#dressage lady barb

[whichchick]

So fall effort with Dressage Lady Barb (hereafter, as always, DLB).  How’d that go?

You know how it went.  It went the same way it always goes.  Fucking ends in tears, snot running down my face because I am totally 100% that middle-aged female adult ammie at the dressage clinic.  I’m also fat.  And on an inappropriate pony.  Here I am, the absolute stereotype of dressaging.

I go in and demonstrate my homework from last time.  She says my homework looks good.  Wonderful, terrific, great.  “I can tell you really worked on this.”  I look “so much better” and have “much better control” of my body. I am “not interfering” and “being supportive” and blah blah blah.

Now, my horse has been off for five weeks (abscess, making hay, torrential downpours) and he’s not fit.  But we did, since our last visit with DLB, put tape on the damn reins and work on having an elastic, consistent contact at the walk with a steady and unchanging rein length.  We worked on it a lot.  It was the only homework she gave me because I am apparently too stupid to have more than one homework.  Despite my limitations, I worked the shit out of the homework she gave me. 

Honestly, the only consistent thing here is that I work on the DLB homeworks.  I whine and bitch and moan about the DLB clinics and then I go do the thing, over and over, in spite of the fact that I do not particularly understand what I’m going for.  I am frequently cargo-culting it along in my little and lame dressage journey.

So today we did canters.  She’s like “Tell me some things that were good about this canter effort.”  (I hate this.  I seriously hate this.  It is one of my LEAST FAVORITE THINGS EVER, the “TELL ME GOOD THINGS ABOUT THIS SHITTY EFFORT” drill.)  This canter effort is on a 20 meter circle and horse is getting tired, so self-carriage is not really there and he’s trying to phone it in a little and he falls out of it about halfway around the circle.  It’s not a particularly stellar canter effort.  It’s an OK canter effort given that he’s not falling on his face and he’s not counterbent or frantic or whatever, but it’s not like a good effort.

I know clinician is trying to teach me to look for the good things and to be happy about all the wonderful progress we’ve made on our dressage journey (round and round in stupid little circles at a very slow jog, basically going nowhere fast slowly) but I hate having to find “good” things in what is overall a relatively lukewarm effort.  GDI, I do not need a participation trophy.  I am not here for my self esteem.

We also did trot.  Apparently I need a quicker, lighter trot.  She was all “choppy pony trot” which is not the sort of thing I expect to be told to generate in a dressage clinic so I was like... “I do not understand.”  So she was all “Just do the thing.  I’ll explain later.”  Later happened and she was “I use the phrase choppy pony trot” because most people understand that to mean the feet spend less time on the ground in trot with quicker, lighter steps.”  Okay.  Or, since I’m not eight, you could just say “quicker, lighter steps.”

We did “I can see you want to argue with me.”  I didn’t say anything.  Nary a peep.  I pointed out that I didn’t say anything.  “But you want to.”  WTF?  I can’t even.  I am not able to make myself have agreeable-looking body language.  I can keep my fucking mouth shut and I can do the riding you tell me to do but I will never in a million years be able to make my body look like I am compliantly in agreement with you.

We did “I’m going to compliment you again and you’re going to have to sit there and take it even though you don’t believe me.”  (This is excruciatingly uncomfortable for me.  I am not sure why she does it and I really wish she wouldn’t.  And honestly, that there is a straight up quote from DLB.  I am not exaggerating for comedic effect.)  I am paying for riding instruction.  I am not paying to be made massively uncomfortable on an emotional front that is unrelated to riding instruction.

This reminds me of when I was in junior high and my English (favorite subject, always) teacher was all talking to me about why was I unhappy and my feelings and blah blah and finally I was like, “Look.  I’m here for school and I’m not ALLOWED to leave.  I have to be here BY LAW but I am not your private pet project.  Teach me the damn subject and leave my unhappiness alone.  It’s my concern, not yours.”  She didn’t stop.  A few weeks after that, I went to the principal’s office and told him that if Mrs. T. didn’t leave me the fuck alone and stick to the subject matter that she was paid to teach that I was going to lodge a formal complaint about her.

