Horse Update

I went for my first post-work ride on a Friday evening. After my lesson, I chatted with one of the teenagers and heard about how much she loved riding and how her horse went lame and she missed riding him. On the drive home, I wept. It was a mixture of joy at riding again and also sadness, because talking to that girl was like getting into a time machine and talking to my 14-year-old-self. I felt the deepest regret I have ever experienced, wondering how I could have gone so long without doing something I loved so much. It brings tears to my eyes even now.

When I got home, I called my mom to tell her about my ride. She had just been for a walk around the neighborhood. There must have been a wrinkle in the time-space continuum, because she told me she had been walking by the barn I grew up riding at, saw a girl walking a horse on the trail, and for a second, she had seen 14-year-old me, too. We both cried.

Riding as an amateur is totally different than it was as a junior. After long and sometimes stressful days at work I get migraines, and all I want to do is go home and lie down in a cold dark room. Usually, those days are when I need a ride most. Other times I feel selfish and guilty spending time away from Severin, the dog, and housework. As a teenager I never had to feel guilty because my only other job was going to school for five hours  a day and doing my homework. Riding is very much an all-in, every day sort of sport. In addition to training, caring for an animal-athlete and all of the necessary equipment and accoutrements is a daily responsibility. There is also the amateur “fear factor”– the acute awareness that I depend on my brain for a living and if anything happens to my head I would be hosed. After six months off, Amay was feeling pretty wild and threw a few huge rode bucks completely out of the blue. After being tossed up his neck I managed to climb back into my saddle only to find he was running and bucking straight toward a jump. For the first time in as long as I can remember I was actively afraid. Fortunately he had the good sense to spin 90 degrees and take off the other direction, which flipped me into the air and left me in the dirt at the base of the jump. My back took the brunt of the fall and it still hurts even two and half weeks later. That’s a new ammy development, too.

So why do I love riding so much? It’s hard to explain. Part of it is the ritual. I can be outside in the fresh air. I take care of horses the way my trainer and all of the wonderful grooms at the barn taught me to when I was growing up– no spraying horses’ faces with the hose, no brushing tails, wraps done just so. It’s a process that doesn’t change no matter where in the world you are.

But mostly it’s the absolute mindfulness that one must practice around horses. It’s like yoga for animal-loving adrenaline junkies. When you are riding a horse, you must practice total emotional control: no fear, no anger, no worry. And you must be mindful of your body and tuned into the feeling of your horse at all times:  why is my horse being resistant on his left side? are my elbows stiff? is he resisting contact on the reins? Do I need to put more weight into my right seat bone to straighten him out?

And jumping, well, there’s just no replacement for that feeling. I am a pro-worrier, and will fret obsessively over a conversation at work that didn’t go the way I planned, the state of the world, our future, whether I will mess up my future children, etc. When I am on horseback– and especially when I am jumping– the world might as well cease to exist. The other day I was jumping a gymnastic with Amay and grinning from ear to ear the whole time. I get teased because I am always smiling when we are jumping. Any why wouldn’t I be? I am in heaven.

With horses, like in life, progress is never linear. After a great summer last year, Amay was having off-and-on soundness issues as early as late October. We worked lightly in November and half of December before giving him a month off while we were back in the States. We jumped a little bit in January and February and even did a low competition, but then he was off entirely from late March until August. We’ve only just started him back but it will take months of conditioning and flatwork until he is back in top shape. When I ride him now, I can feel it’s still hard for him to collect at the canter (a necessary requirement for jumping decent-sized jumps) and he struggles to hold his left lead when I straighten his body. After each ride, we’ve added 30 minutes of ice and vibration therapy which will hopefully preempt any reinjury.

While Amay was off, I had been riding another horse that had developed a fear of jumping and was stopping at fences. He had been given a year off of jumping to relax when I began starting him back, at first by just hopping over tiny things and keeping things light and fun. He got me off once or twice (including a rather impressive stop at a liverpool when I flew over his neck and took his entire bridle with me– it took 20 minutes to catch him after that!) I worked with him all summer with minimal trainer supervision– we just jumped around and kept it positive. Occasionally I’d challenge him to jump something scary, and that’s all we’d do until he realized it was no big deal, and then I’d quit. I felt a pang of sadness watching others move up to higher fences this fall when I felt like I had only regressed. But then I watched this horse jump around perfectly with a teenager and he looked SO HAPPY. I reminded myself that sometimes you can’t measure your skill by the height of the jumps, and that even if my cynical self felt the summer had been wasted…it hadn’t.

Cyprus has given me back something that I had pushed deep down inside for a long time, because I never believed circumstances would allow for me to ride again. When I am not at the barn, I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how I can keep horses in my life– because it is a fact that we will leave Nicosia next summer, and that during the transition we will most likely be cash and time-starved. To future self if you are reading this:  please don’t let it be nine years before you find your way back to the barn.