"Lean back, this time. Don't let him get away with that." She turned away to stride back to the middle of the ring, flicking her lunge whip idly at the mud.
"I have nothing to hang onto." I whimpered.
"That's because you're on a lunge line." She said.
"But how do I let him not get away with bucking me off, if I have no reins?" The more I talked, the more desperate I could feel myself becoming. She wants to kill me, I thought quietly. It'd be easier to fire me, but this way she can make it look like an accident and she doesn't have to pay unemployment compensation.
She relented and fashioned a pair of reins for me.
"Don't rely on them," she warned, still afraid I'd piddle around trying to save my life in lieu of learning from her equestrian instruction. "But, if he bucks, lean back and tug on them. Hard."
With my heart in the pit of my stomach and that churning, I picked up the trot again. Within seconds, the dear beast began to tuck his head.
The first little buck promised to be the prelude to the biggie. He picked up his speed in order to send me lots further this time and then went for it.
I could hear Angel shouting: "Lean back! Lean back!" And when it happened, I leaned so far back, I thought I felt his butt against the back of my head.
I yanked his head up so hard, I could hear him gag on the bit in a strangled gurgle. He stopped. I was shaking harder than I was before, but I'd had the last word. And the sorry bastard knew it.
We stood there--the two of us--quivering for a good five minutes. I hoped hopelessly that Angel wouldn't want to break the spell by having us continue, but she was insistent. In her opinion, the problem had been solved and off we go. I knew the problem was only postponed. That it was there as big as my new fear of the big German horse.
Later, untacking him, he stepped on my foot and blew snot on my parka. Altogether a miserable animal, I concluded. I was so unnerved by the whole experience that I drove nearly a hundred miles toward my family Christmas in Florida before I realized I still had on my rubber riding boots.
Maybe the incident, isolated and unusual in itself, would not have developed into the full-fledge phobia that it did had I not experienced a disconcerting episode with mild-mannered old Traveler the next week.
It was one of those exceptional, rare days when poky Traveler felt like partying. I was on him, bareback, for perhaps a total of four minutes and I was scared to death.
All he did was prance a bit, unrequested, and twitch his ears a little more than usual. I slid to the ground and buried my face in his neck. Amadeus--the Horse from Hell was one thing, but to be unnerved by Traveler, the gentlest horse on the farm, was something else. It meant, to me, that I couldn't handle it anymore. I'd lost whatever confidence I'd ever had with horses.
This was underscored the next few times I attempted to ride. If the horse's ears twitched, instead of thinking he was listening to me or sounds around him, I thought it might be the prelude to a bolt--he'd heard something and was now going to run for his life with me clinging to his back (I could only hope).
When he ran, and I would see this as clearly in my mind as if I were running a movie reel, he would either run into branches and trees that would poke my eyes out and break all my arms and legs, or I would bounce off him, probably onto a railroad track with an oncoming train bearing down.
If I were sitting on the horse and we were not moving, which was by now my favorite gait, I would think: if he shies, we'll fall down that little cliff and roll in that barbwire. His body will crush mine as we roll, embedding it in the barbwire (which I won't feel because I'll be too involved with my many compound fractures.)
Sometimes, when I mounted, I would get a mental flash of me in a wheel chair, or I would hear, quick as a snake, before I could stop it, the voice of some authority saying: "It's her spine. She'll never walk, talk, move, eat, blink, or be able to change channels on a television set again."
Healthy or rational fear is when you know something could be a risk, but you're able to measure its danger with an objective view of your own ability.
Healthy fear is what keeps you from doing 90 mph in front of the Highway Patrol Station. Healthy fear is fear that makes sense. What I was feeling was real, but the reasons for the feeling weren't rooted in reality.
Discouraged and feeling no real hope that my new found timorousness would dissipate on its own, I turned to structured lessons as a way of regaining my confidence.
Lessons are important and helpful to the green rider, probably even indispensable, but the time to take them is when you're excited to learn all about horses and have no emotional baggage or prior business to work out with them.
