Inky is an unschooler

Duh.

I could have named her Progress

She was quite excellent on the lunge line today, very obedient and willing. She is in general an impatient horse so she's usually happy when she's doing something. She wore a surcingle for the first time today with no problem. She's got walk and trot, not so much canter yet -- which is fine, she's willing and too much willingness to canter would mean she was running away which I am glad she is not. I just positioned my apprentice on her sticky "corner" and it wasn't really sticky anymore.

Her former owner called me today. I'd mailed a note to her only on Monday. The consignor was a man so I'm pretty sure this was his daughter -- she sounded young. She said she'd bought the Inky from an Amish man up the road when Inky was four months old. She rode her some last summer. When I asked her how she was, she said, "Well, she has a mind of her own," so I'm not exactly sure what that means but it is a quality Inky most surely does have. She's been to one local show. Inky is a Saddlebred, not a Standardbred . . . the vet got that wrong on the coggins the girl said.

So that totally explains how she's been handled quite a bit and yet had very few manners. We're working on it. I am totally enjoying it. Adding Inky to my herd has helped me see horses as part of my work, not just my enjoyment, and that too is nice.

Rol

Rode today, just a slight ride, and while I've no intention of blogging every ride this year, I think this was an important one. I keep getting out of the groove and I'm hoping today was back in it. We just walked and trotted as she hasn't been doing much and the arena was sloppy, changes of bend, staying round, stretching, transitions. She was wonderful.

acting like an adult

I swallowed my reticence and asked. And it may, eventually, come down to tying her up in an unbreakable way until she submits (or breaks her neck), but it may not. And if it does, it is good to have affirmed that, yes, sometimes it does. And to still have a few more things to try first. And to have the idea reinforced to look for the thing to reinforce.

#164

I didn't feel like talking to not-Pierre anymore, at least not here. I don't need a gosh darned dag blamed intercessor.

I have a horse. Not a draft horse, not a trained horse, but a horse I hope to break and sell. I have a real opportunity to fail.

Here's how it happened: I went to the draft horse auction, which I always do. I saw Mary who I never see, and Billy and Dowd who I always see, and Ang who I sometimes see. We walked around the sale barn and I picked out the horse I wouldn't buy this year. I always do that, see, pick a horse that I think for some reason or another will be undervalued that I think I would buy if I did such things. The first year I went it was a pregnant Percheron. One year it was a donkey and I actually got ready to bid but the bidding very quickly went higher than I was willing to go. I don't particularly remember the other years but we always get photos of them.

This year even the good horses weren't selling for much, and she was skinny. Then she was friendly, cuddling up to the bars to be petted as we went by. And I just thought her legs were magnificent, her angles good. Then she picked up hay off the floor without splitting her legs. When I went to the check-in to find out about her, she was put in as a four year old Standardbred. I'd thought she was younger than that, mostly because she was so skinny and her legs were so long compared to her body. But four meant work with her right now, not later. And her bare feet were solid.

I went back and forth about it. I could imagine that my eyes were playing tricks on me and that she really wasn't so nice looking. I didn't have a way to get her home. I don't have the money to keep her, not really. There was every reason not to do it, mostly that we don't do things impulsively, especially not things like buying a horse. We actually left, got almost to the car, and then I got turned around by my family. Then they had to leave and I almost did . . . then handed them the keys and stayed. I would bid.

Mary and her friend Suzanne were with me. And another lady that one day I will run into again (short silver hair, open friendly face). The auction had actually forgotten this horse and she went in last. I asked the guy taking her in to trot her so I could make sure she didn't pace. She trotted. I sat down and said I'd bid when it hit $25. When the auctioneer intoned "sold" I said "sh*t". I knew nothing, NOTHING, about this horse. What in the heck had I done?

I first started solving the problems -- get her home. I had several options -- there at the sale, someone would take her . . . if I would pay them. Likewise, there were other people I could hire. I checked with friends but one had left already and Ang had a full trailer already. I called Dowd, our neighborhood patriarch.

Now, I'd seen Dowd that morning at the sale, so he knew where I was. The conversation went like this: "Dowd, this is your neighbor CG." "How ya doin'?" "Dowd, I just bought a horse." "I'll call my son and see where the truck is. I'll call you right back." I didn't even have to ask him. He called me right back too. "Yep, it's there. So I'll just go down and get it, then I have to go to 58 to get the trailer, then I'll be right there. You're still at the fair grounds, aren't you?" "Yep, Dowd, I am. Thanks."

Then I went and paid for her. Then I moved her to a different stall in the sale barn with some hay and sat down on a hay bale in front of it and waited on my family to show up. My emotions were bouncing -- elation, excitement, worry, panic, and all around nausea. Would she even load in a trailer?