Apparently, what I did in junior high was VERY WRONG (said my mom) and NOT OK and I REALLY HURT MRS. T’s FEELINGS and she REALLY CARED ABOUT ME A LOT.  Mmm-hmm.  Maybe she did, but damn she had fuck-all of a clue how to display her caring to me.  Not at all.  Maybe that shit she did works with most kids but it was like I was a slug and she just kept pouring salt on me.  (In fairness my parents were getting divorced and things at home were... not good.  I probably looked a hell of a mess, but her caring was poking every single sore spot I had until they all bled. Daily.  It was UNREASONABLE AS HELL to expect me to put up with that shit to spare Mrs. T’s feelings and I’m still kinda mad about my mom for telling me I was in the wrong there.  I should not have to suffer so that other people can feel good about their attempts to “help” me.)

Emotionally this is about where I am with DLB.  She’s helpful on the horse front, honestly she is.  I learn things.  The homework is annoying and frustrating and feels cargo-cult-ish but that’s because I have an insufficient understanding of it at the front end.  DLB is not great at using her words to explain what the homework is FOR or what it’s supposed to accomplish because I guess she does more with how it feels and how it rides and figures I can get it from “There, right there like that!  Do That.”   And that sort of intuitive kinesthetic stuff is super awesome and it’d be SO HELPFUL if I were made to understand that stuff, but I am not.  So my insufficient understanding and my frustration that I can’t make my body do what I want... it is not leading to joyous smiles of instant understanding.  That said, with sufficient reps and substantial effort on my part in the quiet of my own head, the homework does eventually make sense.  

Like remedial jogging, which I did for about two years.  At the outset (see link) it made no sense.  It made no sense for a while and I bitched about it a lot.  But it turns out that if you do like three million jog circles, your horse’s head eventually comes down.  He eventually  becomes rhythmic and steady.  You can start having something like contact on the reins, light and fluttery because neither of you really understand it, but something like contact.  He will get better and better at picking up The Jog on demand and immediately going into it instead of getting there after half a circle of flail first.  He will become, from endless practice, better at coming down to walk from trot instead of throwing his head up and flailing on that transition too.  He will start to be able to listen to cues to bend on the turns because he’s not so busy flailing.  Because the work is simple and repetitive, even newbie floppy riders likely can’t fuck it up.  Floppy rider, because of all the practice at remedial  jogging, gets really good at feeling the horse start to trot, finish trotting, feel like he’s going to fall out of trot, yadda yadda yadda.  Floppy rider becomes less floppy because “floppy” makes it harder for the horse to remedial jog correctly.  This improves rider position.  So yeah, remedial jogging.  Now it makes sense but in the beginning, I had no idea why I was doing it.

I am, swear to FSM, making headway under her tutelage, such as it is.  It could be faster if it were more explain-y with words instead of this mystical Miyagi shit, but if she (and EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET, APPARENTLY) can perceive the mystical Miyagi shit and I’m the only one who can’t... yeah, the adaptive effort has to be on my part because she has no idea what I can or can’t perceive.  

But fuck it all, I cannot keep going to these things when she has me fucking bawling in the goddamn ring because she can’t leave my emotional state alone.  She wants me to be “happier” about my progress.  She wants me to be more “appreciative” of our improvement.  She wants me to give myself and my horse credit for all of our hard work, to be thrilled about the growth of our partnership... honestly I’m over here doing my slug cringe just typing this shit.

I know that DLB means well but she completely fails to realize that I have done approximately six projects IN MY WHOLE ENTIRE GODDAMN LIFE that I have been happy with for more than five seconds.  I am unhappy with almost everything I have ever done, even stuff that other people think is pretty darned decent.  DLB is not going to be able to “fix” this about me and her TRYING to do it is what makes me bawl in the ring like a frustrated toddler.  

