Some big changes are coming into my life.  In two weeks I will have my first dose of the hopefully better MS drug, Gilenya, requiring a 6 hour stay at a cardiologist for my first dose.  I have such big hopes of how this new drug could affect my riding.  Will I have more energy?  Better balance?  Better coordination and timing?  Will I be able to “feel” the horse better?  Will the horses like me riding them better?  Only time will tell, of course.

The second big change is that we are getting a new double wide trailer which we will put on my land, nearer to the road so I have a better chance of getting out in case of a big snowfall.  This means packing up our decade’s long accumulation of stuff, my husband’s business stock, his extensive library, and record collection.  Me?  Lots and lots of horse books and tack, plus all the books I’ve gotten to feed my desire for information of a wide array of topics.  Of course we will have to move every thing else too.

I own hundreds of horse books.  You see when my parents decided to stop riding when we were in Uruguay I had to content myself with watching the horse drawn carts on the streets of Montevideo.  Then my parents, as a “consolation prize” gave me two non-fiction horse books.  I still have them (“Cavalcade of American Horses” by Pers Crowell, and “El Caballo” by Bruno and Beatriz Premani.)  When we moved back to the States my parents refused to pay for riding lessons, but I discovered the horse sections of the library.  With painful slowness I accumulated a few horse books, mostly of basic knowledge.  When I became an adult and earned my own money I gradually accumulated more, gradually because I was “horse poor.”  When I go into a book store, the first thing I look at is the horse books.  When I go into a tack store I always find their book section.  Then came the Internet and Amazon, and I was finally able to buy the books by the old masters that I had been reading about for decades, de la Gueriniere, Pluvinel, Fillis, Decarpentry, and books from the more modern masters, Chamberlin, Santini, Littauer, Kournakoff, Dillon, Steinkraus, de Nemethy, Morris, among many, many other authors, mainly dressage and hunt seat.  Since I could not afford many good riding lessons in the past, a lot of my advanced riding knowledge has come from TRYING out what I read and “listening” to the horse’s exposition of how I am doing it wrong, until I finally figure out how do it correctly.  Sometimes this takes me decades.

One problem that arose because of my MS is that I find any extended intellectual effort to be just as tiring as riding horses.  For instance, after I write my weekly blog I am not good for much else the rest of the day!  When I read books on riding, especially when I am trying to visualize what the authors are writing about, it is utterly exhausting, often I read an equitation book for maybe a half hour and then I HAVE to take a nap as I am wrung out and exhausted, more tired than if I had ridden a horse for thirty minutes.  So a lot of my horse books have been accumulating dust, I read short sections, think about what I have read, and I put the book back on the shelf.  Many times it may be years before I pick that book up again.  As a result I have many horse books I have not read all the way through. 

I hope the Gilenya will also give me the energy I need to read my horse books! 

Maybe I can sell some that don’t “speak” to me, or give them away, but I sort of have to read them first before I can make a decision.  Right now, after reading equitation books for over 50 years, I have a rating system.  I consider an equitation book to be really good if it gives me at least three pieces of knowledge that radically improve my riding.  These books I will definitely keep.  Then there are the books that are wonderful expositions of a riding system.  These books often have nuggets of information that can help me solve some of my many riding problems even if I decide not to ride the author’s system.  Then there are the books about riding at levels that I have no hope of achieving in my life, these increase my understanding of equitation, the how and why of what riders do on horseback.  These books can be quite challenging to read, IF I can read these more advanced books, and IF I can begin to understand them, then they can clarify “esoteric” theories that I had not been able to understand in the other books I read.

Yes, no one can learn to ride by just reading books.  But I can learn so much from these books, especially the ones by riders with decades more experience than I have.  I am riding and taking lessons, so I can discuss what I read with my riding teacher, and the horses can give me their opinions of my often incoherent attempts at trying to replicate what I have read.

I just got to ride once this week, on Tilly.  When I got to the stable I wanted to ride Mia, I am reducing my old MS medicine in preparation for my new MS medicine and my balance and timing are off.  But when I told Debbie she said that Mia had a job that day, “baby sitting” a new mare in the mare paddock.  Debbie has been treating a bad case of fungus in Tilly’s coat so I did not want to use my BOT saddle pad and exercise sheet, so Tilly did not get the warm up she gets from them.  She slogged around, did not want to stretch out her walk, and in general she was not very cooperative.  We rode in both rings, just for a change from our usual boring ride, and since Debbie wanted to keep an eye on the new mare.  I was able to manage one trot down the long side of the arena, and I was able to keep Tilly in a trot though Tilly saw absolutely no reason to keep on trotting.  My legs got a workout riding her!  I could not ride on Friday, it is raining today so I doubt I will get to ride tomorrow at Shannon’s, and for the next two months I will be very lucky if I manage to ride more than once a week.

To help me get through these weeks of little or no riding I am starting to reread some of my equitation books and I am planning on starting to read some of my newer books.  I have started reading “Riding and Jumping” by William Steinkraus, an oldie I’ve read several times, and next I am planning on reading “Reflections on Riding and Jumping” by William Steinkraus, the first time I’ve read both books together.  It will be interesting to see the difference that an extra two decades bring to his writings.  Then I am thinking about rereading-reading two books by George Morris, “Hunter Seat Equitation” and the more recent “The American Jumping Style”, again I am interested in the differences twenty years bring.  Next I might try getting through the “The de Nemethy Method” by Bertalan de Nemethy.  Beyond that?  Maybe I will reread some of my old Forward Seat books to compare them to the above books, or maybe I will reread some dressage books or venture into the ones I have not read before.  If I get enough energy to read books on riding I have enough books for YEARS of reading.

Maybe they will help me become a better rider.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran