Tag: horseback riding

fitness

Happy Horse-iversay to me

Diane Harper1 Comment

Last weekend I was at a party for the people who board their horses at a local barn. We started talking with the owner about its evolution as she is now almost 80, and I realized it is 20 years since I first started riding.

At the time, it was a school barn and I had a horse-mad six year old daughter, so she started taking lessons some time in the fall of 2014. I sat in the unheated barn in layers of winter gear plus the horse’s blanket, trying to stay warm. Some time around Christmas or early January, I decided it had to be warmer on a horse, so I signed up for lessons too.

I do not come from a horse family – at all. My mom, who grew up with horses as work animals on her prairie farm (and who fought with her brothers about who got to ride a bike to school and who was stuck riding a horse), thinks we are crazy.

She’s not entirely wrong, as horses are definitely a financial investment. But they can also bring some pretty cool benefits. For my daughter, it was better mental health because it got her out of the ballet studio and into fresh air and sunshine. It was also a great confidence builder for a tiny child who struggled at school to be able to get a 2,000 pound animal to do what she wanted. Reading everything she could about horse breeds and horse care turned her into a reader.

For me, it was an activity I could share with my daughter, but also a way to get brave while doing a sport. I never loved it, but I learned to jump. When I fell off my horse the first time and suffered a concussion, I got back on a few weeks later, instead of quitting the sport. When I fell off the second time (going over a jump), I had time to think about landing so I wasn’t injured and got right back on and did the jump again – successfully. I have since learned how to stay on during noisy rainstorms when my horse gets scared, and when to get off because I don’t feel confident.

This June will be the 10th anniversary of buying our first horse, Fancy. These days, I rarely ride as Fancy is getting older and suffers from some arthritis, so it is uncomfortable for her to have my weight on her back. Instead, a teenager and my daughter share the riding duties while I mostly just go out for visits to feed and groom her. I have not yet been given permission to try riding Karma, the younger horse my daughter bought two years ago.

Fancy, a very dark brown mare wearing her winter blanket and sprinkled with a bit of snow last weekend. She loves being outdoors year-round, as long as she is bundled up, has her shelter, her friends, and a steady supply of hay and water.

Karma, a dark brown horse with a heart-shaped blaze, photobombs Fancy, who is standing in a green field with dark brown horses on either side.

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Translating Fitness Skills Across Disciplines

Diane Harper1 Comment

A few years ago, my friend Bess came to visit and I took her to my ballet class. She has zero interest in ballet but was fascinated to hear the feedback we were getting: it was just like what she uses when heavy weapons fighting.

Bess, on the right in a red surcoat and holding a sword and shield, has her feet ready to advance on her opponent, who is wearing a black surcoat.

Use your core muscles. Keep your spine aligned. Bend your knees so you can spring up and land without injury. Engage those quick twitch muscles so you can move around the floor. Pay attention to the angle of your wrists: it can mean the difference between a “killing” blow and a wasted hit with the flat of your sword. Or if you are dancing, it’s the difference between a graceful line and strong back muscles vs looking like you have chicken wings for arms.

A woman in a long flowing blue dress holds her arms above her head with her elbows bent. To the left is a pair of white chicken wings with the words “chicken wings” below the,. Image: Zarely.co

That experience has stuck with me, especially when I realized it applies to other sports.

When riding my horse, all those instructions about core, posture, and arm position also apply. Swimming is also all about core, alignment and precise use Of arms and wrists for maximum efficiency when moving through the water.

From watching other sports, especially things like martial arts, it appears these principles are pretty universal.

This discovery has allowed me to take feedback from one sport and apply it to another. Mental images that helped in ballet turned out to be really useful for correcting my riding. Figuring out how certain muscles feel when properly engaged helped me recognize when I was working my core in the pool.

Equally important was the recognition that those translatable skills can make it possible to try a new sport with less fear of the unknown. This is probably that magical knowledge (whether conscious or unconscious) that makes natural athletes “natural”.

I haven’t yet decided to take up anything new, but I like the idea that I could do so and not be starting at absolute zero. In my heart, I’m like the character in the children’s book Brianna Bright, Ballerina Knight, who isn’t very good at ballet but bumbles and stumbles her way through other sports until she discovers fencing,

Brianna Bright, a cartoon girl with long brown hair in a pony tail, eats dinner while images of her as a ballerina and a fencer float above her head. Image copyright Liana Hee, 2018, text copyright Pam Calvert, 2018. Courtesy of Two Lions.
fitness

Spare a Thought for Women in Highly-Gendered Sports

Diane Harper1 Comment

I have been thinking a lot lately about how sports perceived as “more for girls” are undervalued, even in sports where they dominate.

