smellshorsey

What Motivates a Child to Ride -- and Work Hard?

It's pouring down rain, very cold and we're waiting for it all to turn to snow. So what did Lily do? Same thing she does every day -- she rode. I wouldn't have ridden if I were in the ribbons with only one more phase of an event to go. Buddy didn't like it either -- he gets really ticked when rain gets in his ears. But he's learning who's boss.

You'd think she was training for the Olympics. (Maybe she is!)

Her 13th birthday is coming up. What does she want? Some painting and maintenance done on the truck and trailer, and re-joining Pony Club. Not one other thing.

She's spent the last four hours cleaning her tack and oiling it. (Which it needed after its soaking.)

I wanted her to be interested in riding. I wanted her to share my love for horses. I had no idea she would be this passionate, but I'm thrilled.

I know of other girls who have lost interest, even though they have horses and riding moms. I can't tell you why they lost interest, and I expect one day Lily will discover boys or something and things will change around here. (That's probably the way it should go -- but the longer she waits, the better). Maybe they were pushed too hard. One had a very difficult horse and got scared. Maybe riding just didn't appeal to them as much as other things. Sort of like it doesn't appeal to my husband.

I can tell you a few things we did right. The first was getting her a safe pony. She had a lot of fun, learned a lot and built her confidence up.

The second was regular riding lessons with good instructors. We've been lucky that she's had good feelings about all of her teachers (and she's had a lot for someone so young).

The third was that when bad things happened, her teachers were able to help her. One is really gifted at restoring confidence and she really turned things around for us a few months ago. I think this teacher's gift is that she has a really forceful personality, and when she says you can do something, you either believe her or are too intimidated not to try. Plus she keeps you busy and keeps you laughing. She's very unconventional so there's always an element of surprise.

The fourth may be that her best friend also loves horses, though she is new to them. I think that's all they talk about.

And the fifth -- we live out here where there's nothing else to do. We don't own any of those electronic games beyond what will run on a P.C. She's not allowed to use IM. And if you only walk outside to get something out of the car, Buddy will be there at the fence. Calling to you.

Who could resist that face?

Halloween is Extra Scary

Lily and I went shopping for a Halloween costume today. We went to Party City where we often get her costumes. Is it necessary for all of the costumes to be sexy? The male costumes are funny or heroic. The female costumes are sexy devil, sexy nurse, sexy cheerleader, sexy disco girl, sexy witch, sexy nun, you name it -- it should have had the word "sexy" in front of the name. Isn't there any other way for a 12-year-old girl to have fun?

She's too old for Tinkerbell, Cinderella, angels or any other critters with wings (I did push for a butterfly). I honestly don't think there was a single thing that appealed to her -- or to me.

We did get a huge laugh out of the cowboy riding the bucking bronco, an inflatable costume that looked funnier in the store than the one I found on the internet. And I hate to tell you how funny I thought the lost dog costume was.

We left empty handed. Lily's going to come up with her own costume. Whatever it is, it will be better than what we saw.

World's best pony. Ever.

While I'm putting up photos, here's one I can't resist. It's three years old now and not only has Lily grown, she has outgrown the pony she's on. A pony I can say is The World's Best Pony. (Click to enlarge.)

That's me on Lucy. Notice who has the blue and who has the red. My only excuse is that we weren't in the same division (thankfully!)

But back to the World's Best Pony. Her name is Annie Up and we picked her up from a riding school that was getting rid of all of its school horses and others that weren't A circuit quality. Annie looks like a dachshund (short and long), so she is not A circuit quality. She also will canter backwards across a field to kick another horse, and the child riding her will never even notice. Annie kicks. Annie is grumpy.

Annie will do EVERYTHING you ask. And not one thing more.

I have never paid as much for a horse as I paid for Annie. She'd been a school pony for six years, so I didn't bother to have her vetted. If she can be ridden every day and not be lame, she'll do. And I was right.

When Lily's seat wasn't very secure and she'd land on Annie's neck after a jump, Annie would stop. Paul and I were watching her ride, and what could have been a catastrophe (a horse running away with a little girl on her neck) was a non-event. Lily slid herself back into the saddle and said, "Thank goodness she has a neck."

And I said to Paul, "That's why I paid so much for that pony." (By the way, my idea of lots of money is probably a lot less money than your idea of lots of money. I'm pretty good at getting fabulous horses cheap.)

