The Tale of the Dancing Slaughter Horse

by Shade, Victoria;

  The morning of the SAT soon came. I couldn’t remember ever being so anxious. I had found a good seat in the classroom, close enough to the door but not too close. Once seated, I couldn’t stop tapping my pencil and wagging my crossed leg. I had never been so jumpy, not even at my biggest horse show. I had been judged by famous and respected judges, I had ridden in front of an Olympic trainer, and I wasn’t nearly as nervous then as I was that day. What’s the big deal? I reasoned with myself, it’s just a test, like everyone keeps saying. No, actually it’s not. This test will shape the rest of my life. This test will either let me go to a good school and get a good job so I can have horses when I’m older, or not. Stop that! I scolded myself, Are you trying to freak out before the SATs and totally ruin your life? I had to get up and walk around, work off some of the energy that was building. I was in my seat too early anyway, I had a half hour.

  The exam was being held in the school’s library, at the school’s top level. I just went down the stairs to the school’s rotunda, and walked a small circle. I went up and down the stairs a few times. It felt good to move a little bit, I felt like I was at the start line of a major race, I had enough energy to run a marathon. I stretched all of my limbs, and took a few deep breaths.

  OK, now I’m ready, I studied. I’m ready. I avoided eye contact with everyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I stared straight ahead as I ascended the steps. Then, I spotted my chair in the library and walked directly to it. I sat down, picked up my pencil, and put my left hand to my forehead as a shield against anyone’s gaze. I was not about to talk to anyone now that I had mentally prepared myself for the test.

  The exam passed quickly once it began. It was challenging, but fair. My mother was waiting in the car outside, to take me to the farm.

  “How was it?” she asked once I was in the car.

  “I don’t want to jinx it, but not bad,” I said, prompting her to smile. I knew she wanted to know more, but I had recently come up with a rule that I wouldn’t discuss major tests until I had the score back, because I was afraid I would jinx it. Living with my mother had finally made me superstitious, like she was. At least she would think I was just superstitious and wasn’t failing.

  “Do you want to drive?” she asked.

  “Not today,” I replied, not because I didn’t want to drive. I always wanted to drive. I just didn’t want to deal with her gasping and flinching in the passenger seat all the way to the farm.

  Everyone at the farm wanted to talk about my SAT, except me. I kept my responses short, but polite. This was the only slightly annoying thing about knowing so many people who knew so much about me—they wanted to talk about everything going on in my life. I just wanted to be left alone.

  Carol was the only one who would just ask once and never pried into any part of my life. I loved her for that. She was the only person who seemed to understand me entirely. I returned the favor—unlike a lot of her other students, I never asked her about her marriage, her horse, her hopes and dreams. If she wanted to volunteer some information about her life, that was different. Our world together never changed. It was always all about horses.

  35

  Moonshine and I were progressing; we had advanced to Third Level, which meant he was performing more advanced movements. We were learning more tricks, but we still “fought” occasionally. I would erupt in frustration if a movement was not perfect by the third attempt. Then, I would lose my temper and smack Moonshine on his hind end with the whip to wake him up. But Moonshine wouldn’t be reprimanded like any other horse—he always retaliated with a buck. If I then responded with another quick tap, he would throw in another, more dramatic buck. Luckily, Carol was usually around to supervise, even if I wasn’t riding in a lesson with her. For years, she had been telling me that I could not ride Moonshine as if he were any other horse, but I ignored her advice, until one random day, it finally clicked.

  It’s amazing how the days that end up being the most significant are not always the special days I would imagine, not a big competition, or major life event. It was just a regular day, just another Saturday lesson I was having at the farm. Moonshine was in no mood to truly come round and work correctly, despite my best attempts using my seat and leg. So then, to wake him up and engage his haunches, I tapped him on his flank with the whip. I was instantly catapulted onto the pommel of the saddle, which pissed me off, so I tapped him again, and was again launched onto the top of the saddle. I tried hard to keep my cool and just keep riding, but I was getting more and more frustrated. I was hoping Carol would tell me to hop off, so she could fix him, as she had done on so many prior occasions. She simply continued to instruct me, though.

  “Carol, it’s not working, can’t you hop on him and just fix him?” I pleaded, now exhausted from fighting with Moonshine.

  “No, Moonshine won’t go for me or anyone else, the way he goes for you. He is your horse in every sense now,” she replied.

  “But I don’t know how to fix this!” I replied.

  “You’re too caught up in getting the immediate result, you have to dig deeper than just getting the movement. Dressage isn’t about just executing the movements. The movements are there to show the harmony between horse and rider.”

  “I can’t have harmony with this horse, he bucks all the time,” I replied.

  “He only bucks when you instigate. Remember, he was abused, so he’s not like one of these other dressage horses that will tolerate being touched with the whip. It’s something that already happened to him that he’ll never forget, and you can’t change that.”

  “So, what are you saying? This is pointless?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not. I’m saying you have to be smarter than your horse. Since you know he’ll buck when you touch him with the whip, forget the whip,” she said as she pulled it out of my grip.

