dancinghorse | Judy and Pooka's Latest SRS Adventure

Yes, we have been listening to our large and vocal public. First of all thanks to every single one of you on lj or fb or elsewhere who sent birthday wishes. I was stunned and touched to get so very many messages from so very many people. It brightened up an already pretty bright day.

Pook and I were in Scottsdale for the weekend at a clinic with Bereiter Florian Zimmermann of the Spanish Riding School, along with S. and Junior, the adorable Foundation QH she has in training. We knew up front that our boys would win on cute points alone, and so they did.

We left on Thursday morning after a rainy night and with more grey walls of cloud bearing down on us. S got caught in a downpour while loading Junior at her barn a few miles west of here. We were cloudy and muddy but rainless. Got loaded on the nice big trailer, determined that the boys were going to get along just fine, and headed off on the three-hour drive to the far northeast side of Phoenix, out in the hills well away from the metropolis. We drove through rain and fog but had no problems, and arrived at the facility to find some interesting washouts and muddy bits but nothing we couldn't navigate through. Boys had stalls waiting: one in an open "mare motel" and one in the dressage barn with solid walls. Pooka, needless to say, got the walls. Here he is enjoying the view from the back of his corner stall. He had a lovely barred door in front, with morning sun, and a clear view through the open barn door of a pasture full of mares. Here he is enjoying the view from the back of his corner stall (photos by

tcastleb).

We got them settled and unpacked, took them for walks down to the arena so they wouldn't be shocked by it the next morning, caught up with the clinic host, who had F in tow (big hug from him--so glad to see him again), then headed to the very nice hotel by way of a supermarket that provided us with a nice alfresco dinner, and went thud.

Next morning I had the first ride at 9 a.m., which meant I had to be there by 8. Hotel was half an hour away, so I was up early. Pook was nicely settled, had his breakfast, was ready to play.

A little too ready, if you take my meaning. He had been a pisser all week, of the hormones and strikey-squealy variety. I had had to Speak to him daily, but he was just fine to groom, saddle, and ride. Spring is coming early to the desert, it seems.

Well. He was a wild thing. In an ideal world I would have turned him out for an hour and let him do his thing. In a large facility packed to the gills, with major mud in the turnouts and none available without horses on the other side of rather low fences (stallions need high, solid fences or they go jumping or climbing), that wasn't possible. I knew I was going to get smacked for taking him out in the arena and cowboy-longeing--letting him run around without precision, control, or sidereins--and so I did. Judgment call. Highly incorrect by SRS standards. Got The Talk about that.

Was not helped by the fact that Pook, who has been an absolute rock for me through some post-Toxic Trainer trauma, had some trauma of his own after all. He saw the clinician and said, "OH, no."

We discussed the situation. F asked if I wanted to ride, or if he should. In retrospect I probably should have at least started on the horse, but I said let's see what he does for you.

Let's just say he was tense. For values of tense that include llamatude, rolling eyes, and blasting around like an idiot. He was soaking wet and had actual stress foam on his neck--which for him is a first. F got him calmed down as much as he would stand to be, and told me to take him back to the barn and we would do a second ride after the last ride in the afternoon. I was instructed to restore the flash strap to his noseband, to stabilize the bit in his mouth--he'd regressed to that point. So badly undercaffeinated me got to spend an hour hosing him off (thank god for upscale barns with hot-water hoses) and getting him as dry as he could be, then watch a ride or two before it was time to saddle up again.

When I came back to saddle him, he was perfectly happy, smiling, "Oh! A saddle! Just for me?" No trauma that I could detect. And back down we went, and F spent more time with him, then put me on him for a short ride. He was very very up in the back if still quite tense--but we were able to work a little on stabilizing my hands and establishing some needed boundaries with the aids. "Tomorrow," said F, "bring him in in proper longeing gear, with a cavesson over the bridle, and sidereins." So I arranged to borrow a longe cavesson (thinking his own wouldn't fit over the bridle), dug out my newly cleaned and shiny sidereins, and trundled off to the hotel to fall over.

S in the meantime had had a somewhat better time with Junior, but he was loopy, too. F rode him with great enjoyment--a real old-fashioned chunkydoodle QH with genuine dressage talent and also all the capacity for the slides and spins is quite exotic to the Europeans; I'm sure there will be bragging when he gets home. We realized later that that was the night of the huge full moon. Probably had something to do with how nutty the horses were--and not just ours.