What I really needed, in retrospect, was to take long, boring walks on horseback until the boredom outweighed the fears. Or private lessons, with a patient instructor who really understood the problem.
What I did was enroll in group lessons. Group lessons, however, were not the answer and although they did me no real harm, and did, in fact, correct the techniques of my saddle position while keeping me around horses, they did nothing for my confidence level.
I remained afraid and had to force myself, with what felt like a considerable amount of weekly bravery, to continue to attend.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Formal Riding Lessons
The Yellow Pages are a fine way of finding riding academies near you, as are bulletin boards at tack shops and boarding facilities.
If you know people who have horses, they can probably clue you in to good riding instructors, but, in many cases, you'll have to bring your own horse to the lesson.
Although group lessons were probably not what I needed at the particular time I sought them out, the academy I found was, nonetheless, clean and convenient and, as it turned out, a fascinating study in horses and people.
The Verig Riding Academy in Atlanta has been teaching students how to ride for three decades. They've produced hundreds of trophies and championships for their students in national competitions of dressage, cross country and stadium jumping.
In the old days, the Verig's techniques of riding and instruction were called "foreign". Now they're accepted all over the country as the norm.
Dr. Verig and his wife came to the United States in 1952 from Austria. They'd once trained German equestrians for the Olympic games and perhaps because of this and their involvement in the war effort of World War II, there remained a gentle mantle of mystery and romantic adventure about the place.
Old Mrs. Verig would toddle out to the barn every evening in her bathrobe and slippers from the family's nearby house to mutter to any of the students who'd listen about how the academy wasn't like it used to be and how her daughter--the current instructor--had it all wrong.
Her daughter, Valerie, seemed to have a lot of patience with the old woman, who could be very noisy and very insistent about her point, especially when she was observing a lesson in progress.
Mrs. Verig had been a top-level dressage rider in her day, had trained in her native Austria and fled the old country with her husband and their horses during the second World War.
Every night, the old woman would pad out to the stall of her Lippizan stallion, Mestoza, and say goodnight to him by offering him a carrot between her teeth, which he always took very gently from her to the amazement of whatever new audience was in the barn that evening.
She said that her husband had ridden Mestoza out of Austria, across the border, narrowly escaping the Nazis, and they had then brought him to America.
Mestoza was 24 years old and it was thought that it was probably Mestoza's sire that she was talking about. Nevertheless, it was a magnificent story of a young girl during the war, her beloved Lippizan, and her dashing, daring husband.
Another version of the story, although a little less thrilling, says that the Doctor simply made a buying trip to Austria in 1964 for the Lippizan nucleus of breeding stallions and mares. But Verig was a commander in the Germany calvary in World War II, and his wife d
id help prepare the horses for combat--and both worked for the Allies at one point--so maybe there was a horse-lift or two at some time during the war--and the beloved stallion that dashed passionately to freedom and safety and into the young Mrs. V's waiting arms might really have existed--although dead now for over forty years.
The horse in the stall today is still called Mestoza, named after the original sire of one of the six Lippizaner dynasties. Mrs. V was still the only one who was able to get a bridle on or calm this Mestoza, whoever he was, the son or the sire.
In any event, Mrs. V and Mestoza provided me with the only case I'd ever witnessed of a true, consistent affection between a horse and a human. He didn't just tolerate her. He honestly seemed to love her. She may have been a little daft now, but, in her day, she and Mestoza had performed brilliantly together in competition, both here and abroad, countless times.
The original Lippizans were imported to Austria, the Verig's home, from Spain and Italy. They were bred for a gentle, obedient nature for over 200 years. Usually short, around 15 to 15'3 hands, they appear and behave with a look of nobility--from their arched necks, pronounced withers, long back and perfectly turned feet.