This photo is from Lily's first horse trial with Annie (and my first with Lucy). When we walked the courses, Lily got very upset that there were two jumps (one on cross country and one in stadium) that had bales of hay under them. "I'll never get Annie to jump those," Lily said.

"She's not afraid of hay," I said.

"No, but she'll stop and eat," Lily said. I told her she was crazy. Annie was lazy, but Annie was not a refuser.

The first time Lily had ever ridden Annie was a year or two before we bought her when Lily went to riding camp at that stable. Lily fell off the minute she got on Annie and Annie decided to eat. If you've been around horses and children, you know what happened. Annie put her head down to graze, Lily was hanging onto the reins determined NOT to let her graze, and Annie pulled Lily right down Annie's neck. Kind of like a playground slide with a mane down the middle. Annie likes to eat.

At one Pony Club games day Annie decided that the plastic fruit in the barrel was real and needed inspection. Lily could not get Annie's head out of that bucket.

So, back to the horse trials. Lily couldn't sleep that night for worrying about Annie eating the hay jumps. I continued to tell her she was crazy.

Guess what. Lily was first after dressage, had a perfect round in cross country -- and then it happened. In show jumping the first jump was the one with the bale of hay. Annie went right up to it, slowed down but did not stop. Lily started kicking and using her crop, because we could all tell that Annie was planning on having lunch, right then and there in the show jumping arena. The hay was calling to her! And I watched in amazement as my little girl forced that fat, lazy, perfect pony to jump the jump -- but not before Annie took a bite out of it on the way over. I don't know if there is a penalty for eating the jump, but they weren't charged and managed to hang onto first place.

More on Annie later. When it was time to sell her, all it took was one e-mail to one person. Safe ponies, even overweight ones that will buck and kick, are hard to come by.

As for my red ribbon, well, I'm glad I lived to tell about it. Lucy and I were first after dressage. On cross country she bolted on a stretch of wooded path, took three strides and realized that she faced a tall, wire pasture fence. I thought we were dead. I really thought we were dead when I realized she believed her best option was to JUMP IT. That's why God gave horses manes, even if He shorted them on brains. So I hung on and we cleared it! Then I was able to get her to stop. My first reaction was to pray and thank God that we were alive. My second reaction was to figure out whether or not I was legally on or off course. Since I could follow the fence line down to where a gate opened out onto a path and there were no jumps that I was missing, I decided that I was still legal and rode on down to the gate and resumed cross country. I had that euphoric feeling you get when you almost die but don't. And Lucy seemed to have recovered what few senses she has.

And then I did that really stupid thing that riders sometimes do. Coming in to the last jump, which was not at all challenging, I ignored the little voice in my head that said, "Lucy is going to be distracted by that other horse that just came on course," and I kept riding toward the last jump as though I had already won. But that little voice was right. There was a horse coming in the opposite direction, and though he wasn't near the jump, that was all the excuse Lucy needed to duck out. All I had to do was actually ride and it would have been ours. So we dropped from first to second place and didn't screw up in show jumping, so we got to keep it.

But I lived and my daughter won, even with Annie taking a bite out of jump. That was a great day.

In praise of the school pony

True story from one of Lily's riding teachers, whom I'll call "Teresa" because that's not even close to her name:

Teresa has a big farm that can host horse trials and just about anything else. She's also got a string of school ponies that couldn't win a ribbon in a horse show unless they were the only horses in the class, but are some of the best riding teachers around.

One day she was taking a class of beginners on a trail ride where they would play the game, "Pass the Stick." (She probably has a better name for it but I can't remember.) This game makes walking through the woods fun and helps children work on steering the horse and developing their balance. Here's how you play: Teresa gives the first child in a line a flexible stick or pine branch and tells this child to find a place to put it (such as on the low-hanging branch of a tree) so that the next child can pick it up. The next child puts it on a tree limb and it goes on down the line.

This game is challenging if you aren't great at steering your horse. This was Dora's problem. Dora, a tiny girl with long blond hair, compensated by stretching out as far as she could from the horse she was riding to the tree branch where the stick was perched. Dora stretched and stretched. Dora stretched too far and hit the ground. The line of school ponies stopped. For some reason, Dora was lying on the ground under her horse, rolling back and forth and laughing. The other children steered their horses nearby, almost encircling her, and they were laughing, too.

Teresa calmly called out, "Dora, honey, get out from under the horse, please."

Dora kept laughing and yelled back, "I can't." All the children were laughing now, and Dora kept rolling.

