The following weekend, I could stand up without the excruciating pain that had plagued me for the past few months. What little pain I felt was bearable, so I eagerly put on my riding breeches, slipped on my paddock boots, and headed out to the car.
It was the second week of March, and even though it was normally still cold in March, the past week had brought us a heat wave. The temperatures soared to fifty degrees and melted all of the snow. It was just as warm on Saturday, my first day back to riding. The sky was clear blue, unusual for a winter day.
I got to the farm later than I had wanted and rushed to tack up so that I had at least twenty minutes before the lesson to adjust to sitting in a saddle again and riding my horse.
I put on the saddle, led Moonshine outside to the mounting block, stepped into the stirrup and threw my right leg over his back. In that instant, the pain I first felt rushed back. I plopped into the saddle. My right leg was paralyzed.
Moony, please don’t move!
I needed a minute to recover. The aching did not subside, but Moonshine, growing restless, had begun to paw and shuffle, so I knew it was time to get him going. Luckily, no one was around to see me wincing in agony.
I knew Carol wanted me to go to her in the indoor but I needed to be alone. I was afraid that if anyone saw me, they would pull me off my horse. I pointed Moonshine to the farthest arena on the property.
I insisted he walk slowly. Amazingly, he obeyed. His walk was even less choppy than I remembered. I was grateful. Then, I looked up ahead and realized I was riding again! I was where I belonged, in the saddle, on my horse. I finally felt whole again. The soreness in my back and legs didn’t matter anymore. Nothing else mattered now. I turned Moony around and pointed him toward the indoor. I was ready for my first lesson.
I could only ride the walk and rising trot. Most of the fancy movements were done at the canter, but Carol knew I couldn’t handle that yet. Although I was elated to be back in the saddle, I was annoyed that I couldn’t canter. I wanted to ride those fancy moves!
“I was going to teach you the upper level dressage moves at the walk anyway,” she declared, detecting my frustration. Somehow, she had turned my limitation into an opportunity to teach me more. Unlike anyone else, my trainer understood me. She knew what to say and how to say it.
__________
By April, I was riding pain-free. Even though I was riding again, training was still hard. Carol constantly pushed us, challenged us.
“Keep at it,” she would say, “Legs on strong, keep your seat strong,” she often instructed. She would work us until I had very little strength left, and then offer a walk break. I found it fascinating that she knew what my breaking point was physically, brought me to it, and then let me rest just when I reached it.
How does she know how much to push and when to back off? I wondered. She seemed to have full access to both Moonshine’s and my own thoughts and physical capabilities. We were transparent to her.
Moony and I continued to progress, although occasionally my back would freeze up, inhibiting my ability to sit his choppy strides. He would responsively also freeze up. I should have known that he was just reacting to the tension in my back, but instead I immediately got frustrated. Before the accident, I was able to compensate for Moonshine’s stiffness by overusing my back, but now, that ability was gone. I would then kick my horse in my annoyance, which set him off on a bucking spree—also not ideal for my weak back.
After a few lessons, Carol sensed my growing aggravation.
“You can’t get mad at him when your back gives out. So you temporarily lost one of your tools. Why don’t you replace it with another one?” she said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Your mind. When you get angry, that means you’ve lost control. That means that that control has shifted over to Moonshine. So basically, every time you lose your cool, the horse is outsmarting you,” she said plainly.
And now I felt stupid.
“So how do I avoid that?” I asked.
“You will have to figure that out. But what I can help you do is to gain some advantages,” she said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Little tricks; because dressage is performed in a rectangular arena, you can use geometry to help you reinforce your aids if the horse is ignoring them,” she said.
“How?” I asked.
“Let’s say you’re having trouble with your shoulder-ins, utilize the corners just before the movement to establish the bend you need for the shoulder-in on the long side of the arena. It’s impossible for him to not bend in the shoulder-in if he’s already bent before he starts. Let’s try it out. Pick up the trot and bend him before you start the shoulder-in, let’s see if he stays bent in the movement.”