  “How can I ride without a whip? Everyone rides with a whip!”

  “Yeah, but no one else rides Moonshine. He is a different kind of horse, so you have to be a different kind of rider.”

  I was growing impatient with her theorizing. I wanted her to just get to the point, already.

  “Carol, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I confessed.

  “You have to persuade him—ask him, don’t tell him.”

  “Ask him?” I questioned.

  “Yes, ask, don’t demand,” she insisted. “That is the key to riding Moonshine. You have to make him think everything is his idea. If you can play these mind games with him, you’ll be amazed at what he can do and how well he can do it.”

  Not like I don’t know anything about mind games, I thought, as I remembered how many times I tried to manipulate my father by fueling his massive ego. I never thought my mind game practice would bleed into dressage, but here it was. Dressage was turning out to be more about mental gymnastics than physical work. I had to break into the mind of an animal, figure out how to communicate with it, and persuade it to dance.

  “So, I still don’t understand. ‘Ask him, don’t tell him’ sounds like a nice theory, but how does it come into play? What does it mean? Can you give me an example of how I can ask him instead of telling him to do something?” I asked.

  “Sure. Just now was a perfect example. We were just schooling tempi changes, right?”

  Tempi changes are an upper level movement where the horse canters usually on a straight line across a diagonal line of the arena. He starts the line cantering with one leg leading. For example, if his left front leg leads, it means he is on the left lead canter. In a flying change, the rider recognizes the moment of suspension, when all of the horse’s legs are off the ground, and in that moment, asks him to switch to the other lead. So, in essence, he is switching his leading leg in the air, which is why the movement is called a flying lead change. Tempi changes are a sequence of the flying lead changes.

  The easiest sequence is introduced in Fourth Level,
where the horse performs three of these flying changes on every fourth stride. The movement gets more difficult as the levels advance. The next level up from Fourth Level is the first of the international levels—Prix St. Georges, Intermediare I, Intermediare II, and finally Grand Prix, the highest level in dressage. Each level has more demanding sequences of flying changes. I knew most of the more advanced dressage tests because I really wanted to ride Grand Prix and I had memorized the required movements in each level. There were more tricks in the upper levels but I found the flying changes most challenging.

  Third Level has no flying change sequences; all that was required in Third Level was to do one single change. But I had competed at Third Level, and, according to Carol’s philosophy, I had to be training in the movements a level above the one in which I was competing; since Fourth Level introduced the challenge of tempi flying changes, we had to know how to perform tempi changes well before we would compete at Fourth Level. I was excited to be schooling the movements in Fourth Level because I knew Fourth Level was very similar to Prix St. Georges. Carol had the challenge of teaching two inexperienced students—Moonshine and myself—an advanced movement, simultaneously. She was a truly gifted teacher because even though I had no prior experience with tempi changes, I didn’t know how to ask my horse to perform them, or how they should feel when executed, she was so clear in her explanations and answers that she was able to overcome my inexperience with her training.

  “We need to hammer down these tempi changes if you’re going to compete at Fourth Level next show season,” she advised.

  It was November. I only had five months.

  “Do you really think he could learn this by next spring?” I asked Carol, skeptical.

  “You would be surprised what this horse could do once you have him figured out. But it’s your job to tap into his brain and persuade him to do what you want. Remember that you and Moony are in this together.”

  That made sense. I had never really thought about Moony’s perspective. I assumed that since I was in charge, my perspective was the only one that mattered. But Moonshine wasn’t the kind of horse that would allow me to be in charge. He forced me to be his partner instead of his leader. How could I forget that? I knew he hated to follow, so why had I tried so hard to force him to follow my lead? I had been so thoughtless.

  “Be smart when you ride now. When he’s good, be obvious about letting him know. He is an egomaniac, so praise will get you really far with him. If he knows what you want, and how happy it makes you, he would do it so easily. He loves praise, you know that,” she continued.

  “But what if he’s bad, then what do I do?” I asked.

  “If he’s bad, first, don’t get emotional about it. Everyone learns best by the mistakes they make. Let him make the mistake, then correct it. Don’t try so hard to prevent it. If you never let it happen in training, he’ll never know what not to do, but if you do let it happen in training, and show him not to do it, then he probably won’t do it again. Think about what caused the mistake, rather than the mistake itself. Usually, an error in a movement is the result of something deeper, so you will have to be sort of like a technician or engineer and dig for the core of that problem,” she instructed.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Here’s a perfect example—the flying lead changes. He can just barely do them, and they look chaotic. It’s messy and out of control because you aren’t setting him up to do the flying change perfectly, you’re sort of just throwing him into it. Every movement in this sport is about preparation. Think about it before you do it. Think about how you have to ask. Think about whether he is all set up and ready to do it. You have to think now. The higher up the levels you go, the more mental the game becomes. Eventually, you’ll be able to ride him with just your mind.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s really cool—that’s pretty much the essence of dressage,” she corrected.

  “OK, so how do I fix the flying changes then?”