Teresa didn't like the scene. The child was under the horse. Her school ponies are good, but they are still horses. "Dora, honey, I said for you to get out from under that horse!" Teresa was riding as quickly as she could toward Dora, but she didn't dare trot or do anything that might make Dora's horse or the other school ponies move.

"I can't!" Dora called back, still laughing and rolling and still smack dab under the horse.

Teresa, who is immensely calm, was beginning to lose her calm. "Dora, right now, get out from under the horse."

Dora didn't move other than to keep rolling and laughing.

Teresa finally got close enough to hop off of her horse and grab Dora's horse's bridle, "Dora, get out of from under that horse!!!!"

Dora kept laughing. All the children were laughing. Dora said, "I can't! He's standing on my hair."

Bless him. That school pony never took a step. Teresa lifted up his front foot and freed Dora's hair.

Riding teachers teach more than riding

Choosing a riding instructor for your daughter is more difficult than choosing one for yourself. If you pick out one for yourself who is a great teacher but curses like a sailor and "carries on," as my grandmother would say, with the farrier, etc., you are not likely to start cursing like a sailor and carrying on with the feed and seed man unless you were already so inclined.

Selecting a teacher for your daughter (or son -- there are so few boys who are interested that I hope you'll forgive me for frequently overlooking your young horseman) is more complicated. Our goal is to teach Lily to ride AND make sure that her teacher is a suitable mentor. After all, at some point I half expect Lily to have more faith in her riding teacher's judgment than mine in areas beyond riding because anybody who knows that much about horses just has to be right about everything, unlike Mom.

Lily, now 12, has had seven riding teachers, not counting the ones at camp. I'm startled to count them all up. We parted on good terms with all of them. One got a job with a lot of travel and couldn't teach lessons anymore, two got pregnant and dropped out, one went back to school and one was great but the other children in the class only rode once a week so, with Lily riding every day, they weren't learning at the same speed.

But everything worked for a while, and all the teachers taught her something. I am grateful to them all. Here's what I learned. For a very young child, private lessons on the lunge line on a very reliable horse are great for developing position and confidence. Your child should have good rapport with the instructor and really want to please her. Group lessons are fun and keep the child interested, but learning is slow because most children only ride once a week -- during the lesson. Lily rides six days a week.

Semi-private lessons with another child who rides her own horse and rides almost daily are the best for where she is right now. They can enjoy each other's company, learn from watching each other, have the slightest bit of peer pressure to do their best and get a small rest while the other child jumps the course, etc. Plus, it's slightly less expensive than private lessons.

Unfortunately, Lily's riding classmate also plays soccer, and as luck would have it, the soccer day is the same as the riding lesson day, so Lily's getting private lessons until soccer season is over.

I'm also very happy with this riding teacher's attitude, choice of words, professionalism and character.

I greatly loved a former teacher who used very colorful, non-profane language. "Kick the snot out of her!" she would yell, and Lily would get serious about urging her stubborn pony forward. The other teacher would call my horse a "heifer," etc. It made us laugh, and this teacher also had the ability to come up with games that helped a young child have fun while accidentally learning something.

Lily made the comment that her current teacher has never said to kick the snot out of anybody. "She just says, 'Squeeze with your legs.'" Sometimes, though, I do believe that kicking the snot out of your horse or pony is the only choice you have.

Lily has been with her current teacher for almost a year. The quality and apparent character of this teacher's other students reinforces my good opinion. She has a huge following of very nice, polite, dedicated teenaged riders who are good riders and seem to be good girls. Since I want Lily to be both, I feel like we have found the right person at the right time. The atmosphere at her barn is wholesome, too. People are friendly, the moms help whichever child needs help and everything is clean and orderly. People drink water and eat healthy snacks.

One mom I know left a barn because the other moms were into happy hour, which they brought in coolers in their Mercedes, while the children took lessons. That's all fine and dandy, but who's driving? Most people live 30 miles away.

There are very few times in your life you have complete control over who your daughter will look up to. Picking out a riding teacher is one of those times. So far, very lucky.

Automatic lead changes

I'm missing something. Can somebody tell me why your child has to have a horse/pony that can do automatic lead changes?

Lead changes, yes. Automatic, no.

Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, stick around anyway because lead changes are not really what this post is about.