I squeezed my legs, cuing Moony to pick up the trot, and headed to a corner leading into one of the two long sides of the arena. I bent Moonshine’s head and neck to the inside, just as I approached the corner. It was easier to ask for more bend in the corner, as his body was already bending into the sharp turn. As he trotted through the corner, I applied my inside leg to my outside rein, so that I could bring his shoulders to the inside of the track (hence the name shoulder-in). To my astonishment, he stayed bent! It was so much easier to just keep my inside leg on to keep him moving down the long side on three tracks, as opposed to applying my leg and wrestling his head to the inside with my reins.
“It worked!” I let out.
Carol was amused, as usual.
“Let’s try it a few more times, just to make sure that wasn’t beginner’s luck,” she coached.
After trying this trick out on both directions to ensure that it wasn’t an accident, I was ready to learn more.
“What’s another trick?” I asked.
“Oh, now you’re ready for all the tricks in the book, huh?” she teased.
“Of course!” I played along.
Now, taking an air of official authority in a very non-serious manner, Carol started, “Well, technically, there are no tricks in dressage. You know all the experts say it’s just a matter of hard work.”
“Those experts never rode Moonshine!” I retorted.
She laughed.
“OK, back to work, cheater,” she joked. “Pick up the trot on a twenty-meter circle around me.”
I did as I was told. Moonshine picked up his pogo-stick-like choppy trot. He was almost round in his body, but not quite. He was almost working through his back, pushing off his hind legs, but still rigid. He was always “almost” there.
“Ready for your next trick?” she asked.
“Yup!”
“OK, is he totally round?” she asked.
“No,” I admitted.
“What’s the aid to make him round?” she tested me often.
“Inside leg to outside rein,” I let out automatically.
“Good, did you apply that aid?”
“Yes,” I said.
“OK, we know he didn’t immediately respond to the aid for roundness. So now we need a little reinforcement. Only use this when the first aid doesn’t work. This is more of a tip for when you’re desperate, like in a class at a show or something.”
“I’m always desperate on this horse,” I joked, half-serious.
“I know, I know, woe is you,” she dished back.
“Back to business, what you can do to reinforce the aid for roundness is to take your inside rein in your inside hand, and sort of move your fingers around softly but firmly, like you’re milking a cow.”
“Milking a cow?” I asked.
“Yeah, haven’t you ever milked a cow before?”
“No,” I said.
“What about a goat?”
“I’ve never milked anything before,” I told her. Did she forget I was from Queens? Where was I supposed to find a cow to milk in Queens? I wondered.
“Really? OK, well anyway this is what it looks like when you’re milking a cow,” she said as she lifted her hand and tickled the air with her fingers. It looked like she was playing the piano.
“So when he locks his jaw and grabs the bit in his mouth, you can massage the inner corner of his mouth and unlock the jaw by moving your fingers on the reins like that. But you have to be gentle, you’re playing with a piece of metal in his mouth, the most sensitive part of his body,” she warned.
“I think I got it, can I try?”
“Sure,” she said.
I tried wiggling my fingers slowly and gently on my inside rein. His mouth was rigid and unyielding to the rein. It took a few revolutions around the circle when I noticed that he started chewing, a sign that his jaw had unlocked!
“That was harder than the first trick, but at least it worked,” I said to Carol.
“It will get easier,” she assured. “When you ride alone, don’t let him outsmart you. Don’t let him get you riled up, because as soon as you get emotional, the ride is over and you might as well just hop off and go home. Ride more from a technical point of view. If you see a problem, try to figure out how to fix it before getting mad that there’s a problem in the first place, because I’ve got news for you—there will always be problems. Everyone has problems. Even the super star Olympians have problems on their super star Grand Prix horses. The key is how you handle a problem when it creeps up on you.”
“OK,” I replied, digesting her expert advice.