Detox

It's possible that I am a little PTSD about the dressage.

Here is one of my Bad Eventer qualities: I love the dressage.  Not in a specialist-dressage-rider-masquerading-as-an-eventer way.  When I drill it all the way down, I lack much desire for working up the levels or for riding movements as ends in themselves.  But I like the thinkiness of it, and the problem-solving, and I really like riding a horse who uses himself well.

Picture by Flatlandsfoto and used with permission.

When Tucker and I changed course so drastically last winter, one of the things to which I most looked forward was the freedom to experiment and the opportunity to get reacquainted with my feel and my own trainer-brain.  There were changes I wanted to make in how the horse was going and in how I was riding.  I wanted straighter, more coherent, more up in the shoulder and out to the rein.  I hoped I'd have a sounder and happier horse as a result.  I liked and was grateful for a lot of what we'd learned over the years, but I felt up against a wall.  I didn't -- and don't! -- know whether we could get to the other side, but I finally let myself hear that little voice saying that the path we were on wasn't taking us there.

I figured that if I wasn't ready to give up quite yet, I might as well go all in on my own crackpot theories.  What was the harm?

I didn't think much about a sounder and happier rider, at least not as regards the dressage.

But I've been finding, in these first gone-rogue months, that I'd lost my way more than I'd known.  It turns out that when you ride around for -- I don't know at what point the disconnect crept in, so let's just say "a while" without being able to trust what you're feeling, that's a hard switch to just flip back.  And I hated a lot of it, by the end.  Hated the sense of being life-or-death to hold the system together, and hated even the moments that felt like something better because they had stopped panning out.

So here we are, working on our own, without deadline and with plenty of freedom, and I am only just now starting to realize the extent to which I am so completely freaked out that I cannot even breathe.

Seriously.  If we are "doing dressage" I sometimes find myself holding my breath for nearly the whole ride.

And I find myself worrying, wondering, doubting.  Reflexively thinking every time something goes awry that I should not be doing this on my own.  That I should find some help.  Not really wanting help, or input, or eyes.  Not really feeling like we need it.  Just defaulting to: something is slightly imperfect, and thus the end is nigh, and I cannot solve this on my own.

I'm not sure how I turned into this rider.  I mean, I can sketch a rough outline, but the details are blurry and I'm not sure they matter, anyway.  What matters is that I want my confidence back, my faith in my own feel.  I want to seek help when help would be beneficial, but I want it to be a reasoned decision, not a knee-jerk flail.

So we keep on trying.  When I catch myself all frozen and unbreathing, I do what I can to break it up, even if that means we go away and trot up the mountain instead.  I try to go all Inner Game of Tennis and just notice without judgment, if I can.  (Sometimes I can.)  I try to set little goals, make little plans, because riding around aimlessly has not such good outcomes, and I try taking them not so much to heart that I can't make a change.

What we're working on is pretty basic stuff.  Keeping the neck between the shoulders and the shoulders in front of the hips.  Keeping the shoulders up and the hind legs committed, especially in the transitions where it all tends to go to hell.  I have no idea how we got this far with me functionally never riding a single transition, but here we are!  So that is my piece of it: breathe and look up and ride.

And ride the ride that is, not yet another vague ought-to-be.  Tucker takes a good hold of the bridle, frex.  That is just what he does, and I admit: it's what I like him to do.  (In the dressage, that is.  Trotting the CTR, I mostly just threw a little loop in the rein and hooked my fingers into the martingale!)  If I feel like I should have him feather-light, I inevitably jam him up behind the contact.  If I let the connection be solid and trust it and focus on texture rather than weight, on the other hand?  Good things happen.

That's the other thing on the my-piece list: trusting it.

The point was to experiment, right?  This, too, I can try.