We shall not go into excessive detail about a peculiarity of the facility, which was that the arena was about as quiet and restrained as the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, with Western riders careening wildly in all directions, and one shrieking asshole of a "reiner" trainer complete with fake accent literally buzz-bombing the clinic. As in racing at full gallop straight through the middle of a lesson. Lawsuit waiting to happen, there. We deduced that [a] he objected to a real foreign accent in his territory and [b] he had a really, really, really tiny penis. On Saturday he actually instructed his teenaged students to ride in our space in spite of having half of the huge arena open to them. When I videoed S's second ride, I got whole sequences of some kid slopping across the viewfinder.

So that was interesting. Pooka, bless him, went Tony Soprano on the other horses after the first lesson: "He's dead to me." Totally ignored them, except for one mare in the stalls who thought he was pretty cute. But when he was working, he was working. He had challenges, too: the arena is sunk into the ground, which means people are walking by outside above the horses' heads, and the auditors were well up above him a la Vienna. He had a little trouble getting used to that. In this shot from Sunday you can see the bleachers we weren't using--

tcastleb was standing at that level:

Pook at that specific point was arguing in favor of FORWARD, MOM! while we were discussing the next maneuver.

At any rate, Saturday we presented ourselves as instructed, but I decided (unwisely), after putting the cavesson on over his bridle and not liking the effect, to take it to the arena and let F show me how to fit it. Pook would not let F near him with that thing. We had to dispense with it and longe off the bridle. Pook was not in favor. F got the sidereins on, and Pook said, "Nope, no way," and flipped over sideways. There was photographic evidence, but the photographer took it down--however there are shots of the rest of the lesson--there are five pages. See tense Pooka be tense. See tense Judy curl up in reaction. See whole picture regress to along about last January.

But! Again after the ride, happy Pooka was happy. He was, in fact, smug. Hanging out, smiling, being full of himself. I had been rather humiliated by the whole thing, because, seriously, this is not the horse I have at home, I do know how to longe, I do know how to keep my stallion in line, and he really does know how to be a civilized dressage horse. We got kind but stern instruction on the lines of, "He does whatever he wants, he throws his shoulder, he refuses to accept the bit. You must always be correct, you must always expect obedience, you must not allow him to control the program." Yes. Indeed. Correctness and obedience. Yes. Sing it, brother.

But. Happy Pooka. And some very strong corroboration of the work S does with us, and the upping of the ante that she's been applying of late. My meltdown in the last lesson was minor; I did not melt down in the clinic, even when I most wanted to smack the brat upside the head. He was making a point, when it came down to it.

Plus, everybody got to see how a stallion is longed and set up for a ride at the SRS, which was a treat for those of the auditors who had a clue, and I got reminders and pointers for longeing in that way, which is what he needs right now. Even if he did literally flip out over it at first. He was expecting to get blocked and trapped again--he has bad clinic memories, too. Once he got it into his head that this was his teacher from the SRS, the one he really wants to help S and me bring him along, he was a whole lot happier.

S had a much happier and more relaxed ride Saturday, too, and it was lots of fun to watch. We also got to watch F work with various horses and riders, and ride a mare who had been severely overfaced by her "dressage" training, and calm her down and show her how to stretch and breathe and relax. That was lovely to see.

On Sunday we were instructed to prepare as we had for Saturday, to longe--I promised to have the cavesson on before we got to the arena. We were able to ride a bit later, which helped, though leaving the hotel without the trailer key (where the saddle and boots were) was a bit of an exercise in stress management. We got the key in time, and as I was getting the cavesson on, I realized I was being supervised. F had come to see what we were doing. I did not like the borrowed equipment; it was too much leather and metal on that head. So I asked if we could try Pooka's own cavesson, which is a similar style to the one used at the SRS.

Lo and behold, it fit, and F was pleased to have the truly correct arrangement. And I got instruction in how to fit and use it, as we hiked the roughly quarter-mile to the arena:

There was an attempt, once there, to flip over again, but I was ready for it, and got "Gut!" when I declined the offer. And Pooka looked much better once he got going:

The ride itself went better, as well. S observed that it's still not nearly what we can do at home, but I was able to control the horse (sans whip--I never did get my dressage whip handed to me; F has his evil side, yes he does), we managed fairly correct circles, we were keeping the trot in some sort of rhythm, and once in a while he was thisclose to deciding he could come on the bit if he haaaaad to:

Maaaayyyyybe:

Overall, F said, we did well, we got a program lined up for getting him finally through and into the bridle, and we got our marching orders about that obedience thing.

That was work, said Pook. No kidding, I said.

But hey. Round white pony. Odd angle here, but that's some serious engine under the neoprene coating. And lookit! Slinky soft neck!

And now we're back home and the Girlz are thrilled and we have Homework from both F and S, and we have promised to come to the next one with Mad Obedience Skilz. And a nice stretchy horse.