DLB:  I am NOT FUCKING BROKEN.  I AM FINE.  IF YOU WOULD JUST LEAVE ME ALONE TO GET ON WITH IT AND STICK TO PROVIDING INSTRUCTION ON THE THINGS I CAN LEARN TO DO ACCEPTABLY INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON THE THINGS I WILL NEVER, EVER BE ABLE TO FAKE WELL ENOUGH TO APPEASE ONE OF THE FLESH PEOPLE, WE WOULD BOTH BE A LOT HAPPIER.

This inability to be happy with my projects is not the handicap to me that DLB seems to think it is.  I wish like hell she’d get over the “whichchick is not happy enough about her progress” thing and just do the riding instruction part because this shit is like salt in open wounds.  (Yes, I have tried Being A Grown-Up and Using My Words.  No joy on that front.  I do not typically lack clarity, so not sure what the hell the problem is, there.  My mother’s super-helpful advice:  “Tell her you’re autistic.  Apologize for having absolutely no inherent talent for riding.  I can’t understand why you persist in doing things you TOTALLY SUCK AT, but if you’re having that much trouble with this and still want to do it (MOTHER OF GOD WHY ARE YOU SO PERSISTENT AT SOMETHING SO EXPENSIVE THAT YOU TOTALLY SUCK AT?  YOU KNOW, THERE ARE MANY THINGS YOU CAN DO QUITE ACCEPTABLY.  IS THERE SOME REASON YOU CAN’T DO ONE OF THE THINGS THAT YOU DON’T SUCK AT?  ARE YOU TRYING TO BE UNHAPPY?), ask her to dumb it down further for your broken and incompetent brain.  If you can’t do that, then obviously you don’t want to do the thing hard enough anyway.”  Thanks, mom.  I’ll get right on that.  Also, you are a pillar of support.)

So at the end of the clinic’ing, with tears and snot running down my face, I’m like “You usually give me homework for next time.  What is the homework?” -- This represents pretty good personal growth for me.  I didn’t want to ask.  I wanted to slink out of the ring and take my useless stupid self and my idiotic and inappropriate horse home.  But I asked, even though it was hard.

DLB:  “Experiment.”  

The fuck?!?  No.  No.  NO.  That is not useful.  That is lacking in direction and clarity.  That is not at all helpful.  I don’t even want to try to do something with that because anything I do is going to be wrong.  Anything I do is going to suck.  

Anything I put forth is going to be “Awww, look at you, back again to play dressage with your sweaty fistful of money!  It’s so cute that you keep trying at this thing which you are fundamentally unable to do.  When last we met, I told you to EXPERIMENT.  Such fun!  I’m really looking forward to seeing what you spent your entire winter working on.  So, show me your work.  *beat*   Did oo twy weally hawd?  You did?  That’s adorable!  You’re such a Hard Worker!  If only you appreciated your own efforts in a way that I could perceive... but you don’t, so I’m going to call you out for not liking your horse or yourself.  ...And now you’re crying at me.  God, have you no self-respect?  Grow a pair.  Also, what you have brought me, you do know it’s shit, right?  ‘Cause this is shit.  Shit does not stop being shit because you work really hard.  Can’t polish a turd, dumbass.”

Four years ago, I brought you a four year old horse and you were all “What can he do?” and I was enthusiastic about what all he could do and you were “LOLNope.” and you sent me home to jog in fucking circles, extremely slowly, for two years.  At this juncture, I am not at all going to put myself out there again because clearly I can’t teach a horse how to do anything at all.  You don’t have to kick me in the teeth twice for me to get it.  You say “Experiment” like I’m supposed to run right out and ... what?

Put a tie down on him?  Leverage bit?  Sidereins?  No, of course you don’t mean that shit and you’d be pissed if I suggested any of those things.  So you DO have an aim or objective in mind.  Care to share it?  That’s what my eighty dollars was paying for, y’know.  If I wanted to fumble around in the dark, with no particular idea of what I was doing, I would be eighty dollars richer today.  

Maybe I should be buying more feed and fewer dressage clinics.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for dressage.

