I knew there was a problem when I didn’t want to ride. A big problem.
This had never really happened to me before. Sure, there had been times, mostly in the winter, that I didn’t really want to drive 30 minutes or more out to the barn to ride, but once I got out there I was ready to get on my horse. February in Cleveland, OH, can be cold and snowy and some days I would just rather stay home and share a mug of hot chocolate with my kids than freeze my butt off in the 20 degree barn. But this time it was different. I didn’t want to ride.
In fact, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to eat, or get out of bed. I was having my first, and hopefully only, bout with depression. This was ten days ago.
Normally I’m a very upbeat person. I’m the eternal optimist, and really believe the best in people and situations. I’m also a bit hyper, but that helps me “get stuff done”. That’s what I do. I Get Stuff Done. If I wasn’t wound a little too tightly I wouldn’t have the energy to cram everything into a day that I do. Normally I’m scurrying around from place to place with a song playing in my head and a spring in my step.
So what happened to me that made me not want to ride? The answer is unclear.
I think I can say it started two weeks ago with thinking about my friend and former riding instructor Blair. You can read about her story here –
19 years later I still have unresolved feelings about what happened. For years after she disappeared I would “see” her at horse shows, or see “her” truck on the road and try desperately to drive next to the truck to see if it was her. There was never closure of the situation, even though I know in my heart that she is dead. Still, every now and then I use the magical internet to search for her.
In fact, during this last bit of searching I was able to reconnect (through Facebook) with two other riding instructors that I knew from when I was a kid. While this was all very nice, it still wasn’t finding Blair, even though I knew I would not find her. I did find her High School Alumni page, where they had her listed in the “In Memoriam” section. It had her senior portrait. I met her three years after that picture was taken. She was so young.
At that point I was just sad about Blair, but this had happened before and usually amounted to nothing other than being sad and maybe crying a little at the injustice of it all. That’s when everything gets a little complicated.
Later that week I went to my therapist to have a session to deal with my emetophobia. That’s fear of vomit, or vomiting. I’ve had this problem since I was 12 when I had my first seizure. After the seizure, I threw up. No big deal, until it came to pass that the only times I threw up were after I had a seizure. And let me tell you, having a seizure is a terrible experience. I had them from the time I was 12 until I was 21, and then they stopped. The doctors didn’t so anything about it, saying that I would probably just grow out of them, which I did. Even though the seizures had stopped, they had ingrained in me a deep seated fear of vomit due to the trauma of the seizure that immediate preceded vomiting.
Last year, in November, I had another seizure (my first in almost 20 years) brought on by my four year old daughter Macey vomiting. My husband was there for the whole thing. He wrote about it from his point of view on his blog –
Well, first it was warm enough for the horses not to have sheets on. Then it rained, creating mud. And since it was still too warm to have sheets on the ponies went outside naked.
Naked ponies + muddy pastures = filthy ponies
So I spent stupid amounts of time cleaning Bert and Kaswyn before I could put tack on them. Albert especially. I was excited that he might keep the clean coat he got from the baths he got at Nationals, but it was not to be. That horse GRINDS the mud into his body. He gets it so caked in his halter that you can't get it off of him. Piggy boy. He stinks too.
It's now cold enough again to keep the boys sheeted, or, like today, blanketed. Soon the pastures will freeze and the mud will go away. But that means snow and ice and I hate to be cold. So if I'm not whining about one thing it something else, huh?
Let me find one more thing to complain about (because I'm really on a roll today). I wasn't riding well last night. I felt unbalanced and ineffective. Then I realized I was perching on Albert instead of sitting my butt down and keeping my legs long. So I fixed that issue, then got on Kaswyn and he didn't feel right at the left lead canter. Something is going on there and I can't decide if he's just stiff from the weather change or if his back is sore again. He didn't seem back sore to me after the ride, but I gave him two grams of bute last night anyway. I expected him to feel pretty good because he got his Polyglycan shot on Sunday. Ah well.
Hello winter. The only good thing about you is Christmas.
Fire, a 13 year old purebred Arabian gelding, came to our barn in the middle of March. He was trained as an English Pleasure horse and his owner needed to move him from his old trainer's barn, so she came to our barn because she is very good friends with Marge, the barn owner. Fire's owner doesn't ride, and he hadn't been ridden in months. I put him on the lunge line just out of curiosity and saw that he had tons of potential as a dressage horse. He has a nice rear end and really can swing his back.
So I starting working with him just for fun. He had some major fear issues at first, and was very nervous about being worked, or handled on the ground. Slowly over the course of six weeks I could see him relax a little bit and let his guard down. The barn staff were also reporting that he was more calm about going outside and coming back into his stall.
