dancinghorse | This Was the Week That Was, with Bonus Lesson Neep (Reply)

coraa have blogged Camp Lipizzan so far, and others are probably going to chime in as the buzz wears off and brains start functioning in real time again. Mine isn't at all, but I'd better get it down now or it won't happen. You know how that goes.

The hosting end of Camp was Interesting this time because I was quite sick the week before, when I needed to be cleaning and decluttering after a summer's worth of not-Camp, so I came into it with reduced resources (but plenty of excitement and anticipation, which carried me through). There were new challenges in the kitchen and in the size-of-Camp departments. We enjoy a challenge and it worked splendidly, but we did conclude that unless one person is really into an air bed in the library, three singles or two couples are the max for overnighters. We can easily handle a good number of "day campers" who sleep elsewhere, so that will be an experiment for a later Camp.

The best part was seeing how happy people were, and observing the periods of rapid-fire conversation and laughter interspersed with longer spells of silence except for the clicking of keys. When brains got tired, people went out for a horse fix. If I was working in the barn, I would see someone staggering down from the house, eyes lightly glazed, pausing to pet noses or lean on the fence, then after a while, wandering back up. The horses thought all this was great fun, as did the cats and dogs.

Random entertaining details included the horse blankets in the library--I had been washing them all before winter, and had them folded along one side of the room until I could move them to the storage shed. They never did make the move:

coraa was so comfortable curled up in them for writing and critting that they stayed all week. We had Minnow monitoring the writing sessions, as she does, and Pooka charming the socks off everything with two X chromosomes, as he does. The Wonder Farrier showed up on Tuesday to shoe Capria and trim some of the others; he's a splendid raconteur and all-around fascinating character, and everyone declared that she would be including a farrier in her next book. We had a photographer in residence for two days: a local equine (and firefighter-calendar--oo-la-la) photographer came by to break in her amazing new camera. And

tcastleb, Camp staffer beyond price, made pizza from scratch on the final night, giving me a break (and time to indulge the lesson coma) and everyone a lovely dinner.

Thursday's riding clinic was in a category by itself. Everyone was game for a go, and

casacorona came over to watch and lend a hand. We used Capria twice, and then the photographer showed her some Western moves; she was perfectly up for it all. Pandora and keed also stepped up and gave their riders a great experience. Keed was very apprehensive to start; he's a tough customer but there's still some trauma of the Toxic variety. But once he realized what the new deal is, he was delighted to play. Carrma of course got to do a session; she'd been having problems and not wanting to be girthed, but what started as a massage session turned into a ride, to

tcastleb's relief. She was a bit sniffy to miss out on a ride.

And Pook and I got our butts kicked. We had promised butt-kickage and we came through. It was a level of clinic I hadn't done since SRS guy, though I occasionally thought I had. This was the real deal.

We started with groundwork. I had to use my brain, oh noes! S asked what exercise I should start with. I greeted that with a blank stare. Uh, buh? We ended up doing spirals (as in the icon) and attempting to connect the whole body and feel his sacrum. There was some success. Lesson moved, as it does, to the same exercise under saddle--with serious upping of the ante. I had to keep that burrito rolled up nice and snug, get lots of crossing over fore and aft, and make sure not to get all tensed up. That part was hard. We used the spiral out to move from walk to trot, and threw in a bit of a break: spiral in, spiral out, trot down the long side, weave through three hay barrels spaced about 10m apart. From this we were supposed to add canter, but I had a breakdown of sorts. No stamina. Just not enough oomph. I was not pleased with myself, but there it was.

HOWEVER, during a break in the proceedings, when we were instructed to trot him out freely around the arena, he asked if he could canter, please Mom, please? And there was a long, free, relaxed, unstressed canter twice around before we rolled back up into more spirals. And that was a first for him under saddle, and it was bliss to ride. So was the long trot. S said I was laughing while we did it. "I never heard you giggle during a ride before." Well, she has, but not while he's been doing something other than Working Crowhop Right Lead. That always cracks me up.

The final part of the lesson was the hardest and I got rather upset because he was lugging on the left rein. Serious draggage. "Don't pull back! Use your leg and seat!" S called out. I tried. He would give me maybe three strides of bendy softness, and then back to the three-ton PSI. But S improved my mood considerably after we finished, by asking, "Could he ever lug like that on the left before?" Well, no. He would throw his right shoulder and lug, but seriously use his whole left side to object to being asked to use it? Nope.

That, in short, was progress. "And sometimes it's not pretty."

Best part really? We saw the raw photo footage, and it looked a lot better than it felt. That's been standard for S lessons. When I was doing Toxic Dressage, I was always disappointed when I saw photos or video. Now I either don't notice or don't think we're doing a lot, and the photos are a pleasant surprise. Pook was flying in the trot--serious reach and extension. That locked neck and shoulder are gone, baby, gone. He's through in his whole body, unless I get in his way--and we work on that.

As I said. Butt-kickage. And Progress. We'll take it.

Next Camp is the first week in November. We have an opening or two. Email for details and specific dates. Or hey, email if you want to book later dates. This is shaping up to be a Very Good Thing. And Very Good People are the reason why.