When my family walked in all full of anticipation and curiosity about what had happened, I cracked a grin and they knew. "We own a horse!" When Dowd got there, she walked right on the trailer. She pawed when tied and so far that has been her worst habit. She got off the trailer and walked over our bridge.

Our adventure had begun.

She isn't an easy horse but so far I'm not disappointed in anything. I still look at her and think, yeah, she's a nice horse. She's slighter than I might like but she's athletic. She's smart enough to give me concern because when horses are smarter than their people, they are both in trouble. She spirited but handles well. She's got opinions but listens. She's impatient. She's curious. She doesn't tie well.

The not tying well had been giving me a fit. So I dreamed a solution last night, a better one than tying her up until she submits I think, although I will reserve that. The two affirmations that keep playing in my head are: Mary saying, "I believe you love them all," because I do, no matter the breed or discipline, I like horses; and my daughter saying, "There's nothing you can't do," when I said, "What if I can't do this?" I have to be a little like Dory and "just keep swimming".

I don't feel like I have anyone really that I can ask questions and opinions of. "What would you do?" There is not a horse person in my life who I trust that much. Funny that I have said that I don't think Lisa really trusts me (enough to let me bring Gabby home and break her anyway), but I have a reticence to ask her things. I mean, she never asks me my opinion about anything. When I called her from the sale, she said, "So I can assume this is a work horse?" When that wasn't correct, "So, I can assume it drives?" When she'd seen a few photos of her, her first opinion was that she was way older than four, and then that "she looks content" -- not nice or anything like that, just old and content. When I said I still liked how the horse was put together, she said, "Well, it doesn't matter how she's put together -- she just needs a home." And when I said I hoped to sell her, she said, "Well, if you can't sell her, you'll have to teach her to plow." Later she said the horse might have to be "re-homed". (just for the record, I hate nouns like "home" and "gift" used as verbs -- hatehatehate). And the name she suggested for the horse was "Minnie Pearl". So I'm finding it difficult to find any respect in that.

So we named her Increase.

I have an idea how to work with her on the tying thing. I lunged her for the first time yesterday. She's sticky on a corner that would lead back to the field but otherwise she did quite well. I just have to try to work with her about every day and figure it out.

She is so absolutely gosh darned athletic I can imagine her jumping the moon, galloping cross country not afraid of anything, or just moving extremely well for dressage. A girl can dream.

evolutions

and then Rol got wonky (as in not lame exactly but something not quite right) and I quit riding at all. I figured I might have lost my ride entirely.

And then I surprised myself most of all by buying a horse. And perhaps the most interesting thing is who believes in me and who just cannot see it. At all. Walk on. It is my life to live.

And now it seems perhaps I will get to ride Rol and work with my new horse and that is just alright with me.

Although I did consider changing the name of this blog to something to do with my great uncle Noad, who did believe in me, who said of me, "That girl; put her on your worst horse and she'll still out ride you."

I'm doing fine.

no horse show

so there is sort of a horse show this weekend and I'm not riding in it. It turned into a "fix a test" which is nearly as expensive as a full clinic lesson, and frankly my issues are bigger than finessing a test. Well, and I'm not heading to a rated show or anything -- I'd rather just ride and improve (not that I'd give up an opportunity mind you but Rol and I together aren't headed there).

And then the weather hit and the show ran long and my clinic ride got canceled. Which also is really just as well -- it was pushing me financially and I'm more happy to spend the time with my family, and doing the things we need to do.

Something shifted.

just give me a month

it isn't that I have it all figured out, but I feel at peace with myself about it. I was mad for awhile that my vulnerability was responded to with defensiveness but I've finally been able to see that as a measure of her vulnerability. If that makes sense. It does to me. So it is a place with more room for grace.

Grace is a good thing.

I have been riding regularly, and it is going well actually in that I feel like she's responding and we're making progress. The show this month has turned into a ride-a-test and so costs nearly as much as a clinic lesson and so that made me gasp but I did know it would be more expensive. So I do still want to do it but I'll consider just doing a clinic lesson instead -- an hour for just a little more money. Or a lesson with a judge on the test that I'll likely be riding the rest of the year (which would mean, probably, that I'll go for T3). None of that is decided though.

I will say that bear skin works well.

ride CG ride

Well now, that was different. First thing; "CG, would you get on Tully at the end of my ride so I can see how she moves?" Sure thing. Second thing; "Are you going to ride today?" She said that because I guess I haven't been on in three weeks, certainly not since "the incident", absolutely not since the "little chat". She'd asked last week if I was going to show in April and I responded with a southern non-answer that I think drives her yankee self crazy: "I'd have to get on a horse to do that, wouldn't I?" I'm relatively sure she didn't understand then (long parenthetical deleted) what that meant, but later I think she overheard me say to someone who asked why I hadn't been riding that I'd had trouble finding my motivation for the past couple of weeks which might have been a direct enough reference for her to catch it. I don't know. Anyway, she was very nice to me and asked if I would be riding and I said, if I have time, I have to get home before very late so husband can try to fix the fuel leak on the van. "I'll catch some stalls for you," she said. And she did. And I had plenty of time.

