Bob is an amazing rider. He's so still - everything is still - and then everything moves in harmony. It is just so fluid.
He rode Mercury today - a real challenge. Last week after the jumping lesson and the head tossing and the new hole in the flash, I rode Mercury on Sunday. I don't remember it being particularly exciting, but I was trying to be careful until I had another lesson. Little did I know that fate would conspire to keep me from creating more bad habits by drowning me in work all week.
So Bob got to ride Mercury today after a week of no riding at all (not even lunging), and with his new bad attitude. Of course, Mercury looked better (at his worst) under Bob than he ever does with me. Bob said he has really severe problems bending to the left, and that he breaks because he feels unbalanced. He is also naughty and tested Bob frequently.
What Bob said he needs is to be ridden consistently so that he feels secure - so that he knows he can go 10 laps around the arena (into the corners, not racing around with his nose out) and know that it's ok - he doesn't fall down when he comes out of the corner.
Bob said we're getting stuck because I'm not patient (and don't know how to fix this stuff anyway), and Mercury is "green" for all practical purposes. He said he'd put it at 60% Mercury's fault and 40% my fault.
Tomorrow I'm going to take a lesson, but I suspect that I can't replicate what Bob was doing today because I simply don't know enough. And I am guessing that the next two weeks I am going to continue to log an extra 30-40 hours each week. So I'm going to ask Bob to do a month of training (until after my week off in July), I'll take a couple lessons and watch whenever I can, and then the Happ's Derby (scheduled now), Bob can ride Saturday and I'll ride Sunday. I don't know if that's allowed.
Otherwise, I don't know if I'll be ready to take him to the Derby (almost certainly not) and maybe not even the shows after that.
As much as I want to know how to fix every problem, the thing is I'm never going to be good enough to be a trainer. That's what trainers are for.
Charlie with the long sought after cooler
Spring NWEC 2013 Novice
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Thich Nhat Hanh and Positive Thinking
Through a series of small conversations, I had a delightful insight last week.
I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh (a Buddhist monk), and came across the story of a young man who wanted to take the civil service exam in Vietnam. Even though he scored very well, the heads of the school did not accept him because he was so young. Here's what the book said:
"People need to have a strong aspiration before they can become a bodhisattva who can liberate beings from suffering or someone skilled in helping the people and the nation. The young man in this case could have raged and complained. He could have given up. But he kept studying. When the young man took the exam three years later, he passed. He then ... went on to serve his country very well."
"When he failed the first time, he may have suffered. He did not know that all this was to help him grow up and do better. It is the same when we pray. We think that we did not receive what we prayed for, but we don't realize that we might have received somethign else, perhaps something greater or less than what we asked for. Our Buddha nature knows us better than we know ourselves, knows more clearly what is best for us."
My mom has told me this each time I've felt like life has dealt me a poor hand or I've suffered a blow. I did not get the owl field job I wanted one year, but then the next month got a wonderful job doing field work for a great zoologist. I did not join the Peace Corps, but I got the best dog in the world. A series of loser boyfriends break up with me, and there isn't a happy ending to this one yet. I did not keep my colt, but I met Bob, who is as close the perfect trainer for me as I will ever find.
So thinking these types of thoughts, I suddenly had a flash of positive thinking. It may or may not be true, but the buoyancy of the thought was enough for me:
Bob always makes those jokes about how I’m his retirement (his steak and lobster). I’ve always taken it to mean that I have so many problems, he will never run out of things to fix. I never once, until last week, thought of it as being that I have so much talent and potential, that he will be able to keep helping me improve. What helped me piece it together (the new way of looking at it) was something Alice said a week or so ago, about how Bob is so good that he doesn’t have to stop teaching his students or deliberately keep them at a lower level, because he always knows more to teach them. And so maybe what Bob has meant is that I have the potential that he can really help me develop into a high level rider, because he himself used to be a high level rider. (This matches with his small statement “I finally have a student who can win”.)
I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh (a Buddhist monk), and came across the story of a young man who wanted to take the civil service exam in Vietnam. Even though he scored very well, the heads of the school did not accept him because he was so young. Here's what the book said:
"People need to have a strong aspiration before they can become a bodhisattva who can liberate beings from suffering or someone skilled in helping the people and the nation. The young man in this case could have raged and complained. He could have given up. But he kept studying. When the young man took the exam three years later, he passed. He then ... went on to serve his country very well."
