Friday, June 1, 2007. I've just returned from the Jeremy Beale clinic at Sandi Bishop's lovely place. Thank you Sandi for another wonderful, rewarding clinic. We once again got to experience the magic of a master trainer at work on many different kinds of problems. And most of us take away a renewed commitment to and awareness of FORWARD. Yes, Louise, there is a fifth gear on that Porsche you're driving.

          It's really good to get together with friends and focus on our training and riding. I've gotten to spend time with some wonderful new people and their horses this year and I'm feeling grateful for it. When we are working together it seems like all good things come along. And I, for one, have needed it this spring. Between blowing out my truck engine and having to deal with this drought and hay shortage month after month, I've felt a little overwhelmed. But, as I was telling my good friend Leslie Timmerman, I've got fabulous horses, the most wonderful husband in the world, great friends, and good health--so what if I have no money? Ok, so there is that thing about eating and paying the bills, but you have to keep your perspective.

         Lately I've felt how lucky I am to have something I passionately care about in my life. The daily grind of job, bills, laundry, car repairs, plumbing problems, etc. takes a lot of energy. I get depressed about the drought, global warming, increasing militarization, the price of gasoline. It seems like all the things that were supposed to make life easier (cell phones, computers) now just make it more complicated. I'd like to know who decided that what we all want is more choice and constant updates. I don't have time to make all these choices--I just want straightforward service that doesn't require me to change everything every six months. I thought all these gadgets were supposed to work for us! More and more, I feel like I work for them. Then there are days when getting old just feels too hard. I can't see anything anymore. I can't lose five pounds. All my body parts get up and go at different speeds, and some of them don't seem to ever get up at all. Add to these daily annoyances the real and profound grief that the war in Iraq is generating in us all, and it's hard not to wonder what the heck makes it all worthwhile.

         But, when I walk out to the barn and see my colt I get excited again. The future stops feeling like a heavy chore. I start thinking of all the things we can do together and feeling how much I love him. It changes my world every time.

         Perhaps owning and admiring horses today is sheer romance. But if so, this has not always been the case. In the dangerous and uncertain world of the past a horse could make all the difference in whether you and your family survived, thrived. For a soldier, a fast, strong, obedient horse was the difference in life and death. For a farmer, a hard-working, willing horse made it possible to clear the land, sow crops, harvest the yield, feed the family. Throughout history, horses have pulled milk carts and queens' carriages; they have carried their human partners into parades and into battle. Maybe in the dangerous and uncertain world of today horses mainly serve to revive our mortified spirits. But on a lot of days that feels as life-saving to me as any service they have ever rendered.

         I've begun to really appreciate what it means to breed, train, and ride fine horses. I think about the stallions that came through wars because they were strong, obedient, calm, smart, swift. In the peace-times of yesterday, those were the stallions put to mares to breed the next generation of war-horses. Today we fight different kinds of wars mostly without horses, but we are still selecting horses for their character, their rideability, their athleticism, their willingness and readiness. As a young person I started a lot of horses, horses that weren't particularly well bred. In recent decades I've only started a few, but they were much better bred. With each of the later ones, I've been able to feel a vast improvement in rideability, elasticity, temperament. With Bayo, I feel what a phenomenal difference this selective breeding has made over the decades. It really is astounding.

         I'm not sure exactly what kind of battles we might be fighting today, next month, or ten years from now, but I think I feel something like what warriors once felt for their horses. I feel fortified by such a horse; girded against the hard times to come. I stand in Bayo's stall and I stop feeling beat down; I feel inspired to live fully, dream big. In a dangerous and uncertain world the power of something good radiates to everything around it. And that's what I feel when I look at Bayo.

         So, I go to work, pay bills, deal with the spam of the day, work out, count calories, pinch pennies. I can feel his presence in my spirit all day and I can hardly wait to get home and ride.

         Cheers everyone! and RAIN!!

          Sara

Thursday, March 3, 2005. Today, riding Finesse with rain threatening. She has been back in work since Bayo was weaned in October. I wanted to bring her back into training by reviewing all the steps from the beginning. Find and fix the holes in our education. This has been a wide-ranging task, but rewarding. I've spent most of the winter trying to get her much more active. I found that if I tried to make her yield to the bit early in her warm-up, I never got her as active as I wanted. I adopted Kyra Kyrklund's advice not to care where her head was in the warm-up, instead to make her responsive. So this was our warm-up: walk, leg-yield, halt, turn. Trot, circle, leg-yield, develop bend, using legs and seat. Move on to canter. Back to trot/walk/trot transitions. By this time Fin would usually be working softly and steadily in the bridle, but I often felt that we needed more activity. I would go to the exercise Jane Savoie taught us: On the 20-meter circle in trot. Make a fist of the outside hand, squeeze the inside rein like a sponge for the count of three, saying "add, add, add." This exercise has the added advantage of confirming the horse in the outside rein. We would do this both directions, of course.

Sara and Finesse, October 2005.

By now my half-halts would usually be working pretty well, and I could begin to change the balance a bit, develop more engagement, and more impulsion. I found in the first few months back in work, though, that this still did not produce the schwung I was looking for. Once I had her this active, Fin found it hard to engage, to sit in her haunches and carry. I had to wait for her to build strength, but also, I had to work in the short trot in order for her to find her balance. I used the rubberband exercise: short trot, long trot, short trot, long trot, until she was working very close to half-steps in the short trot. This allowed her time to find the engagement and then to express it in the more forward trot. If I tried this short trot too early in my workout, though, it failed. I found I had to get her really active first. Warm up, then make her reaction to my leg and seat very quick. Otherwise, she tended to drop behind my leg when I tried to get the short trot, and this never led to good engagement.

Today, it all paid off. When I got on and picked up my reins, she came into the bridle immediately, balanced, light, forward. I was able to go much more quickly through the exercises and move right to the work I wanted to get to. Before I laid her off to have the baby, I never felt satisfied that the quality of either our collection or our extensions was sufficient. Today I did. Today we danced!

Sara and Finesse, October 2005.