Week of March 26, 2006 new place -- One weekend, I'm wandering the streets of Chelsea after midnight and the next, I'm gripping a saddle between my thighs and wondering how W. and I ever wound up on horseback. One weekend, I'm standing on a sunny, sandy beach fantasizing about galloping along the shore with my sweetheart and several months later, I'm standing in horse shit and pouring rain learning how to pick mud from a horse's hooves.
It all started last Thanksgiving. W. and I wandered a nearly deserted beach on a bright, clear Gulf Coast day when we encountered a horse-rental place. I said, "Oh! Wouldn't that be fun, to rent horses!"
W. agreed but said he just wasn't comfortable managing a horse because he'd never learned to ride.
"That's easy to fix, I'm sure," I replied. "We live in a horsey area."
Indeed. Soon after we got back from our holiday travels, I found a riding class in our local community college catalog. Classes actually started March 12th, the week before my trip to NYC. We met our instructor and other class members in the tack building. J. gave us an overview of what kind of clothes and footwear and headgear we should outfit ourselves with. That first week, I didn't parse any details of the place other than one corner had shelves with sweaty beat-up helmets we were required to wear and that the rest of that wall was stacked floor to ceiling with pungent leather saddles. On the other a desk held some water bottles, and both permanent and dry erase markers and someone's car keys.Afterward, she started our lesson on grooming and saddling the horses, which was cut short because the pouring rain made the horses too wet to groom. J. bugged me a bit because she seemed especially complimentary of and attentive to the men in our class. I was so irritated, I didn't feel at all bad about fibbing a little on the required paperwork and waivers J. asked us to fill out.
The next week, I was in NYC, but two weeks later the weather was decent enough to ride. Even though I had my own pony as a youngster, I never saddled or groomed him on my own and I usually rode bareback. I was very nervous, not only because I had missed the basics week before, but also because I was actually 10 pounds over the weight limit (even though I really, really don't look it, I was worried they would put me on a scale before I could ride.)
The first thing I did when we arrived at the stable was to trek up a hill, past the rental stable and private tack building to the bathroom tower. A tall wooden observation tower sits at the highest point of the stables property. It looks down on a large corral on one side and on the other side over the parking lot, the tiny ring right next to the parking lot and the two rings where we have lessons. The largest ring is filled with obstacles that riders and horses jump over. The obstacles are easily collapsible posts with cross bars the horses could knock off just by brushing a careless hoof over them. Most were set low, only a foot or two off the ground. Many of the obstacle posts were filled with brightly colored plastic flowers. The whole thing gives the impression it could be a circus ring because the poles and the holders and the flowers are bright yellow, neon pink, day-glo green and bright blue. The ring just next to it is smaller and less cluttered. Instead of twenty obstacles, there are only six dark green bars and a couple of white holders.
I find the bathroom at the base of the tower. As I washed my hands, I inspected the photos and drawings of horses that decorated the facilities. I realize that my teenage infatuation with horses never reached anything close to the level of the people who use the restroom. I wondered if horse fever is contagious.
Much to my relief, no one weighed me. Also much to my relief, picking hooves is no big deal and in the eight to ten lessons I've had since the first one, I have as yet to saddle a horse. W. has had to saddle a horse almost every time we come. My horses have always been under the control of riders in the sandy ring. All I have had to do is wait for the previous rider to bring one by. Most horses expand their chests when you put a saddle on them. The trick, that I didn't know as a very young pony owner, is that they don't keep their chests expanded forever. As a young kid, my saddle would always fall off to the side because I didn't cinch it tight enough. It was yet another thing I worried about that first week.
For many weeks the horseback riding scared me almost as much as the ice skating lessons, maybe more. For one thing, riders are perched four feet above the ground. A fall could be seriously painful. Horses are large, intimidating and stupid creatures that are easily spooked by things like plastic bags. You factor these things in with people who also jumpy and you could have disaster. In fact, the first week I heard that one of the horses had bucked one of the students. (Oh, yeah, riding is relaxing and fun. Right.)
Actually it has been. Each week, I have enjoyed it more and more. That first week, I rode Snoopy, a geriatric reddish-brown horse with actual wrinkles on his face. (W. rode Ranger that week, I think. W. has fallen in love with Ranger, a former race horse.) Snoopy seemed perfectly happy to walk around the ring, but distinctly unwilling to break into a jog, the Western riding word for "trot." Our instructor, J., told us to make a clicking noise with our tongues against the roofs of our mouths and at the same time kick our heels into the sides of the horse. A Western jog, J. told us, is actually slower than an English riding trot. This was easier to notice at first when you watch someone else in the class riding around. It was hard at first to tell the difference in your own horse's steps.
J. reviewed what everyone else had learned the week before. We each walked our horse in a back-and-forth pattern criss-crossing the ring to get the idea of controlling the horse. She had us walk around the ring counterclockwise, then clockwise. Walking a horse around a ring for nearly an hour is not my idea of excitement. Things got more interesting near the end of class when J. had us line up our horses by the edge of the ring and, one by one, we'd "ask" our horses to jog around the ring. I clicked and kicked and kicked and clicked and, finally, Snoopy started jogging. Jogging on a horse feels like you are sitting on top of a piston getting slammed up, then down, then up, then down. I knew from before that you can cushion the roughness of the gate by holding some of your weight off the saddle with your legs. I did this from force of habit. J. complimented me on my posture and easy manner, but told me to keep my heels down and to keep my hand near the saddle when Snoopy jogged.
The next time around, the jog seemed a little more fun, a little more easy, and actually a little harder to control.
After class, we left the ring and all us riders took our horses on the trail circuit. It is tradition to ride around a dirt path that circles the property. We rode around the perimeter of the property, between the ring and some metallic-fenced corrals, along a road, then across the open slope where the observation tower bathroom was. We came back downhill next to the high-rent stables and back to the grooming station. One of J.'s assistants told me that I had to remove both feet from my saddle and dismount by swinging my leg over and jumping off the horse. This is so very different than how I used to dismount that I'm embarrassed even now to think how clumsy I was. Once I managed to fall off the horse, practically, I clipped Snoopy's halters with two tie ropes to hold them while we unsaddled them. In these ropes, the horses really cannot move their heads much. It feels both safe and a bit mean to tie them in.
I left the lesson feeling dusty, sore, yet exhilarated and feeling that I had a lot more to learn. W. and I gave J.'s assistants the apples we brought as treats for Snoopy and Ranger. Because it was muddy, we didn't have to groom the horses that first day. We only unsaddled them, took their bridles off and put up the tack in the prescribed manner. We unclipped the tie ropes, clipped on a lead rope and walked the horses to a corral up a hill. We did not get the satisfaction of giving the horses treats directly. One of the assistants added the snacks to a feed trough in the corral. In later sessions, we got the knack of giving our horses treats ourselves. The trick is to use the "red snack bucket." Feeding the horses from your hand is forbidden because the horses start biting children's hands looking for snacks.
At my last lesson, I finally figured out that the leg signals tell the horse's back end what to do (I rather thought that it affected the front end at first). By our next lesson at the end of June, I will have forgotten everything again. Everything except that my favorite horse so far is Junior, a nearly all-white piebald former roping horse with pale blue eyes. Horses don't get more Western or more responsive than roping horses. He's butt ugly, but he's fun to ride.
