Spring is Here

Yes, North Carolina in the spring.  This is the best time of year here, the gnats and flies are still mostly absent, even the colder mornings warm up nicely, the birds are tweeting outside the window, and the horses are shedding what is left of their winter coats.  The trees are flowering, the leaves are sprouting, and it is simply gorgeous!

Grooming Mia has been a hairy adventure in more ways than one.  Of course, gobs and gobs of hair fly off her coat and the currycomb and brushes get clogged with even more hair, but the saving grace is that her coat fungus seems to be gone.  Rasping Mia’s hind hooves has been an adventure of evading her flailing hind hooves and getting after her when she starts cow kicking.  Two times I just decided it was not worth the danger to get her left hind hoof trimmed, though I did get some off the sole one day before she got down and serious about how uncomfortable it made her to hold her left hind up so I could take care of the hoof.  Yesterday Mia and I came to a compromise, she finally agreed not cow-kick at me and I kept her hoof really low while I used the hoof knife and rasp on it.  I do not really blame her for the flailing hooves, after all the weather changes from day to day and the changes of air pressure get my arthritis hurting, and I imagine she must be hurting more than I do.  At least we have finally conquered her thrush, which is a relief because I have been treating it every time I cleaned her hooves for over eight years.

Some days when I am supposed to ride, the only thing that gets me out of bed is the fact that I get to ride an Arabian mare, even if she is old and creaky.  I remember how I am the only one that will trim her hooves so that her hoof angles don’t constantly change and irritate her arthritic leg joints, I remember how I am the only one that will go over her coat and get every clump of fungus out, I am the only one who will groom her face all over, inside and out of her ears, and I am the only one that will brush her mane out thoroughly.  I am the only one doing this because I am the only one riding her, otherwise she would just be out in the pasture except for feeding.  Debbie’s stable is FULL, and with 38 horses, twenty or so stalls, no one else has the time to fuss over Mia for a few hours each week.  Even when I get down and discouraged because I am literally going nowhere with my riding, Mia makes it worthwhile.  I just get so BORED just riding around the ring, but with my MS and my weakness and lack of balance I really do not feel safe riding by myself on trails, and Debbie’s paddocks have too many horses in them to be safe areas for schooling a horse.

So I work on my seat and on getting my riding muscles stronger.  Lately I have been asking Shannon and Debbie to tell me when my back is perpendicular to the horse’s back, only to find out that my back has been properly perpendicular to the horse’s back all along, if anything I might lean back a tiny bit at the walk.  I was sort of surprised when I heard that, after all I am riding the horses in a Forward Seat, using Forward Control and doing Forward Schooling.  At the walk I let the horse dictate how I carry my upper body.  If the horse’s back feels weak, stiff, or somewhat painful, I get my seat bones forward in the saddle and/or roll my weight to the front of my seat bones and pubic bone.  Otherwise, at the walk or sitting trot, I just sit up and let the horse move my seat bones, which I try to keep “glued” to the saddle.  Since I am trying to prevent jarring my brain, I avoid bouncing in the saddle as much as possible.  If the horses tense their backs, my back gets jarred and I start bouncing in the saddle.  I get puzzled reading riding books that insist the pelvis stay still in the saddle, if I do not move my pelvis so that the pressure from my seat bones stays constant, the horses stiffen their backs and I suffer.

I do manage to stay in the saddle for 30 minutes each time I ride, but I still get quite tired.  Often the last few minutes I am riding the halt, just resting but still determined to stay in the saddle the full thirty minutes.  The mares have been very gracious about this so long I get off when the 30 minutes are over.

I am gradually increasing my posting trot, and finally, on Friday, my legs were strong enough so I could start correcting Mia’s inversion from contact at the trot.  The way I do this is to raise both reins, gradually, so they get more parallel to the cheek pieces of the bridle (watching out for the horse’s eyes, of course,) until that wonderful moment when the horse voluntarily reaches forward with its nose, stretches its neck and brings its nose down and forward.  I have not been stable enough in the saddle to do this since I had my MS attack two years ago, so I was very pleased when Mia reacted properly to this rein aid without me having to get the reins more than halfway up.  I hope my seat is still stable enough to do this my next lesson; Debbie gets really irritated when Mia inverts!

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran