Using What You’ve Learned

A little history: A year ago, after 21+ years riding, and a year of owning my first horse, Max, he (my horse) and I moved to Sunrise Farm in Pelham, NH, where owner/trainer/instructor Mark Matyszyk took me and Max back to square 1 and began the long, tedious journey of “fixing” us. Until then, I thought we were doing pretty good together - winning in pleasure classes all over Massachusetts, jumping 2’11” fences in our lessons, and scrambling back into the saddle and off to the other end of the arena every time the spookmonster reared its’ ugly head (at least once; sometimes two or three times a day). You know the spookmonster, right? That little guy with the long, fangy teeth - horse biting teeth - that amazingly enough, no matter how hard you look, only horses can see? Sometimes he hides inside things like flower pots, judge’s booths, or the oak tree that your horse has already seen 112 times (that 113’th time can be the doozey!). And other times, he’s just “there”, waiting for just the right moment to catch you and your horse off guard.

About six months ago, the spookmonster was lying in wait under a trot pole. Having gone back to the beginning and step by step fixing what was broken (nearly everything except my desire to learn, and Max’s more often than not willingness to cooperate), we hadn’t jumped anything in quite some time. I understandably missed jumping, and most days would have given my eye teeth for even the smallest of crossrails. And like magic, there they were - no, not crossrails - two perfectly spaced trot poles, left behind from an earlier-in-the-day lesson. Common sense dictates that in order to jump, one (and ones’ horse) must be able to go over trot poles in a “calm, quiet, and relaxed” manner. But like I said, it had been a while. So I decided the first step back to a stadium course would be to walk over these poles. No sweat, right? That ‘s what I thought. But that little bugger, the invisible spookmonster, was lurking underneath that first pole, and instead of walking over it, Max took it like it was a 2’ fence! (I did miss jumping, didn’t I?) He did this a couple of times, until Mark (you remember Mark, right? owner/trainer/Instructor at Sunrise Farm) paused on his way by the arena and saw what was going on.

He said we needed to change Max’s focus so he’d forget about those poles. If something else became more challenging MENTAL work for Max, then he’d forget that the poles were frightening. Made sense to me. So he started teaching me “turn on the haunches”. I’d walk Max right up to the first pole, getting closer and closer each time. Then halt, and then turn him in a 90&Mac251; angle to the right, walk it off and approach the poles again. Hard mental work - especially for a horse who’s never done anything like that before. And guess what?! It worked - within a few minutes, through his concentration on these turns, Max had forgotten all about the poles and his fear. After a few of those turns, Mark (you remember Mark, right?) had me walk Max right over those poles. He was slow and a little hesitant, but he WALKED! instead of jumped, over them.

So, the other day I brought Max out to the arena. There had been high winds that morning, and one of the 3’ tall pillar flower pots that stands on either side of the entrance to the dressage arena at “A” had blown over. Big deal, right? It wasn’t blocking the entrance. He’s been by these things while they’re standing up, hundreds of times, if not thousands. Now this one’s lying down flat - even less intrusive, I say. I, however, am quite wrong. While I wasn’t looking, our old pal the invisible spookmonster crept inside that pillar, and popped his evil head out just as Max and I were turning the corner and going down the short side of the arena toward “A”. Max saw that pillar on the ground, and nearly jumped out of his skin hopping, leaping and sidestepping away from it. This, of course, was unacceptable behavior! So we circled back for take-two, which resulted in the same temper tantrum. It seemed no matter how much I kicked with my inside leg, shifted my weight to the outside, and shanked with my outside rein, I wasn’t winning this battle. And I was getting angry. Angry enough that I finally declared to Max that by the time we were through, he’d be so numb to that pillar that he’d walk over it just like it wasn’t even there. This thought led to me saying to myself, “Yeah, right - and he’d probably jump it like it was a 2’ fence... just like the trot poles.” Just ... like ... the trot poles!

And that’s when the brain (mine) engaged, and I started THINKING. I took the knowledge that, once before, changing Max’s focus to something he found difficult made us able to go back to the first task and accomplish it much more easily. So how could I apply this knowledge; this understanding; to the situation at hand? I just needed something for him to focus on, that would take the focus away from the pillar.

I began by asking Max to do his bending exercises - slowly stretching his head and neck down, and bringing his nose to his inside shoulder, while staying on a 20 meter circle that, in this case, brought us directly by the demon-pillar. Max is familiar with bending exercises - it’s something we work on regularly - but he still finds them challenging enough that the pillar was no longer his focus. Once we had gone by the pillar three to four times in “bending mode”, I began asking Max to slowly straighten his head and neck out to the normal arc/bend degree for a 20 meter circle. He remained calm, quiet and relaxed, and the pillar might as well have “disappeared”, while inside I was shouting “it works!; it works! I thought it through, and it works!”

So let’s go back to the beginning. I wanted to walk the perimeter of the dressage arena in a calm, quiet, relaxed manner, which is what I asked my horse to do. This should have resulted in further relaxing my horse, and getting him to stretch down, which would have given me license to trot. This clearly didn’t work. Instead, I was the proud owner of a horse throwing a temper tantrum, and I never planned what to do in case of failure. If I had mentally prepared myself for failure, I probably could have avoided getting angry, and would not have wasted as much time figuring things out. Luckily, though I did develop a plan when I needed one. I went to the bending exercises, and was able to develop the calm, quiet, relaxed walk around the perimeter of the arena that I wanted in the first place, so was finally able to move on to the trot.

The major steps in getting there? Breaking everything down into baby steps, and thinking - using the mental aspects of riding, for both myself and my horse, to achieve the desired results, and not rushing anything - making sure that step one was correct before moving on to step two. Mark always tells me “how can you expect the trot transition to be good, if the walk is erratic?” How can I expect to go to a competition, and ride a successful dressage test (see archived articles), in unfamiliar surroundings, when my horse can’t even walk by a pillar he’s seen every day for a year?

Take it slow, get it right before you move on, and most of all, have fun! See you at “C” !

Sandi Prosnitz
Assistant Instructor
and Website Designer

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