Known for what's called their "airs above the ground", (meaning all the leaping and half-flying choreographic movements that they do) the Lippizan is the embodiment of the dressage horse. Being a grueling but awe-inspiring test of a horse's memory and manners, dressage (the art of training horses to perform movements in a balanced and obedient manner) demands a high degree of understanding between horse and rider. It's an excellent discipline and especially good for the green rider looking to perfect her seat.
My goal, before I ever rode solo again, was to make my seat absolutely secure. Dressage is the riding discipline to do that.
The dressage seat uses a longer stirrup than does the hunter or jumper seat, giving greater security and more communication with the horse, as more of your leg is in contact. As a result of the lessons, I became so comfortable with the longer stirrup that it was a year before I could wean myself off it and go back to the slightly shorter stirrup needed for jumping. And even then, I felt like my knees were riding around by my chin, Steve Cauthan-style.
The Verig Academy featured two large outdoor rings--one which had jumps--and an indoor area where the winter lessons took place. The barn and the Verig home were attached to each other as well as to the indoor ring. In fact, the Verig family living room picture window looked out onto one of the riding rings, allowing the family, or whoever was interested, to watch the lessons in the comfort (and warmth) of their living room. Just like watching tv.
The barn itself was neat and warm and clean. The 25 horses each had their names on their stall doors: Netta, Imprint, Mestoza, Katrinka, Siglavy, Big Boy, and Traveler (every southern barn has at least one horse named after Robert E Lee's famous mount, and the horse does not have to be white to merit the honor). At night, tucked into their warm blankets and surrounded by sweet bedding, they would nicker softly to one another.
It was a good barn and seemed a happy one.
Twice a week, every Tuesday evening and midday on Saturday, I would bundle up against the January cold, pull on bulky sweaters, my riding boots and my schooling chaps over my boots, and trudge off to class.
We students were asked to check a list hanging on a clipboard in the center of the barn to see which horse the instructor had decided we were to ride that day. There didn't seem to be any particular method to this decision. But it did serve to make us feel that someone was in control of things, or had a master plan of sorts. Then, we would find the horse in its stall, find his tack, tack him up, (having little to nothing to do with bulletin boards, the verb form of the word "tack" means to saddle up. Since that's basically what "tack" means--the horse's saddle and headgear) lead him to the center of the indoor ring, mount him, and be waiting in line for the instructor to appear. (Having never taken any other kind of large group riding lessons, I don't know if this sort of regimen is typical of group riding lessons or just specific to the German military leanings of the Verigs.)
These particular horses, although disdained heartily by Angel Barnes as "school horses" were, nonetheless, nothing like the sweet, sometimes-plodding pasture ponies on which I'd begun my tutelage. Remembering that I broke my shoulder on one of those poky pasture ponies, my heart quivered at the size and spirit of these "school horses." They were beautiful Lippizans, many of them stallions. It seemed to me that these horses were only one step away from the Horse of Horror from which I'd catapulted at Angel's barn. Goodness, at least Amadeus had been gelded. (A gelding is usually calmer than a fire-snorting, ground-pawing stallion who is out to prove his virility at the expense of your peaceful ride through the pasture.)
My first few weeks of lessons, I was assigned to a large Lippizan mare named Netta. Netta, at 24 years, was the oldest horse in the academy. She had foaled half the barn and was not terribly affectionate, perhaps as a result. Although, happily, she did not bite like some of the others.
As I bumped around the ring, holding shamefully onto the pommel as I went, various riders in the group would mention to me that they had taken lessons on Netta when they were children. The knowledge that I was so green that I was a palsied, trembling coward even on a children's mount--and an aged, nearly decrepit mount at that--did still less for my confidence level. (On the other hand, I did sort of wonder at these peoples' progress if, fifteen to twenty years later they were still in the beginners class at the same riding academy.)
One afternoon, after we'd done several boring laps at a slow trot, Netta got a little frisky and did a wee buck and wing in one corner of the ring, joylessly called the "ghost corner" because the horses tended to spook more often when they went past it.
