Reflections on Past, Present and Future

I had a great time at horse-riding tonight. Diva did a brilliant job, her trot-canter transitions were virtually spot-on for once, no striking off on the wrong leg, and we even managed to canter some 20m circles in the indoor school. For Diva, who is neither the most elegant of beasts, nor the most agile, this was a really big deal - the girl tends to steer like a battleship.

And... WE GOT A SQUARE HALT!!  First time ever!!!!!

The secret?  A really long warm-up, perhaps, because the weather was so cold. I didn't ask her to come down onto the bit, but by the end of the session she was voluntarily working longer and lower.  A lot of the work in walk and trot was without stirrups, too, and I felt a whole lot more secure in the saddle. 

A good night, and a good day at work, too.

I was going to post my last Lastours castle post tonight, but it's getting late and I've been distracted by horse-riding, so it's going to have to wait.

I had a fantastic lesson tonight. Diva was on the ball, and we both did really well.  Um, this could be because of a mindless bit of horse-cruelty I indulged in within 30 seconds of getting on.  She was being particularly sluggardly and dithery, so I gave her a wee tap (honest!!) with the dressage whip to wake her up, and wow!!

Diva was no longer walking.  She was sproinging along at a spirited jog.

For once, my legs were required to hold back instead of kick forward. Canter transitions were all spot on (and in every one, she struck off on the right leg) and we repeated last week's 20m circles in canter (in both reins) with aplomb. She was very up and down to begin with, but by the end of the half hour she was beginning to come down onto the bit. 

It was marvellous.  Everything came together, it was woman-and-horse-in-perfect-harmony and a thousand other horsey cliches.  Diva was very full of herself by the end.  She responds very well when someone is urging her on and telling her in no uncertain terms that she's a very clever girl, etcetera.
 
Now... 

Why can't it ALWAYS be like that???

Okay, so I promised you more from Carcassone tonight? 

I'm sorry.  I'm going to have hold off for another day.  It's late, and I've only just sat down after horse-riding.

I haven't ridden Diva for almost a month now, and in that time, she's been transformed into a complete bampot.  One of the girls took me aside tonight and warned me that she'd gone mental in a group lesson on the weekend and ditched her pilot, as per usual.  Okay, so she hadn't been out in the field earlier and was a wee bit frisky, but...  I was advised to be careful. 

I shrugged, and said that I was well used to Diva's nonsense, and was expecting as much in the outdoor school.

Of more concern was the news from my instructress that Diva had stumbled and tipped over twice in canter in the week or so, when A (my instructress) was actually riding her.  A was thrown both times, and Diva ended up on the deck.

This is not good news.  I've had a horse fall with me before.  He was a four year old who didn't know where to put his legs and we ended up re-enacting a classic stunt horse fall from a western.  Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to swing my leg out of the way before Jake (the horse) went crashing to the ground, or else I'd have been squashed.

Anyway, falling horses is not something I approach lightly, and Diva was definitely on probabation.  Unfortunately, some chap was out chasing a horse in the neighbouring field throughout the lesson, so Diva was tittupping around the outdoor school with her eyes bulging and acting like some kind of demented Arab stallion.  Which considering she has the built of a small carthorse, was quite impressive. 

For some bizarre reason, I wasn't that bothered.  She might be a dingbat and a bampot, but she's not a bad horse.  Not by any stretch of the imagination .  She needed a strong leg and a strong hand, but while she was bouncing up and down like she was on four pogo sticks instead of hooves, she did listen to what she was being told, all be it with a bit of ill-humour and reluctance.  But she managed to put in some creditable work, bending properly on circles and producing some good trot-canter transitions.  She didn't even stumble once.

Poor Diva.  She's her own worst enemy.  She creates because she's not well-schooled and not used to having to work properly and she falls over her big feet because she's unbalanced.  But if she keeps up like this she'll probably be give the Royal Order of the Heave-Ho just because she's not suitable for riding school use.

I hope she sorts herself out, because I really prefer things the way they are just now.  Everything at the stables seemed to have settled down, and I'm hoping it'll stay that way.  I really don't have the time for a horse.  Let alone one who can't keep a level head and keeps flying off into orbit at every opportunity.  I dread to think what she's like on hacks.  And I can't possibly imagine what she'd be like at a horse show. 

The mind boggles....

I made it!! I survived 'War Horse'.  (With two words - cue David Bowie, half-singing 'It's War Horse Actually.  War Horse.  As in Horse.' Refer to the album Hunky Dory if you're still confused...)