Then my friend asked me to ride her seven year old Half-Arabian gelding, Skyy, who she had for sale. Her hope was that he could get experienced enough to be able to qualify for, and do well at, Arabian Sport Horse Nationals and then he could be sold. It would be tough for me to ride three horses (my horse Kaswyn, my friend Susan's horse Albert, and Skyy, all Arabians doing dressage!) but I thought I could get it done. And with the support of my husband, and tons of help from my trainer, I was able to pull it off.
Well, that's only partially true. Yes I rode all three horses four or five times a week after work. And I took lessons, and took them to shows. I was able to qualify all three horses for Nationals, but ended up only taking Albert and Skyy because Kaswyn had back issues associated with his long bout with a splint bone injury. By the time he was really pain free there wasn't enough time to get him into shape to go. Anyway, I took Albert and Skyy to Nationals. And I fell off of Skyy in the Training Level Amateur Championship.
My trainer came to the rescue and rode Skyy in the Training Level Open Championship and went Top Ten (7th really) out of 40 horses. He was great for her. But I left the show with pain in my neck and arm, which I'm still struggling with today. And Skyy left the show and went back home, so he is not at our barn anymore.
Since I felt like I had an open slot in my training routine with Skyy gone, I put Fire back in rotation. He regressed right back to being afraid of being worked. This made me sad, but I knew that he was just scared and not a malicious animal. Of course I wrote about this on my blog, and Craig, my husband, read it.
I have to give him credit, because he's very careful not to interfere in my horse affairs at all. He brought up the fact that I had ridden another lady's horse (a warmblood) and been bucked off at a show. This resulted in a torn medial collateral ligament in my right knee which put me out of commission for eight weeks (read about that here). Then this latest fall in the show ring (you can see that here), again off of someone else's horse, has resulted in a whiplash sort of injury to my neck which still gives me pain today even though the show was a month ago.
Then he asked me to please not ride Fire anymore. He said he trusts Kaswyn and Albert, both of whom I've been riding for years. His feeling is that neither of these horses would do anything to hurt me, but since Fire has so much fear he just might do something out of fear that could hurt me, and he really doesn't want me to get hurt again.
I had to admit that he was right. Even though I know that Fire is really a sweetheart and is just fearful because of past training issues I couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't melt down someday and run off with me or something. No person who rides horses can guarantee they won't get hurt, and I know that. But I trust Kaswyn and Albert so much that I am confident that the chances of either horse hurting me are almost zero.
So, sadly, I will only be riding two horses, Kaswyn and Albert, and will no longer be riding Fire. He has a lot of potential, but maybe he's actually happier this way. He gets food (too much sometimes!) a nice stall, and daily turnout with his buddies. All this plus no stress of having someone ride him.
However I can't help but imagine what he'd feel like going down the centerline for the first time. I guess sometimes you just have to let go.
My plan on Tuesday was to just ride Kaswyn bareback and lunge Fire and Albert. However, I ended up riding both Kaswyn and Albert bareback. Kaswyn I rode in a halter, but Albert I put a bridle on.
You might wonder why I ride bareback and in a halter, especially when I'm short on time. It's faster tacking up and untacking, and I don't have saddles and bridles to clean. You might not think that it makes that much of a difference, but it made enough of a difference on Thursday that I was able to ride Albert too. I usually leave the barn with only five minutes to spare to be able to pick up the girls on time, which is kind of a bad thing because if I hit traffic I'm hosed.
I also like riding bareback. Not all the time, because I don't feel like I can really train hard when I'm bareback, but I love how it shows me my flaws. For example, on Thursday my ride with Kaswyn revealed that I'm still not letting my left leg stay long enough. I could tell this because I was sliding a bit to the right, and when I'd let my leg get long and sit squarely on both seat bones I wasn't off balance. It was more evident in the corners because I was leaning my upper body to the inside while going around corners to the left. I'm also letting my right shoulder come up a bit at the same time, so I'm getting all twisted up again. It's only been a few weeks since my last lesson, and those old bad habits are already starting to creep back in. A bit discouraging, but I'll keep working on it.
Kaswyn is amazing in that he can "get on the bit" without a bit while being ridden in his halter. I can collect him, do extended paces with him (sometimes it's hard to stay with him though!), and even do half-pass and canter pirouettes. I think this makes my trainer crazy, and I don't think that she really likes that I do training type rides bareback AND with a halter, but sometimes it's the only way I can fit everything into my day.