[whichchick]

Dressage clinic with Dressage Lady Barb (hereafter DLB) today.  It was brutally hot for before noon, but we got some things done.  I’m not a great learner, though, so noting and remembering “How That Thing Felt That The Clinician Said Was The Right Thing” is something of a struggle.  I also don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle OR any idea what the final picture is supposed to look like.  *sigh*

I feel like an idiot in that I can’t answer the question, “So, what are you working on with your horse?”

He’s a horse.  I ride him.  Isn’t that enough?

No.  

Okay, fine.  We’re working on sucking less.

That’s not very positive.

Look, lady, for the first two fucking years I rode for you, you told me to do remedial jogging and only remedial jogging and all the other interesting or fun things that I wanted to do were “for later”.  I have, accordingly, adjusted my sights lower than they were.  No canter pirouettes over here.  No shoulder-inning, no walk-canter transitions.  Not claiming we can back up.  Not claiming we can transition in balance.  You tell me I can’t do anything, I will not claim to be able to do anything.  No chances for you to shoot me down, over here.

It’s not like that.  She’s not like that.  I just... ugh.

Today we demonstrated our (a) reasonably useful trot and (b) stretchy round-ish canter and (c) our leg yield which now looks “better off the right leg” than it does off the left leg.  I’m working on the whole leg yield off of seatbone/hip thing.  Nobody ever told me that you were supposed to go laterally off of seatbone/hip, okay?  So now you’ve told me that (Last time) and I’m all pissy about it because it’s not natural for me and I have to change how I do things and my right hip is locked and stiff and it feels dreadful.

Couple of things of interest.  First, I am to let the horse trot several steps before starting to post.  (I thought you were supposed to rise up with the first stride of trot but apparently DLB doesn’t like that.  DLB thinks that it goes better if we let the horse establish a decent trot before the posting happens... and that seems to be true, so I guess we’ll go on in this manner from here on out.  Why did nobody tell me about this?  Is there some kind of handbook out there?  I dunno.)

Second, I am to spend quality time on being more up and vertical and totally helping horse to lift up himself in trot.  (He can do about a circuit of the ring in a decent-ish trot before he falls apart.  He needs more strength and practice to do more.)  I am to ride for and demand this better quality trot, on an ongoing basis.  More work on my part to noodle around feeling for contact, too, as that will also help.

Third, endless trot-canter-trot transitions will help build muscles -- that and the leg-yield-to-trot thing we got last time shall still be on our to-do list.  Horse needs more muscles to do the things we would like to be able to be doing, cannot perform unless is strong enough.

And all of this begs the question... what do I want to do with da Bird?  She keeps asking me what I need help on.  I dunno.  I don’t adore competing especially when I get excused for being unable to complete a stadium round or when I get “Please go home and lunge your horse in sidereins” comments on our shittastic dressage tests.  Again, negativity.  Those are not positive goals.  DLB wants positive goals.  I have to come up with positive goals.

[whichchick]

Horse updates, Thursday haul-in lesson over fences, Sunday clinic with Dressage Lady Barb rescheduled from our earlier cancellation this year.  Lots to talk about!  行きましょう!

Thursday I hauled Bird up to the boarder barn (huge sand ring of hugeness) to play over fences.  Allie had put a course up for a fun show thing and it was still up so we were going to play with it.  The course was not just poles, there was actual fill (haybales, evergreens, culvert pipe, flower boxes, etc.) and stuff.  Bird and I need practice on Actual Courses with Decorative Jumps, so yeah.  This was right exactly the sort of thing we needed to work on.

It went interestingly.  Allie says Bird needs to understand that Leg On means Go Forward, no matter what.  She says that the problem with strange jumps is not that he is actually scared but that he would like more time to look at them MORE than he wants to listen to the Leg On.

So, when there are screech-halts at jumps, you should back straight up (these jumps are not very high) for seven or eight steps and trot in again, using crop behind leg to reinforce “go forward”.  This should be repeated if necessary.

