear of mentioning it: her improvement over last summer seems almost magical. Last summer, when she wasn’t cranky about saddle fit she was backing off from whatever bit I put in her mouth. I finally stopped riding her in anything but her western saddle and started using a mild hackamore instead of a bit.

By last fall, she was moving forward enough that I told D, my trainer, “well, she would probably do okay in hunter under saddle, if we could convince her not to snarl at the other horses, and ride her in something besides a western saddle and hackamore.” She was very pleasant. However, when horse people say a horse is pleasant, they are frequently damning with faint praise, sort of like the old backhanded compliment, “but she has a great personality!” (Though the first few years with my Thoroughbred Hap, I tried for pleasant, since pleasant made such a nice change from “run away!”)

Because of my own physical problems, Lily got most of the winter off. I restarted her in late winter by lunging her. I was feeling fairly fragile myself still, so I didn’t even want to think about getting on her. However, I did start to get myself somewhat accustomed to riding again by riding my friend’s Percheron cross, Major.

In early-spring, I spent a month of sessions where I would lunge her, then ride her briefly in the western saddle. I had been lunging her with a bit in her mouth, and she was accepting it, so I didn’t drag out the hackamore. At first I rode her at the walk, with a few jog steps before I finished. After the western jog started turning into something that I might optimistically call a working trot, I started doing more trot work. About two months after I started riding her again, I took a deep breath, told myself that even though I had been restarting her as if she had never been ridden, I had cantered her lots in the past five years, and asked for the canter. She hesitated, asked me if I was sure, and picked up a nice working canter when I asked again. And it felt like a balanced working canter, though since I had asked her to canter on impulse, my trainer wasn’t around and I couldn’t ask her to confirm it.

We started mini-lessons with my trainer again, since I wasn’t strong enough to last a full lesson. She started me doing “shoulder-fore” with Lily at the trot. I had done it with other horses, but I couldn’t manage it with the hackamore. The shoulder-fore helped with straightness, and Lily started to shift her weight back a little more. After a session, more and more, I found myself riding over to my trainer and asking, “did that look as good as it felt?”

Before you can put a horse on the bit, the horse has to be forward, and the horse has to be willing to take contact. (There are some other components, I know, though I am still trying to figure out throughness.) I had given up trying to put Lily on the bit, because she would not take contact, nor was she forward enough. One day, right before my birthday, I realized something strange was happening as she trotted: Lily was taking contact. I closed my legs on her sides, took a slightly firmer hold of the contact myself as quietly as I knew how, and for a few steps, I was able to put her on the bit.

Trying to do dressage in a western saddle is a challenge, but the saddle had become my security blanket. I had stuck on her despite a few spooks and crow hops through the spring, and attributed my doing so to extra support of the western saddle, since I don’t think of myself as a very strong rider anymore. (I had actually got pretty good at sticking Hap’s patented “drop shoulder, pivot, and bolt” routine, but that was a long time ago, since I finally managed to train him out of it when he was fourteen or so. )

I put my jumping saddle on Lily, but there wasn’t enough there, there, and besides, I still want to work on dressage for a while until she is even stronger. However, I rode her in the jumping saddle long enough to find that she didn’t seem to object to it anymore. When I re-introduced her to the dressage saddle, she seemed happy with it as well, and I felt more secure than in the jumping saddle.

My trainer’s oldest junior student, who has been riding with her for years, expressed an interest in riding Lily. I had been concerned that Lily is essentially a one-rider horse, and R, who used to lease Hap from me, is a good rider, so I welcomed the suggestion. The first time I watched R ride Lily was when we were still using the western saddle. I watched for a while, and asked my trainer quietly, “does Lily look that good when I ride her?” “She usually looks a little better.” There were some moments with the two were at cross purposes, and Lily was obviously frustrated. Most of the time Lily looked like a well schooled show hunter who wouldn’t have looked out of place in an A-show under saddle class. But for a few minutes toward the end, R was able to put Lily on the bit, ask her to lift her forehand, and Lily looked simply brilliant. I had given up hoping she would ever look like that.

Lily has had a lot of training in the five years that I have had her, even with the year off with the bowed tendon injury. But it feels as though, one night this spring, someone replaced my frustrating, basically sweet natured but all too frequently cranky, evergreen mare, with this marvelous trained horse. My trainer thinks that she was sore backed from her cycles, and finally matured out of it. I think it might be that, or some subtle physical injury that finally healed over the winter. We still have a lot to learn together, but now I feel as though we are building with bricks, rather than trying to build with sand.

