Horse people are a funny breed. There are as many ways to be a successful
horseman as there are to skin a cat, but still most of us seem to have a
methodology that is the best one and the only one and the right one. Having grown up showing one horse both
English and Western at the open shows, then APHA/AQHA, and now entering the
rated USEF world, I’ve seen a lot of different approaches during what I like to
consider my short time on this earth [wink].
Although I’m not a big believer in astrology, I am a Libra, so I tend to
waver in my convictions. My
best/only/right is always changing.
The one constant for me is my desire to learn. When I was winning 8 classes per day at the
open shows as a kid, my family stepped up to the breed shows where I got my
butt kicked. When I was routinely
winning my favorite class at the breed shows I got a new horse and moved into
the hunter ring. This led to the jumper
ring, and who knows what’s next? The
point is that I’m an eager study and my journey has been as much about learning
horsemanship as it has been about coveting blue ribbons. I’ve certainly not mastered anything, but
I’ve got a fairly well-rounded education.
That said, I think that the perfect equine partner would be
one that was trained from the beginning with methods from many disciplines. I think the same can be said for riders. As much as people have discounted me and I’ve
discounted myself in the recent past due to my lack of experience over fences,
I wouldn’t change a thing about my riding education. Am I behind the curve for
my age and current discipline? Yes. So what?
Riding for me is about learning, not competing. The competition is the place where I go to
put what I’ve learned to the test.
Last summer I started clinicing with Greg Best. My friend, Alia, and I went to one of his
clinics in July where we immediately fell in love. On the first day of the three-day clinic we
were a few minutes late to the ring because of some commotion on the farm, and
one of the other girls in our session said, “You guys are late. You were supposed to be in here at eight.”
Greg’s response: “They
probably took the extra few minutes to put their hair under their helmets.”
We knew then that we were going to get along
swimmingly. But more importantly, he
helped Alia transform her horse from a nervous stopper into a willing
soldier. He helped me so much with Hauns
that weekend, but what I really took away from that clinic was that I wasn’t a
bad rider. I had many technicals to learn,
but the basics were there.
For months before the clinic I had spent time with several
different trainers and, with the exception of one, none of them took the time
to help me get better. I had adopted
Hauns from my husband who had used him as a beginner mount, and was ready to
move on. Hauns was a solid citizen but
had his own style. He liked to go around
out of frame, head upside down and tilted to the side, getting kicked every
stride in an effort to keep him going, but always behind the leg. I knew how to fix that using my Quarter Horse
training methods, but I didn’t want to be unfair to a horse that was trained
differently, so I sought help.
With
each trainer it was the same routine.
They looked at my horse, assumed that I didn’t have the skills to fix
it, and gave me mediocre help trying to ride what I had while happily pocketing
my checks. One of them told me to give
him away, which was at least better than watching him rub my leg down the
entire long-wall of an indoor and saying, “Good. Sit tall.
Good.” It was incredibly
frustrating. I was ready to sell the
horse and started looking for eligible buyers.
I attended the Greg Best clinic in an effort to make him a slightly more
desirable sale, but instead came away with a horse that was in frame and in
front of my leg, not to mention actually jumping jumps instead of lazily flopping
over them one leg at a time. And do you
know how Greg helped me accomplish all this?
By not saying, “No, don’t do that!”
He actually encouraged my instincts and my confidence soared. It was literally a life-changing
weekend.
I’ve taken many more clinics with Greg. Alia and I are groupies and are absolutely
shameless about it. There is nothing in
the world that I want more than to learn how to be a better horseman, and if
being a little bit of a weirdo groupie is the answer it is fine with me.
Interestingly, last summer Alia and I stopped going to horse
shows almost entirely. We didn’t need to
gauge our improvement via competition when we had periodic visits with
Greg. Subconsciously, our goals changed
from managing to get a horse around a few jumps one time to beat some other
people at a show, to beating the riders we were just a few weeks past. Every time we were faced with an opportunity
to go to a show, we would look at each other and say, “Eh…”
Skip ahead eight months.
Maybe I’ve given up too early, but I feel like I’ve gotten
Hauns as far as I can get him. I’ve had
good help for a while now and Hauns does his job as well as I think he will
ever do it. I only get out of him what I
put in, and at a solid 17.2hh he’s a lot of horse to manage which means he
requires that I put in quite a bit.
Additionally, I think having all of my eggs in his basket put a lot of
pressure on both of us. I began to
consider getting a new horse so that Hauns could be my trusty backup and I
wouldn’t have to push him to work so hard every day.
As people often do, I spoke with my friends and
acquaintances about my plans. Everyone
had input. I got a lot of “don’t dos”
and a lot of “you should dos.” I finally
sat down and thought about what I wanted.
I realized that I’d gotten more gratification out of taking a horse that
was a “giveaway” and turning it into a horse that could be successfully shown
in the high adults (if I stayed on course) than I ever would have
imagined. I like being the
underdog. I’m competitive and having
something to prove drives me to work hard.
It’s probably not healthy, but it is what it is.
But I’m still a Libra, so when someone says “don’t do” I
start to question what it is that I should do.
Finally I decided to silence the noise and negativity around me, I
stopped talking to people about it, and with the help of three people that I
respect very much, I bought an unbroken almost-four-year-old off a one minute
and twenty-four second free-jumping video from Holland. It was ballsy, I know, but I didn’t do it
alone. Of course my partner in crime was
right there with me, and Alia now has a Dutch four year old in her barn,
too.
I’ve had my young gelding in the barn for three days, and I
can honestly say that I’ve never before been so fond of a horse in such a short
amount of time. I’m aware that this
might backfire. This might literally
kill me. This might turn out to be a disaster,
but no matter what, it will be an adventure.
There will be days on which I feel elated. There will be days on which I feel that this
was a huge mistake. There will be days
on which I fall off and days on which I reach milestones and days on which
people will say “I told you so.” But the
point, as always, is to become a better horseman, and I can think of no better
way.
Plus it was cheap.
So the secret is out now.
I’d like to introduce the world to Megatron.