He did go over all the stuff, sometimes it took a couple of tries.  And then she made the jumps a bit bigger and scarier and we did it again, stringing together three or four jumps (in canter!!!  Cantering our approaches!!!) at a time.  And mostly that was ok, with a refusal or two b/c we approached the scary hay bales from the other direction.  And the jumps got a little bigger and she reshuffled the decorations for new and different scary and we did it again.  (Jumps are now about 2′3″.)  Bird is overjumping a lot this whole time but it doesn’t feel frantic, just “whee!”, so it’s not at all bad.  He doesn’t really have the experience to judge jump height appropriately anyway.  And that was that.

I took him over to the wash rack to hose off b/c it was blazin’ hot even at 6 PM and tied him to the string breakaway tie because he doesn’t actually tie that well.  He stood still for hosing of both sides and spraying of all over and legs and back and butt and being touched on front legs with the hose and whatever.  (He’s been hosed before.  This is not his first encounter with a wash rack, either.  The problem here is not hosing off or wash racks.  The problem is that he’s not a reliable tie-r)  And then he was done.  Lifted his head and checked the tie.  Set back on the tie.  It didn’t break right away so he came forward, re-evaluated, and set back harder on the tie.  Wash rack mats were wet so his hinds slid and he wound up sitting like a dog.  *sigh*  And the breakaway twine snapped so he flopped backwards and over to one side, putting his front half outside of the wash stall and his hind half inside the wash stall, whereupon he flailed and wriggled a bit to figure out how to get up.  He managed it and loped carefully off (dragging lead rope to one side) about a hundred yards before he started eating grass.  Fortunately we’re a long ways from the hard road over at Boarder Barn.  Bird suffered some small abrasions but was not damaged in any other respect.  I loaded him up and took him home.  He was slightly stiff through his back when I took him off the trailer, but yo, you be an idiot, you deserve what you get.

So then Sunday, we dressaged for Dressage Lady Barb.  We showed off our remedial jogging skills.  We did circles and straights.  We did teardroppy “At A, walk, then turn onto quarterline and legyield-to-the-rail, at rail, trot on, on long side, extend trot, bring it back, at C, walk, then turn onto quarterline and legyield to the rail, at rail, trot” things.  We got compliments on (a) rider balance and seat (b) use of hands and arms (c) rhythm in horse’s jog (d) ability to leg yield subtly and attractively.  We got to canter, even, which is progress.

Dressage Lady Barb asked what I did with him.  I failed at providing a good answer.  He’s a horse.  I have him.  I ride him.  It’s good.  Do I need to have plans?  Isn’t having and riding sufficient unto itself?  Are goals a requirement?

Anyway, we got New Things To Work On instead of being sent home to do EVEN MORE REMEDIAL JOGGING.  I am so excited to have New Things.  Here are the new things.

1.  Right leg is permanently glued to horse’s side, needs to be a little looser and floppier.  Also, horse should not need “Leg On” to just walk.  Practice him having more of his own initiative for keeping the forward going, leave legs off-er unless you want something.

2.  Trot-Canter departures.  Lots and lots of them.  So many of them.

3.  Cantering the twenty meter circle while leaving him mostly alone on the figuring out balance front.  Just let him get on with it, not so much handholding.

4.  On all circles and turns, more straighter and less turning inward.  Try looking at the outside ear.  Be careful to not collapse towards inside of turns.  Extra straightness, here.

5.  Horse leg yields way better off left leg than off right leg.  Fix this.

6.  Leg yield in trot suffers as compared to in walk.  Fix this.

7.  The teardrop/leg yield exercise mentioned above, do that.

8.  Keep hands close and related.  When legyielding off left leg, please to be keeping left rein not so much in use.  Left hand near left wither, not out to the side.

She asked if I had other things to show her and I said no.  While da Bubbins can kinda shoulder-in, kinda, he can’t do it well enough or long enough to actually demonstrate it and I feel like if I showed her that, she’d be “No, no, just stop that.  He’s not, you can’t, just don’t.”  He also knows how to shift his hq to the side as for haunches-in and he can hold that for like two or three steps of walk, but again, it’s so lame and pathetic and baby that I don’t want to discuss or demonstrate it because I suspect that all I’ll get is “Just don’t.”  

My view there is that if I’m not going to “just don’t” then there is no point asking the clinician for input.  