And it was all wonderful. The details are that getting to do it made me doubt myself more than I have in the last few weeks. Those words aren't quite right. I know I can really do it, I just need to feel my way and I worry, I guess, about getting thrown (or throwing myself) too far into it, over my head . . . But I also know, deep down, that I can.

Husband said that if Lisa was going to change our relationship, it would be only slowly, and that is fine with me. What I mistrust is the appearance of change without any real change. But I also mistrust too much and too abrupt of change. So I'm still in the market for a job. But Lisa is one that I'm "interviewing" by her actions. And right now the first she heard of a new job wouldn't be the two week notice.

$8/hr doesn't buy you a friend

My sleep is extremely variable in its quality. Sometimes I sleep like a log. Sometimes it eludes me. Sometimes I dream, sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't. It just varies, and yes, seasonality counts although it isn't really the seasons but the time of the year that the veil is thinner.

I remember the first time my dreams warned me of something. It was just a bad work situation, a situation that had been most excellent and that in a period of a few months had deteriorated to untenable. Ah but I'm tenacious so I was holding on, trying to make it be better. So my dreaming self took over. Every single night I was being chased and things were blowing up. Chased. Blown up. Shattered to wakefulness. Until finally I figured it out. It is work doing this to me, creating these dreams. I made an appointment with my boss. He blew me off. Three times. I turned in my two week notice and then was sick for two weeks. When I'm done, I'm done.

Sometimes being done comes slowly like that. Sometimes it comes suddenly, like it did the other day. About 9 am on March second. Done. Still, the realizations come more slowly.

So last night I had a dream, a very vivid dream, and I really hope to heck it is just a warning dream and not a prescient dream. My dad told me he had some bad news for me, that Riddle and Rood was suing me for sixty-four million dollars. Now, just so you know, my dad's been dead eleven years this year, and Riddle and Rood is the huge veterinary practice across the street from the Kentucky Horse Park. As I was absorbing that (because even in a dream I'm trying to make it make sense -- why was Riddle and Rood suing me? why 64 million? what makes them think that's even in the realm of possibility?), Daddy said he had some more bad news, that Ashley (the new very good rider at the barn who Lisa has her latest shine on) had been working for them. This somehow meant that she was behind it. Oh. Ok. Deep breath.

Then I went to Rainwater, an old friend who is a philosophy professor, and he measured me for my shoe size. Yeah, now, that's more like what a dream is supposed to be like.

I have dreams. Real dreams, and some ability to back them up. I laid them on the line. I exposed myself but if anyone at all didn't realize those dreams were there, they were willfully blind. While she's been good to me, I've been good to her, and for her, too. By my becoming entirely vulnerable, she exposed herself, and how little regard she has for me, naked. I've been paid for my time and that and a "thank you" at the end of the day ought to be enough.

It isn't.

So I'm here putting my skin back on. It fits. Skin is like that. Although it may be a bear's skin.

Whenever she's nice to me, I don't believe it anymore. "Thank you" stings. $8/hr just doesn't buy you a friend. Still, I love the barn, the horses, and, yep, the people too.

affirmation

This is kind of a place holder in that this happened today but the bulk of this story happened already and I haven't written about it yet. But here's what happened today. Heather was at the barn talking about a horse and a student, trying to fathom through what is going on with them so that she can help them. In the midst of it she said to me, "CG, you see them here, you come out and teach her and maybe you can see what is going on." Me, who was just told it would not ever be possible for me to teach, train or ride there. I did not talk to her, yet, about it but obviously she quite naturally sees me as a competent professional, a peer not an underling.

Husband said, "Write this down. Lisa is the only person who doesn't see you that way and you need to collect the evidence so that you believe yourself." Or something like that.

I gotta get back on that horse and ride.

Which, another funny thing today. I talked to Rolinette about the situation, more in depth than I had to this point. And I told her I wanted and needed to hear what she had to say. But of course, she just looks at me and listens with that soulful eye then walked over to me and put her forehead on my chest in the most amazing way. Later, after I'd taken her out of her stall to clean it (rain kept everyone inside today), taking her back to her stall she stopped, she looked in the wash rack, and she tried to go into the wash rack. That's where we'd groom and tack up if I were to do such a thing. It was her way of telling me to get back on that horse and ride.

I truly needed both those things.

or maybe not

maybe. maybe not. Maybe that's how it always is. Time for something different maybe. As much as you hate new things. Time for something different. Time for something. I am here only for as long as I'm amused and I was very not amused today.