I didn't need the hankies.  I only burst out greetin' twice.  The first time was when the soldiers went over the top and braved all the shellfire/machine gun fire etcetera.  The second time was when the hero said to Joey the Horse, "That's it, boy.  We're going home."

I regret to say that Spielberg over-egged it a bit in the emotional pudding for my tastes.  If he'd played the whole thing very straight, concentrating on the human story with the horse being used as a common thread throughout, it would have been an awesome and very moving film.  But I felt that the horses were 'over-acting' - there were bits of anthromorphic behaviour from the horses which just didn't seem very horsey, and it made me go 'bleaugh!' right at the points when I should have been snivelling. They didn't need to do this - it was quite obvious from the straining sinews, snorts and groans that the poor beasts were struggling.   It's the usual Spielberg thing of 'look!  You're supposed to be feeling very upset around about now, and just to press it home, I'm going to make it even more emotional...'

Sorry, didn't work for me.  Though the lassies at the riding school thought those touches were wonderful.  Ah well.  Must just be my latent cynicsm shining through...

And then there were the little historical niggles.  Like... Why, oh why, didn't they practice field clearance before they started ploughing the dodgy field?  And perhaps lazy beds might have been a more sensible option than regular ploughing if the field in question had drainage issues?  And how come the British army had so many Andalusians taking to the field in the cavalry?  That was before The Boss gave me his diatribes on a) The Nature of Trench Fighting in WWI, and why you do not get shelled when you go Over The Top, and b) Why That Tank was an impossible Hollywood creation.

I'm glad I went - it was a good yarn, if taken with a large handful of salt.  And I can't claim the title of the post - that was J's doing.  As for my riding instructress, her description was 'Black Beauty for Boys', which was a nice one.

As for Diva...  We started lateral work tonight - leg-yielding.  We started in trot, she wouldn't or couldn't do it, so we went back to walk.  My teacher has decided she can't do lateral work and is too old to start trying (she's thirteen) but I am determined to give it a go.  We shall learn it together - even if it takes months.  She can cross her forelegs, which is a start, though the rear ones are more problematic.  Which may, once again, be down to the injury to her pelvis last year...

And now, after half an hour in walk, I am well and truly shattered...

It's been a busy day, in which much progress has been made on many fronts.  I finished writing the draft of my Perthshire farmsteads paper. It still needs a wee bit of revision: I'd be happy to present it at a conference as it stands, but it just needs a bit more tweaking to bring it up to publication  standard...

And tomorrow, I'll be heading off to the weir for the next stage of the repairs...

Horse-riding went extremely well tonight.  I did eight trot-canter transitions on the left rein - Diva's BA-A-A-DDD rein! - and out of the eight, we managed to get two on the wrong leg, followed by another three on the right leg, followed by a stint on the right rein (on the right leg, each time...) followed by yet another couple of canters on the left rein, in which we got the first one on the wrong leg, and another two on the right leg.

That's what I call progress.  I feel vindicated, because my suspicions have once again been confirmed.  There's nothing wrong with Diva's left canter, but she needs to be helped by her rider, and not abandoned to bumble along unassisted.  When I first started riding her, she seemed a bit of sluggard when it came to trot-canter transitions, but...  Oh, boy, when she gets going, she ain't half stroppy!  She's very strong, and when she gets into her head that she WANTS to canter, she won't half fight you when you ask her to trot.  Which is nice, because I like a horse with a bit of oomph, as long as it's enthusiastic oomph, and not mean, wilful, treacherous oomph... 

So there's been improvements all round.  I'm much more confident at cantering Diva - so much so that I'd be quite happy to try cantering 20m circles and canter changes of reins.  And... Diva wasn't half as sweaty and knackered tonight as she has been, even though she did an awful lot of cantering.  She seems to be getting fitter.  Which considering that she only gets worked properly for half an hour a week is quite miraculous.

Things are not quite how I'd like them to be.  Cantering should be smooth and controlled - for a musical embodiment of the perfect canter, take the third movement of Mahler's 1st symphony as a perfect model.  But as I drove home, I discovered that I'd inadvertantly selected the perfect soundtrack for the occasion: Depeche Mode's Mercy in You (from the Songs of Faith & Devotion album).  Which in comparison to Mahler's landler is, how can I put it, a bit boisterous and energetic.  Just like Diva's canter, in fact...