If you're new, here's a fast and probably inaccurate description of an automatic lead change. Your child is jumping a horse show course. She starts off on the left lead to take the line of jumps down the right-hand side of the arena. When she comes to the curve at the end of the arena after the line of jumps, she needs to be on the left lead. She could have asked for this lead over the last jump before the curve, she could have asked for a flying lead change if the pony landed on the wrong lead or she could have smiled at the judge while her pony executed a perfect automatic flying lead change and kept on going. The third choice is what Show Moms are willing to pay for. If you want to know more, go to Wikipedia's Canter and scroll down to "Importance of Leads."

There is a really nice Horse Mom I know who just shipped in a new Extremely Fancy Pony she found at the national championships. She was telling the rest of us Horse Moms about him. She knows everything about him except whether or not he does automatic lead changes. If he doesn't do these, out he goes.

"If he's otherwise perfect, why don't you keep him?" I asked.

"Because if he doesn't do automatic lead changes 100 percent of the time,  he might mess up at one of the big shows," she said.

"But isn't the rider supposed to do something? (Like ride.)" I asked. She looked at me as if I had just passed gas and kept going with her story.

This coming year they're going to hire a professional rider to campaign the pony so that he will qualify for national championships. Then next year, they'll let their daughter ride him.

But I'm still stuck on the automatic lead change thing. "What if you want to counter-canter?" I ask. Counter-cantering is intentionally cantering on the wrong lead. It is seldom asked for but I have had to do it in competitions, and not just in dressage.

The Show Mom looked at me. “You almost never have to counter-canter.” True.

This woman is buying not only a fancy pony, but one that has been “programmed.” Like a Seeing Eye dog or other animal assistant, this pony must compensate for what the owner/rider cannot do.   

The justification for this is that well-balanced horses do this when galloping on their own in the field. The real reason is so that the child – and mother – can win. 

So, what this woman is buying is a pony that knows all the things her daughter does not. This makes no sense to me. I thought riding was a sport requiring skill, effort and knowledge. 

What will her daughter learn from all this? Several things, such as all she has to do to win is to show up. That for some reason, she is better than the other children (unless the other children’s parents have even more money). And that very little effort is required for success. 

Unlearning these lessons later in life will require much more than simply learning to ask for a lead change now.

My 95-year-old father said, “Why don’t they forget about the pony and just buy a trophy?” 

Later, when this child encounters a “real” horse, she may be disturbed and confused to find that, in spite of her many winnings, she really doesn’t know how to ride. And she may wonder that so many things in life require so much more effort than she knows how to give.

Or am I missing something? Am I just mean and jealous?

With my daughter, Lily, nothing comes without effort. Buddy jumps because she taught him, starting when she was only 11. He was a western pleasure horse. She’s had to develop a deep seat and legs because otherwise she gets bucked off. She’s learned to anticipate his detours from the plan by his body language, and subtly correct him before he takes action.

In other words, he’s teaching her how to ride as much as her teachers. Assuming she survives falling off regularly, frequent frustration and learning to lose gracefully, she’s going to be a real horsewoman.

Lily will be able to ride gifted but difficult high performance horses because she will have known challenges – and how to overcome them. The ribbons she does win will be entirely hers because she put in the hours and effort, six days a week. (Buddy gets Wednesdays off.) And she’s learning that if you really want something, you have to earn it.

And though Buddy is what they call A Lot of Horse and he can get really, really tall sometimes, she loves him. He is cute and funny, like so many Bad Boys. He’s a great pet and would come in the house if we’d let him. He’s not mean, just contrary and sometimes uncooperative when asked to perform.(He can also be very, very good.)

Lily is as ambitious as anyone. And however far she gets, she’ll have done it on her own. 

You can’t buy what Buddy is teaching her. 

Horse Moms of the World, what do you think?

Dog jumps are great for horsey kids!

We went to a great party last night for Lily's riding teacher, who will soon have a baby. It was at a beautiful house with a multi-tiered (I don't think that's the word I'm looking for but it will do) yard. At the bottom grassy tier was an enormous collection of dog agility jumps -- for the children! If you could walk and were under the age of 20, you were out jumping.

While the adults had fun talking with adults inside, the kids were outside setting up courses and pretending to be horses. Great exercise, great fun and a wonderful way for even the shy kids to join the fun.

Turns out that the horse-mom-in-charge takes the dog jumps with her to horse shows for the younger children to have something to do.

Some people are so clever. And fun.

Horse magazines vs. teen magazines

Today Lily had to bring in a magazine to school (7th grade) for what I don't know. She brought in a well-worn copy of "Horse Illustrated." Her favorite everyday clothes have horse pictures or horse-themed designs. Her most prized possession is a silver locket from Horse Feathers (grandparents' gift) that contains a picture of her most prized thing, Buddy himself. When she rides in the car she, like her mother, is galloping a horse alongside the road in her mind. There are some great jumps out there in the form of traffic barriers and fences. We've jumped them all.