  “For starters, you have to be able to canter a straight line, keeping him round, collected, and controlling the rhythm with your seat. Exaggerate your aids for the lead you are on, so if you are tracking left, coming onto a diagonal to change direction, really sit down on your left seat bone, and keep your left leg on snug, right at the girth, and your right leg one hand’s distance behind the girth. Hold your right rein to keep him balanced, and keep your left rein soft, so he can bend to the left. But he can’t change his entire balance to the right with a flying change if he is totally bent to the left, so just before the flying change, you have to prepare for it—make him really straight, but make sure he can stay round at the same time. Test him for a few strides, make sure he can canter super straight. When you feel like you have him there, just switch your cues, imagine your legs are like scissors and just switch their positioning. So, when he is in the air, bring your left leg back, right leg forward, and shift your weight from your left to your right seat bone, and drop your right shoulder.

  “The trick in this moment of suspension is in the landing, when he lands on the new lead, you have to keep him from taking off. This is where you’ve been having problems controlling him. Try first to sit down deep in the saddle, with a really strong seat to control the rhythm. Just because he changes his lead doesn’t mean the rhythm of the canter has to change. But if that doesn’t work, then make a more obvious correction, like a small circle going in the new direction. If you pull him into a small circle, he can’t build up speed because you’re breaking his momentum. Eventually he’ll figure out that flying changes aren’t about getting excited and taking off, they just mean a switch in the leading leg. Once you guys have those down, we’ll start playing with adding more on a line, like maybe one change, then another after five strides, then another after six strides. Whenever he feels ready, ask for more. But always ride smart, you have to ride like a trainer now.”

  Ride smart, I thought. OK, so basically, I have to turn off my emotions when I ride. How is that possible? How can I not get mad when he doesn’t want to do a movement he’s done a hundred times before? I wondered. I would definitely try, though.

  That winter, I worked on controlling myself. I was desperate for Moonshine to be famous and for the whole world to know what a special horse he was, so I would do anything to get him there. I don’t know why I cared so much what people thought all of a sudden. I usually didn’t care what others thought, but when it came to Moonshine, I did. I needed for everyone to recognize that even though he wasn’t as talented or graceful as the warmbloods we competed against, he was just as special, and even more special because not only did we dare to compete with horses that were superior, but we sometimes even gave them a run for their money.

  I would no longer be controlled by my emotions; I would now be the one in control. Learning how to be in command of my reactions was the biggest challenge I had met thus far in my dressage training. I tried to be more practical, more pragmatic in my training. It was difficult, and I slipped many times in the beginning. But the difference that this new mindset made in training was significant and notable. Whenever we made a mistake, I would correct it, instead of punishing my partner for having let it happen. I realized that he was always reacting to a cue I had given him. Carol was right, all the mistakes really were my fault.

  If I expected him to be perfect, then I had to be perfect myself—expecting anything else from my horse would have been unfair. After all, from his point of view, why should he do anything for me? He let me sit on his back and make him work and let me put him in trailers and take him to shows not because he shared my ambitions or aspirations. He didn’t know the difference between an important show and a training ride, or who was judging a particular class. He simply did everything I wanted because I wanted him to do it—out of the goodness of his heart. When I thought about training from Moonshine’s perspective, he hadn’t been bad or intentionally malic
ious. He just didn’t know why I wanted him to do the things I wanted, and he would never know why. So, if I wanted him to perform at his maximum capability, I would have to be at my absolute best.

  My horse was not a push-button horse; he wouldn’t go around an arena doing movements like a robot. I sat on a few horses that were so perfectly programmed. Even though they were easy to ride, I didn’t like them—they were boring and uninteresting. I thought I would love sitting on a trained horse, but I preferred my horse, the most difficult horse on the property. I both loved and hated that Moony forced me to be perfect every time I rode. He never let a mistake of mine slip, like other horses did. If I was half a second too slow with my cue for a flying change, Moony would either execute it piss poorly, or not at all. Other horses might have realized what I actually meant for them to do and done what I thought. They would have assumed what I wanted and done it. But maybe the fact that Moonshine only did exactly what I asked him actually made him the best trained horse; maybe that made him the most obedient. And maybe this is what Carol meant when she said that if I could ride this horse, I would be able to ride any horse. No other horse would teach me to be a perfect rider.

  __________

  Moonshine very much appreciated my new style of riding. I no longer rode with a whip. I no longer rode emotionally. When we were faced with a problem, I stopped to think about it. I was going against my natural instinct to erupt in anger and frustration, and instead analyze the situation before I did anything else, as Carol taught me to do. I would try the movement two more times, and if it still had not improved, I would go back to the basics to figure out where the deeper issue lay buried, just like she said. I was beginning to learn that dressage was not testing the rider’s and horse’s ability to execute the movements, but rather, that the movements were there to demonstrate how well horse and rider communicated. It really was a dance—we had to perform as one. Maintaining such a high degree of control over my mind and thoughts was the greatest, and also most rewarding, challenge that I had ever faced.