Although she regained her composure and promptly went back to the mindless, drudge-trudge that had previously carried us around the ring, I was stricken. I moved her woodenly to the center of the ring where the instructor stood and there we remained for the rest of the lesson: immobile and afraid, with my wanting very much to be off the frightful beast altogether. It would be my riding nadir.
Slowly, as the weeks passed, I was able to rejoin the other students and continue the tentative, unhappy plod-trot around the ring. I never felt confident during this time, but I was eventually able to trot the ring without gripping the saddle with my left hand. Knowing better than I, the instructor soon began assigning me to different horses, although it took several conversations and a crowbar to unpry me from Netta.
I worriedly rode Imprint, a bouncy greyhound of a horse, and a friendly one, and loved him immediately. He had none of Netta's attitude of resignation and apathy, but seemed eager to trot about the ring as if he'd not done it a hundred thousand times before with various degrees of jerking on his poor, soft mouth. It was a good experience for me to be able to compare the two.
In a few weeks, I was able to climb onto the more advanced horses, although I never cantered any of them. The feeling of being able to ride them--if only at a trot--helped cheer me considerably. When I saw new riders enter the academy and inevitably begin their schooling on begrudging old Netta, I felt buoyed with the evidence of my obvious improvement. The old mare died six weeks after I came and promptly threw the whole barn into a real grief. She'd been one of the original foals from the group the Doctor had brought over from Austria and old grouch or not, she'd served them well and to the day she died.
The indoor ring, in which we took our winter lessons, was approximately 50 feet by 70 feet. One side of the ring was open to the makeshift gravel parking lot and one side was covered by the longest, widest mirror I've ever seen. In the winter, the sounds of cars attempting to squeal and shimmy their way out of icy tire ruts would panic the horses and send them bolting for the opening that led back to their stalls and presumably, safety. Although, in every case that this happened, all riders were able to regain control of their exiting mounts, I, nonetheless, harbored images of all the horses racing en mass
e for the meagre opening and leaving several severed knee caps behind them (at least two of them mine).
The instructor would have us trot in single-file around the ring and then in a figure eight while she reminded us of various things:
"Susan, are you on the right diagonal?"
"I guess, since you ask, I'm probably not?"
"Sit through a bounce, please."
Being able to see yourself in a mirror is second only to having copious video-tapes of your riding as far as being able to critique your position. What feels right is one thing, but when you're able to see your toes jutting out, your heels parallel to the ground and great gaps of daylight between your knees and the saddle, you know, comfortable or not, that it's wrong.
Correcting the position while you're seeing yourself lets you remember how it feels too. Holding the correct position without the mirror to correct and confirm you is the green rider's nemesis. It's hard and it takes hours of riding. Practice, practice. And more of it.
Riding in endless circles may sound titanically dull to the experienced rider, even to the non-rider, and is absolutely to the horse, but it is surprisingly unboring to the green rider with a confidence problem. Every jog is a potential springboard into a buck, every shake of the head is a probable mutiny-about-to-happen, every sneeze is the beginning of an amok about to be run.
I was even afraid on the ground. With visions of Flicka rearing up to stomp-to-dust the bad guy trying to burn down the ranch, I would tug on stirrup leathers with trembling fingers. (Some horses will automatically give playful, patella-pulverizing kicks when you tighten their girths.)
I kept my feet well away from theirs too. It is incredible the number of things that can startle a horse. And once startled, they usually like to react by jumping to the side or up in the air or turning around briskly...often with little regard as to whose sneakers they crush in the process.
The instructor, Valerie, had the misfortune to demonstrate this particular situation while I was in the ring. The horse shied onto her left, booted foot and although it didn't break, she did limp for a week. I wanted to look into the possibility of ordering an eight-foot lead rope, but she insisted that the incident was a fluke and that horses almost always shy away from you. It's in their genetic code. Those essential avoid-stepping-on-human-feet chromosomes that make up every great horse.
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