And then... I discovered that the weather forecast delivered last night was a wee bit over-optimistic. There was a frost already settling, and temperatures of minus six have now been forecast for our area.  So I had to spend ages running around the garden trying to get the penstemon wrapped up for the foreseeable futures, packing them with hay and then putting fleece over the top.  Unfortunately, I think may have shut the stable door after the horse as bolted, which means, alas, I'll have lost all my plants, as none of the cuttings seem likely to survive to maturity.

Alas.  I had the sneaking suspicion that this might happen.  Though at least the pelargoniums have been brought into the house for the night, so they should be okay, at least...

It's a horsey post tonight.

I've just come back from half-an-hour with Diva, and - oh, boy! - am I knackered!!

There were two aims of the lesson today.  For twenty minutes, we concentrated on accuracy.  Two parallel poles were set out on the inside track at C, and two more across the lateral line from E to B.  The aim was to navigate the horse through the poles each time in trot.

So far, so good.  I was thinking in terms of serpentines, and it worked very nicely.  I got some lateral bend in the horse, which is impressive, considering she's a riding school beast and usually as wooden as hell.  The difficult bit came when one set of poles were made steadily narrower, until there was only a gap of about 18 inches to navigate through.

Impossible! thought I, as we trotted our way round for the final approach.  But we managed it almost perfectly - one pole got knocked once each time - which means that I actually find it easier to steer a half-ton horse than I do a mountain-bike. J says that this is because Diva has a brain, but I'm not really sure that Diva's brain is tuned in to trotting between two very slender poles laid down on the ground.  I think I'm right in saying that she can't actually see where she's putting her feet at that stage anyway. 

That went very well.  And then we moved onto the dreaded trot-canter transition.  Tonight, I started to make progress.  I finally made my aids clearer, more precise and firmer, too, and the horse responded.  I can't tell you what the difference was - I think I was thinking of moving through from the legs and the seat, pushing the horse into canter rather than sitting like a numpty in the saddle and flapping hopelessly.  The only problem is... she kept going into canter on the left rein in the wrong leg.  This is a Diva thing - I don't know if it's linked with her pelvis trouble, or whether it's sheer silliness.  I'm not going to suggest it's laziness, because I'm a firm believer that a poorly schooled horse will have real problems performing what's asked of it. More work on her balance in walk and trot will I think bring dividends, but I'm just a lone voice in the wilderness.  I think the kids who make up most of her work schedule wouldn't know what the right bend was if it jumped up and did a song-and-dance routine in front of them...

Anyway, apart from the odd strop when the trot-canter transition didn't go well, Diva did extremely well.  I wasn't trying to get her down on the bit, and I'm sure she could have been more active from behind.  But once again, even without being asked, she dropped her head and lightened up in the forehand.  And again, I had that incredible buzz that you get when the horse you're working with becomes completely submissive to your requests, not because you tell her to, but because she wants to.

Ah, Xenephon.  You and your Greek friends were so, so right about horsemanship....

Normality has resumed, and I've returned to having my horse-riding lesson on a Wednesday.

Which means...

No more Softy!  No more Diva!  No more Indy!!  I'm back on Molly, and I'm delighted to be reunited with my old partner in crime.  I now have a new instructor - when I introduced myself, I told her I was going to be one of her most boring pupils, and then explained my desire to return to Classical basics.  She looked instantly relieved, and confessed that she'd been getting really depressed by all the kids moaning whenever she tried to get them to do things right, with cries of, "But such and such says this, so why do I need to change," etcetera.

Ah, it ain't like it was when I were a lass.  In the old times, the word of your instructor was law.  If she said you needed to put your heels down, you put your heels down.  If she said you looked like a sack of potatoes tied up all ugly, then you listened.  Now the young muppets seem to be getting lippy.

As for Molly... She was looking rather swish today.  She'd been done up in a natty little Arab plait, and she looked distinctly cobby.  As opposed to messy/hairy//dowdy (delete as appropriate).  Molly has completely forgotten our earlier relationship, and wasn't too chuffed at be asked to return to some attempt at athleticism.  But we did seem to be getting somewhere by the end.

More plants arrived, and things are getting crazy on the plant front.  My daily repotting quota is now as follows: 6 x lobelia, 6 x petunia, 1 x nasturtium, 1 x very fancy geranium, 1 x fancy petunia type thingy.  And it's only Wednesday!  Sigh.  I'm knackered.  Space is at a premium, too, so the sweet peas will be kicked out this weekend.

Today, I opted for the gaiters, because we were entering Tick City.   The weather has been foul - the nearby flood plain of the River Cart is doing exactly what it says on the box.  And I need to fit a rubber ring and a snorkel to my poor car...