My girl and horses. A good thing.

She made the comment on the way to school that she imagined most of the other girls would be bringing in teen fashion and other magazines, e.g., "Teen Vogue," "Seventeen," "CosmoGirl" etc. I shuddered.

A while back I thought to buy her one of these magazines and spent some time browsing the magazine aisles. Every issue, EVERY ISSUE, contained something I consider inappropriate. The world, or at least her world, should not be about how to dress sexily to drive "him" crazy (who is "him"?), how to be a good kisser, or how to let "him" know that she is hot. I'll stop there because I'm about to throw up.

One day there will no doubt be a him whose picture just might replace Buddy's in that silver locket. That day doesn't need to be anytime soon, nor does that silver locket need to have serial pictures of hims occupying that special spot.

So, I've renewed her subscriptions to "Horse Illustrated" and "Young Rider." I even got a subscription to "Practical Horseman" for myself. (I used to freelance for "The Chronicle of the Horse" and "Practical Horseman.") Life is good. Let's keep it that way!

Riding lessons and 100 degree temperature!

I wouldn't have done it. Today it was over 100 degrees AGAIN. The ground is crunchy with parched grass. The pine trees are losing their needles. The gum tree's leaves are turning. It is unholy hot out there. For the 13th day in a row.

And today was the first day for "fall" riding lessons. Now, my daughter, whom I'll call "Lily" because that's not her name but one she likes, has had a riding lesson almost every week this summer. So you would think she could miss riding in 100 degree heat.

You would be thinking wrong. She went. No one died. I may have to put a salt block in her room, though.
Oh. And I had to haul the horse to the lesson. That is right, all you soccer moms who think that driving your child to practice and games is a hassle. I have to take child and horse to the lesson, or horse shows, or whatever. I drive a Prius when I am in "normal" mode. When I'm in Horse Mom mode,  I drive an '84 Suburban named Ben (Sub-urb- Ben, get it?) who has quite the drinking problem (don't ask about my mpg -- I wouldn't dream of calculating it), pull a trailer and deliver both daughter and horse to her destination.  I coddle Ben. He is an old man pulling a heavy load. And you know about old people and heat.

But Ben made it too. With any luck, we'll either get rain, a cool spell or preferably both. In the meantime, we get to watch the hay crop dry up in the field, and look forward to another winter of astronomical hay prices.

I'm really sorry about the heavy rains in other parts of the country. Wish we could trade!

Take care, wherever you are.

I like to feed horses

Horses like to eat, and I like to feed them. It's a cheap way to get a very committed fan club. All I have to do is walk outside, or where they can see me through the window, and they get excited.

I take it back. It's not a cheap way to get a fan club. But I'll pay the price.

I feed the horses. I am their favorite person. No one is more special than me. I have worshippers. Sometimes I have to sneak around to get my coffee so I won't be spotted in the morning before I'm ready to come out to greet my admirers. All two of them (unless you count the three cats and dog, but they don't offer the drama of galloping and whinnying to greet me).

And today, I have to start sharing my throne. Our horses will have a polytheistic world. My daughter is going to start feeding at night.

My husband says I do too much of the work around here (and I'll agree, but he's not interested in his chores list....) And it is time that our daughter started doing more with the horses.

She knows how to do it. So now, I'm sharing my crown. I've counseled her to check both sides of the horses for cuts and bumps and any swellings. It's not enough to feed them. You have to look at them.

She'll do fine. They'll do fine. And I still get to feed in the morning.

One last thing: There is one thing I hate about feeding them. The hay. There is no substance on earth more determined to stick to you, to stick in you, and to stick around long after you thought you had shaken it off. Hay gets everywhere on me. It's always in the dryer lint tray, the vacuum canister and my unmentionable undergarments. How it gets there, I don't know. If it could be tamed, it would out-do Velcro.

That I won't miss.

I can see the horses grazing as I write this. Little birds dart around their feet, eating the insects they stir up. I'll miss not getting to feed the horses tonight. I'm sure I'll get used to doing one thing less. And, if I know my horses, they have appetite enough to expand their adoration to both mother and daughter. When they gallop and whinny to her, she might finally understand just how special she is.

All it takes is a bucket of food, and your are queen forever -- or at least until the bucket is empty.