"When he failed the first time, he may have suffered. He did not know that all this was to help him grow up and do better. It is the same when we pray. We think that we did not receive what we prayed for, but we don't realize that we might have received somethign else, perhaps something greater or less than what we asked for. Our Buddha nature knows us better than we know ourselves, knows more clearly what is best for us."
My mom has told me this each time I've felt like life has dealt me a poor hand or I've suffered a blow. I did not get the owl field job I wanted one year, but then the next month got a wonderful job doing field work for a great zoologist. I did not join the Peace Corps, but I got the best dog in the world. A series of loser boyfriends break up with me, and there isn't a happy ending to this one yet. I did not keep my colt, but I met Bob, who is as close the perfect trainer for me as I will ever find.
So thinking these types of thoughts, I suddenly had a flash of positive thinking. It may or may not be true, but the buoyancy of the thought was enough for me:
Bob always makes those jokes about how I’m his retirement (his steak and lobster). I’ve always taken it to mean that I have so many problems, he will never run out of things to fix. I never once, until last week, thought of it as being that I have so much talent and potential, that he will be able to keep helping me improve. What helped me piece it together (the new way of looking at it) was something Alice said a week or so ago, about how Bob is so good that he doesn’t have to stop teaching his students or deliberately keep them at a lower level, because he always knows more to teach them. And so maybe what Bob has meant is that I have the potential that he can really help me develop into a high level rider, because he himself used to be a high level rider. (This matches with his small statement “I finally have a student who can win”.)
Sunday, June 03, 2007
XC Lesson - 6/2/07
Well, this lesson was extremely educational, although it was one of the "three steps back" lessons.
I was warming up Mercury outside, where he was continuing his ear --> sideways head --> stiff, quivering neck --> full on jump. When Bob got out, he asked us to canter each direction, first with a defensive seat (sit up very straight and deep, keep your knees closed, legs close), then in a two point (where I immediately just throw away all contact, which is not correct). Mercury was fine, but he kept stumbling.
So we talked about the stumbling. Bob said it's permanent. Unlike in my head, where I have made up excuses for it for a year and a half now and how it will surely get better, Bob says he's just not ever going to pick up his own feet and move them. He said there is absolutely nothing that I can do to fix it (over the course of the next hour, I kept coming up with ideas which he kept saying no, like "what about if I smack him really hard with the stick when he stumbles?" and Bob pointed out it would just make him lurch away really quickly afterwards, not stop doing it). He also said that watching him move, his back left leg crosses over and that's the source of the other stumble, and why he can't move out. His right leg kicks his left leg. I believe Bob phrased it as "one of Mercury's many problems."
So we went out to jump the cross country jumps, and did some riding around in the field so Mercury could look at everything.
We started with a little log, and immediately after the first jump he stuck his head way up in the air and started charging around.
So in case my evil mean hands were punishing him by coming back too soon, I was thinking about keeping them way forward after the jump, and he did it again. I think this time a horrible scary crow/raven (I can't ever tell which) went flying off from the other side of the fence, so he also used that as an excuse to freak out. We jumped it from the other direction (headed towards the barn) and then we tried me deliberately giving him his head when he was tossing it. That worked once, then the second time he just took off. We moved to a couple other jumps and a couple combinations, but the head thing was getting worse and worse. When I finally yelled "I AM giving half halts!" Bob said, wait a minute, come over here.
Here's this lessons revelation: the flash noseband was too loose. Because the leather has stretched since the last time I poked a new hole in it. And Bob said there's no point in going on, he's just going to continue to fight, you're going to continue to develop new bad habits that need to be fixed (i.e. his head tossing), and you could make it much worse if he starts doing it in front the jump.
And I said "Well, what if you rode him?" and he said "It won't help" but got on him, and although Mercury looked better, he was still really, really naughty and Bob didn't even try to jump him. It was really interesting to watch from the ground, because I could see him open his mouth to be bad (then lift his head), and I could see when Bob gave a half halt, it was correct for a second, then he would open his mouth so he could move his head forward.