Sure, I suppose I could just use tack and not clean it, but ugh, I just hate that. The reins get all gross, as do the billet straps, and I hate the black smudgy crud that accumulates on the saddle flaps. And don't get the started on the gross bits and flash nosebands. So I MUST clean them. Yes I'm obsessive.
Anyhow, Albert's ride was really nice. He's got such a nice back and it's very comfortable. We schooled a bit of shoulder in and trot half-pass. There was no way I could stay with his medium trots, so we just did the collected work. We also worked on walk to canter transitions. He still comes off the bit a little for those but they are improving.
Poor little Fire got the short end of the stick and was just lunged. He's so fat right now and is still a little stress ball. I told Marge he needs to go on a diet, and then I saw how much she was feeding him, and she said "Yes, I know this is too much, I just feel bad for him." I told her he would be much better off with less and she dumped half of the grain back into the grain cart, saying "I know I know! He just gets so little anyway that this doesn't seem like enough." He's got a huge gut and if it's going to come off then he needs less to eat. Fortunately he doesn't have a cresty neck or any of the laminitic warning signs.
Today the plan is to ride Kaswyn and Albert, then go have dinner with Susan. Craig is taking care of getting the girls home and fed, so I'm going to ride and then go have a big cheeseburger and fries. Oh, how I LOVE fries!
I spent Tuesday afternoon at the barn as usual. My neck has been feeling somewhat better so I decided that I'd ride two horses. I hadn't ridden Albert since Nationals I chose him and Kaswyn to ride and Fire to lunge.
The plan I've been rolling around in my head would be to go to the barn four days a week and rotate so that I'm only riding two horses every day and lunging one. That way they will all get four days of work but only three days of riding and one light day. Riding three at night is just too much and I was only making that happen because Nationals was coming up. Now I can take it easier.
However over the next few weeks I will be feeling a bit of pressure. Usually I go to the barn Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, but since Nationals the girls have had swimming Thursday nights. No big deal that I skip one day, but this week and next week I've got dates planned with my hubby on Friday. So skipping Thursday and Friday is totally out of the question. Yes I know my horse had a whole week off while I was in Kentucky, and Fire hadn't been worked in six months, but now I'm rolling again and I don't want to slow down!
Anyway, I rode Kaswyn first on Tuesday. We continued schooling working to lengthen to working trot. He feels stronger and I'm getting a stronger, even trot stride from him. This is kind of a new thing for me, as I've always felt that his lengthen (or medium) trots were delicate. What is mean by that is, well, my horse is hard to ride. He doesn't look like it, but he's tricky because he's sensitive and the slightest shift can throw him off. So riding him is like walking a tightrope - constant, tiny adjustments, no over corrections. This applied especially at the medium trot. About halfway through the diagonal I had to do a very slight adjustment or he'd get too ahead of himself and take a funny uneven stride. The adjustment had to be done just right or I'd ruin the whole thing.
But then I started riding Albert again, and got these fantastic trot lengthening from him. They are strong, even, and that horse pushes over his back like crazy (I think he got 8's on them at Nationals - the good ones anyway). Now that I know what it's supposed to feel like I want Kaswyn's to feel like that too. Kaswyn knows how to push over his back but I don't think I ever schooled the lengthenings properly with him. That kind of strong pushing stride is not inherent in my horse, but I think I can teach him how to do it.
So that's what we schooled first, then a little walking and then some collected to working canter transitions. Then back to the trot. We're getting there but it's going to take awhile. And I'm not going to push it and injure that boy again, so I'm being patient.
Then I rode Bert (when I say Bert I mean AlBert, you get that right?). We did a little trot work and then I decided that I'd try the flying change exercise that my trainer had me work in our one lesson. Albert gets so upset about the changes that I want to start working on them now so that in two years it will be no problem. It might take that long to get them if Tuesday's work was any indicator. He just gets so freaked out that as soon as I ask for the change he throws his head in the air and takes off. I think he got about half of the changes I asked for, but it's so hard to tell if they were clean because he was taking off so much. My trainer says it's okay that he gets a little excitable about them, because his changes will be very expressive once he gets them. But for right now he's in a panic. I need another lesson! Unfortunately they will by at my barn and not in my trainer's great arena, because now that Skyy is home the trailer is up for sale and not available for me to use anymore. Bummer.
Then I had time to throw Fire on the lunge line. That poor horse is still so stressed about working, and I didn't even work him in side reins or anything. He did get to the point were he'd stretch his head down, but for the most part he was tense. After we finished I walked up and patted him, and he didn't sigh or relax at all. I really wanted him to lick and chew his mouth a little bit, so I put my finger in his mouth. He allowed me to get my finger between his lips but his jaw was clenched tightly shut. So I moved his tongue around a little bit, and it was very very dry. I know that with a bit in it's a mouth if a horse chews (in a contented way, not in an anxious or gnawing way) that the mouth will get wetter, but I don't know for sure if a dry mouth is a sign of tenseness in there is no bit present.