Dressage Lady Barb will be back in July.  We have a lot of work to do before then.

[whichchick]

This weekend is the RRHPC minitrial, which I’ve attended for the past two years with Bird.  I’m not going this year, which I think is the sensible course of action.

In case you don’t recall last year’s stellar effort at the RRHPC minitrial, here’s a link to how that went.  TL:DR -- it sucked, they thought we looked “dangerous” and “out of control” and “entirely unsafe” in stadium plus also we can’t fucking dressage.

We’d done the super beginner glorified ground poles level the year before, and it went slightly better but mostly because the bar was “Please Do Not Kill Me Or Be An Embarrassment” and he managed to clear that as well as the glorified ground poles.

So my instructor asked if I was going up to RRHPC this year to re-attempt it after our spectacular failure last year.  And I was like “LOLnope”.  She points out that if I don’t show, I can’t get better.  Mmm-hmm.  And if I fail repeatedly, with money that could have been round bales or truck payments or dressage clinics, it tends to make me very unhappy with my horse and my horse’s abilities and my limitations as a rider.

If you can’t succeed, then stop fucking trying.

Not really, but we are not far enough past last year’s “dangerous” and “out of control” and “entirely unsafe” skill level.  I don’t think we will be able to make it through stadium and be allowed to go xc at the current time.  I’m pretty familiar with what stadium looks like up there and I don’t think he can handle it yet.  He needs more practice first.  I wanted to get him out to a h/j show or two this year but the first one was Company From Philadelphia weekend and the second one was Brother’s 45th Birthday weekend... so it didn’t happen.  I will make a concerted effort to block off BOTH Creekside H/J show weekends next year.

At his/my current skill level, it is entirely possible that Bird will stop at one or more of the stadium fences and/or overjump stuff in such a way as to convince the event organizers that we are “dangerous” or “out of control” or “entirely unsafe”.  I am not taking this horse out to do stadium fences at Rolling Rock until I am 100% certain that he will jump anything I aim him at, the very first time he sees it, without any bullshit of any kind.  I AM NOT going to be dq’d on stadium again.  I am not.  It is expensive and embarrassing and humiliating and frustrating and I DO NOT WANT to do that again.  (In pursuit of this, we are working like hell on jumps and doing better at them.)

Dressage, well, we’re better than we were, but we still suck.  Still torque to the outside, still counterbent, still above the contact.  God damn.  It feels like I been riding the same shit this whole fucking time without getting ANY BETTER AT ALL.  I do practice, honest, I do.  I do twenty meter circles and I work on my transitions and I work on my fucking contact and my straightness and still I suck. Still I go ride in front of dressage judges who tell me to put the horse in side reins.  Still I get beaten in fucking walk-trot tests by absolutely everyone else on the property including the ten year old on the arthritic school pony.  I must absolutely fucking suck at this because I am not getting at all better and it’s been two years.

Fat stupid middle-aged ammie who can’t fucking ride.  Still can’t ride.  Horse has been under saddle for two goddamn years and he can barely trot.  He is above the bit and fussy in the halt and wobbly and uneven and jesus fucking christ I can’t make him be better than this.  I don’t even know HOW to make him better than this.  Dressage lady Barb is like “Okay, he’s rhythmic, but this is kind of a puny trot.  Make the trot bigger.”  Well, yeah, okay but then it FUCKING FALLS APART AGAIN.  Do you want it rhythmic, or do you want it bigger?

(Stupid rider.  You now get to keep trying to make it bigger AND rhythmic.  When he fails at bigger, you ensmallen and re-rhythm and then TRY AGAIN.  Are you an idiot, or what?)

And then there’s XC.  I have some XC fences at home.  Mostly Bird jumps them but I am too much of a pussy to canter into them and so I just trot in.  If I were braver, we could canter into those fences... but I’m not braver.

Anyway, we have a long way to go before I am going to be willing to take this horse out in public and try to do some sort of baby 2′ eventing effort with him.  Possibly next year IF and ONLY IF we get to both Creekside things and manage to do them at the 2′ level.  Possibly.