So I put new holes in the flash, and Bob says we have to go back:
1) Bob rides him a couple times for an attitude adjustment
2) Then we go back to dressage
3) Then we start working him in running martingales over poles
4) Then stadium jumping (he said he wasn't as bad two weeks ago inside because he doesn't have room (or as many excuses) to stick his head up and run)
5) Then cross country
I basically don't have time to do all this before the next show, so I'm not sure what will happen.
This is frustrating because he's been fighting me (and spooking at everything) the last couple weeks, and I noticed the flash was loose, but didn't think anything about it. I could have avoided all of this by thinking to tighten it myself.
Oh yeah, and Mercury has a fat neck, so he needs to lose weight. His neck balls up when his head is in the proper position, making it uncomfortable for him to maintain it. That's the purpose of those neck sweats (I always thought it was to keep their hair short), but you also achieve it by working on the bit (with the uncomfortable neck).
I was warming up Mercury outside, where he was continuing his ear --> sideways head --> stiff, quivering neck --> full on jump. When Bob got out, he asked us to canter each direction, first with a defensive seat (sit up very straight and deep, keep your knees closed, legs close), then in a two point (where I immediately just throw away all contact, which is not correct). Mercury was fine, but he kept stumbling.
So we talked about the stumbling. Bob said it's permanent. Unlike in my head, where I have made up excuses for it for a year and a half now and how it will surely get better, Bob says he's just not ever going to pick up his own feet and move them. He said there is absolutely nothing that I can do to fix it (over the course of the next hour, I kept coming up with ideas which he kept saying no, like "what about if I smack him really hard with the stick when he stumbles?" and Bob pointed out it would just make him lurch away really quickly afterwards, not stop doing it). He also said that watching him move, his back left leg crosses over and that's the source of the other stumble, and why he can't move out. His right leg kicks his left leg. I believe Bob phrased it as "one of Mercury's many problems."
So we went out to jump the cross country jumps, and did some riding around in the field so Mercury could look at everything.
We started with a little log, and immediately after the first jump he stuck his head way up in the air and started charging around.
So in case my evil mean hands were punishing him by coming back too soon, I was thinking about keeping them way forward after the jump, and he did it again. I think this time a horrible scary crow/raven (I can't ever tell which) went flying off from the other side of the fence, so he also used that as an excuse to freak out. We jumped it from the other direction (headed towards the barn) and then we tried me deliberately giving him his head when he was tossing it. That worked once, then the second time he just took off. We moved to a couple other jumps and a couple combinations, but the head thing was getting worse and worse. When I finally yelled "I AM giving half halts!" Bob said, wait a minute, come over here.
Here's this lessons revelation: the flash noseband was too loose. Because the leather has stretched since the last time I poked a new hole in it. And Bob said there's no point in going on, he's just going to continue to fight, you're going to continue to develop new bad habits that need to be fixed (i.e. his head tossing), and you could make it much worse if he starts doing it in front the jump.
And I said "Well, what if you rode him?" and he said "It won't help" but got on him, and although Mercury looked better, he was still really, really naughty and Bob didn't even try to jump him. It was really interesting to watch from the ground, because I could see him open his mouth to be bad (then lift his head), and I could see when Bob gave a half halt, it was correct for a second, then he would open his mouth so he could move his head forward.
So I put new holes in the flash, and Bob says we have to go back:
1) Bob rides him a couple times for an attitude adjustment
2) Then we go back to dressage
3) Then we start working him in running martingales over poles
4) Then stadium jumping (he said he wasn't as bad two weeks ago inside because he doesn't have room (or as many excuses) to stick his head up and run)
5) Then cross country
I basically don't have time to do all this before the next show, so I'm not sure what will happen.
This is frustrating because he's been fighting me (and spooking at everything) the last couple weeks, and I noticed the flash was loose, but didn't think anything about it. I could have avoided all of this by thinking to tighten it myself.
Oh yeah, and Mercury has a fat neck, so he needs to lose weight. His neck balls up when his head is in the proper position, making it uncomfortable for him to maintain it. That's the purpose of those neck sweats (I always thought it was to keep their hair short), but you also achieve it by working on the bit (with the uncomfortable neck).
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