Kaswyn is very oral and as soon as I'm done lunging him he licks his lips and chews his mouth. Albert didn't used to lick or chew when we were done working because he was tense, but after each ride I'd get off of him, pat him on the neck and tell him good boy, then put my finger in his mouth to make him lick and chew. Now as soon as I get of and tell him good boy he does it. So I'm hoping this strategy will work with Fire. He is ten times more tense than Albert was, so it might take quite a long time.
So that was Tuesday. Today I have to get off of work, run to the barn and ride, get the girls by 5:15, go home and feed them dinner, then get to swimming by 6:35. Luckily I think I can get out of work early today so I might be able to jump on Kaswyn bareback and lunge the other two really fast and still make it to get the girls in time. Only two more weeks of Thursday swimming, then it moves to Wednesdays which will be easier for me since it's not a usual barn day. However Mondays and Wednesdays are the days that I schedule things (like car appointments, doctor visits) and run errands so I'll have to make sure I get that all done on Wednesdays in time for swimming.
Oh, and I had a great chiro and massotherapy appointment yesterday. My neck and arm are only a little sore and are feeling tons better. I'm not doing any work on that special project for a week, so hopefully I can get some healing done. It's nice not to hurt! Imagine that.
I stood there on the dock, hands on hips, and watched my sister drift slowly away from the pier. Had she been in the rowboat this wouldn't have been as much of an issue, since she could have paddled her way back to the dock or the shore. But she was in the motor boat, the boat she insisted on being in, and she didn't have the keys. Not that she knew how to drive the thing anyway.
At first she didn't seem that upset. But once she reliazed that she was too far away from the dock to jump back to it, and that she was indeed floating down the river alone, she started to wail. I stood there and let her scream.
I heard voices and footfalls behind me, and I turned to see my dad come running down the back lawn and out from under the shade of the trees. "What's going on? Tracy, why are you out there?"
My sister shouted back in a tearful voice "Sheri untied me!".
My dad looked at me and said "Why did you do that?"
I said "She was being mean."
My dad gave me the look of death and called to Tracy "Hold on, I'll come get you!".
By this time most of the family was on the back lawn and heading toward the dock. My father called to uncle Fred to grab the keys, which he found and tossed out to my father. My sister was really crying now so my dad just jumped in the water and waded out to the motorboat instead of bothering with the rowboat. He may have had to swim the last few feet or so, but it really wasn't that far. He climbed in the boat, started it up, and puttered back to the dock.
Once my sister was safely on the dock and the boat tied up again my dad barked at me "Get in the house!" Once in the house I got a long lecture about how it was dangerous to set my sister free down the river (Why?, I asked, she knew how to swim!) and also that it was not very nice of me (Well she started it by being a Miss Bossypants!). Eventually I was banished to the upstairs bedroom for the rest of the day, which was fine since I found some old books to look at. Eventually one of my cousins came to get me for dinner, and all was forgotten.
Needless to say, we weren't allowed to play alone on the dock anymore.
Today I spent eleven hours at work. The last few hours were dedicated to working on a special project. This project involves putting samples on microscope slides and prepping them. To do this I use my right hand and have to hold my arm up at kind of a funny angle. My neck injury does not like this.
My poor husband was greeted by a late, grumpy, aching wife. Thankfully he had the girl situation under control, dinner had been fed, and kids were playing nicely together. Luckily for me Craig cooks well and made a fantastic beef soup for dinner. I ate my dinner took my drugs, and tried to do some picking up around the house. I was not as effective as I would have liked, but at least I got something done.
Now it's time for me to get into bed and hopefully get some healing sleep. I actually felt pretty good and pain free all day...until the end there. I'm hoping this means that I'm on the upswing if I can just stop hurting myself. However when faced with the prospect of "Do this project or don't get paid", I think I'll do the project and suffer the consequences (even though my husband wishes I wouldn't). We need the money. I'll heal.
The barn plan for tomorrow is to ride two ponies. I haven't been on Albert since the show, and I want to start schooling second level movements again. We sort of put them on hold until after the show, but now it's time we move on. That horse is confirmed first level. Now it's time to see what else he will offer. I also want to ride Kaswyn again, of course. Getting on my horse is like putting on my favorite pair of jeans. It just feels comfortable, and right.
So as long as my shoulder holds up I'm riding tomorrow. And no more making slides. Not until next week anyway.