* * *

I do most of my riding in the arena at my trainer’s place. One long edge lies along a country highway. The road wasn’t too busy when I started riding there twelve years ago, but traffic has picked up over the years with the growth of population in Black Forest. (By the way, reportedly the Black Forest was not named after the area in Germany, but because it appeared black in the distance when seen by the early European descent settlers in this area.)

The bad news about riding along side an occasionally busy road is that young, green or nervous horses (and occasionally riders) take a while to get used to the traffic whooshing by. The good news is that once they do become accustomed, it seems to make them more bomb proof in general. I ride with one ear pricked, and move my horse to the other side of the arena if it sounds like something really unusual is approaching, like the guy with the twelve foot flags flapping behind the cab of his pickup truck.

I took a mini-lesson with my trainer this morning, which was return for me helping her with two almost beginner riders to whom she would like to be able to give a semi-private lesson. My trainer usually starts beginners on the lunge line, and she likes me to keep an eye on one while she works with the other. (My trainer’s school horses have an easy life: they tend to get ridden as much in a week as most school horses get ridden in a day. It means they stay fairly lively. While it is nice to have enthusiastic horses, beginner riders usually benefit from a more laid back approach.)

While my trainer D was working with one of the kids to set up Major to ride bareback, I warmed up Lily. It used to take forever to warm her up, but now she doesn’t require much more than Hap needs. (In fact, Hap doesn’t need warming up so much as settling down. I have several different protocols depending on which Hap I am riding at the time.)

When D came out, I was trying to see how much working trot I could get from Lily without her falling out of cadence. The answer was quite a lot, in fact almost more trot than I could comfortably post.

The first horse I could sort-of put on the bit was a horse I rode with a trainer down in Texas. The second horse I thought I could put on the bit was D’s horse Havoc, who was probably the best trained horse I have ridden. Then I learned about a year later what Havoc felt like when he was really on the bit, and realized that he had played me for a sucker before that. I can still remember what it felt like the first time I put Hap on the bit, though it took me years to be able to do it consistently. (Hap had serious “I am going to protect everything from my shoulder forward” issues.)

I had expected, somehow, that Lily would start feeling like Hap if we ever managed to get her trained. Instead she is starting to feel a lot like Havoc. I could have closed my eyes this morning and believed I was riding Havoc.

Usually, my lessons have been all about Lily. This morning, D decided the lesson was going to be all about Elaine, since Lily is doing so well. Today this meant sitting trot, which I rarely do, since it was the last thing I wanted to do with a horse I suspected had back issues. (It took me years to learn to sit Hap’s trot correctly, because he would immediately drop his back to protect it, which made it even harder for me to sit). And so D drilled and drilled and drilled Lily and I, or so it seemed. The torture was made more bearable when I noticed that, despite doing something that seemed very uncomfortable to me, Lily was trotting forward and keeping her back up under the saddle, which meant she didn’t think it was all that uncomfortable. D finally came up to us and told me to swing my leg back. I thought she planned to take my stirrups away, but instead, despite my whimper, she put them down a hole. And then I found I could sit the trot.

We were taking a break in the scary part of the arena, the part adjacent to the lions and tigers and bears (according to Hap, anyway), when I heard something that sounded like a shot. This was followed by something that felt very like an earthquake. I had enough time to say to myself, very firmly, “I will not fall off” before Lily stood with all four feet on the ground again and me still on her. I was looking around to see how the kid riding Major with the bareback pad was doing, when I heard a double shot, and experienced another earthquake. Once again, I was still on Lily when she subsided. I asked her to walk forward to the non-scary part of the arena, which she did obediently. I then asked D if I could bail. She said yes, followed by a compliment on how well I rode during the excitement. I executed the quickest dismount I’ve managed in a year. It must have been fairly impressive display because the kid on Major asked me if I was okay. I was just grateful that Major is the closest I know to a totally bombproof horse. By then the truck that had backfired was driving slowly past. Twelve years of riding in that arena, and I had never heard a backfire before. I hand walked Lily until the truck was safely down the road, and remounted.

The rest of the lesson was short and nicely anticlimactic. We did some more sitting trot on the circle, and it was as if sticking to Lily through two violent spooks had shaken something loose in my back, because it felt much easier to do. Lily stayed reasonably relaxed and forward, though she did take an occasional suspicious glance to one side or another. I didn’t blame her: if I hadn’t known that the truck had driven down the road, I would have been suspicious too.