In North America, at least, the vast majority of amateur equestrians are girls and women, yet the story is much different at the elite level. Since 1964 women and men have competed together at the Olympics, but no woman has won a gold in show jumping or eventing, though almost as many women as men have won at dressage. Dressage is widely seen as the “girliest” of the disciplines.

A consequence of this may have been the undervaluing of equestrian as a “real” sport. No, the horse doesn’t do all the work; riding is intense and demanding, and it requires strength and bravery as well as athleticism, a good connection with the horse, and many many hours of hauling tack, shoveling manure, and getting 400-600 kg horses to go where you want, even when you aren’t riding. The size of the rider doesn’t seem to be a major factor; the key is how well they can manage their horse.

Other sports have also suffered from male flight (the term for men and boys being less likely to enter a domain once it becomes associated with femininity). They include cheerleading, which was a male sport as valued as football before women took it on during WWI, gymnastics, figure skating, dance and artistic (formerly synchronized) swimming.

These athletes all must all be strong and flexible; most compete in close formation so precision matters, and artistic swimmers do half of their their four-minute routines under water. Concussions and other injuries are common. But because they are women-dominated sports where costumes and make-up have a role, they are routinely mocked as not being true sports. Interestingly, all, including equestrian, are places that have traditionally been more welcoming of LGBTQ+ athletes, as well.

However, the most egregious undervaluing of women’s sport this week was at the men’s World Cup.

Soccer is not gendered at the early stages of learning the game; over 40% of all players in Canada are girls, and boys and girls play together on the same teams. As they age and become more skilled, the girls and women are relegated to a distant second place in the minds of some (check out Wikipedia to see just how little attention the women get). At the same time, the most-watched event of the 2020 Olympics in Canada was the gold medal women’s soccer game won by Canada, led by Christine Sinclair. Sinclair is the world’s all-time leading international play goal scorer among both men and women, and the second player in history to score in five World Cups (after Brazilian legend Marta).

The Canadian women have played in every women’s World Cup since 1995, reaching 4th place in 2003. They scored twice in their very first game in 1995, against England. In total, they have scored 34 goals. So when a TSN sportscaster gushed about the first goal for Canada at the men’s World Cup the “greatest moment in Canadian soccer history” while sitting beside Janine Beckie, a member of gold medal Olympic team, it’s not surprising this was her reaction:

Woman with long blonde hair and a black sweater holds a microphone while seated in a broadcasting studio. There is a crowded stadium in the background. The woman has an extremely sceptical look on her face.
Janine Beckie gives her co-host some well-deserved side-eye.

We all need to be more like Janine Beckie, every time we hear such nonsense.

Diane Harper lives in Ottawa. She grew up watching or attempting every one of these sports, and still does some of them, so she knows just how hard they are.

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Fitness Buddies

Diane Harper

This week, someone asked for suggestions on keeping motivated to do fitness activities. There plenty of good suggestions about scheduling workouts into your day so they become a priority, finding activities that work for you, setting goals such as competing in a race, etc.

My best hint is to have fitness buddies. Over the years, I have gravitated to activities I can do with friends. As an introvert who is highly susceptible to peer pressure, it’s perfect.

I can get some social time but don’t actually have to be too social; mostly we are doing our own thing, and there is a time limit. Since most of my fitness buddies are extroverts, they are really good at setting up times to meet; I will happily join them whenever possible.

The social aspect is really good for mental health too. I have friends associated with each activity. In most cases, we met at ballet, or a swim club, or at the barn, but many of those friendships go well beyond that specific sport. One example is my ballet buddy who morphed into a walkng buddy, and now we are simply friends (who still do classes and walk and swim together). I don’t have a lot of friends from work, and my family is small, so I really value these social connections.

My newest fitness buddy is also one of my oldest. I took up adult ballet when my daughter was an enthusiastic young dancer. I learned to ride a horse because it was warmer than sitting in an unheated arena during her lessons. We took lessons together until she was in her teens and I bought Fancy for her.

We have shared Fancy for seven years now, which has meant only one of us could ride at a time. Priority went to my daughter, and I got out of the habit of going more than once a week. That got even worse when the pandemic hit and my weekly lessons ended. But now she is riding another horse for a friend, so I have taken to joining her for morning rides. I am really enjoying the time with her. Secretly, I hope she buys Mickey so we can keep riding together.

My daughter in an outdoor arena under a bright blue sky, riding Mickey, a brown horse, with the shadow from my horse and me in the foreground.

Diane Harper lives in Ottawa.

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Finding my Well-Being Sweet Spot

Diane Harper2 Comments

Sam recently shared an article on the links between too much time and mental health, with the comment that this was not her problem. My immediate thought was “Ha! I’m willing to test this hypothesis!” The study looked at perceptions of well-being and how that rose or fell depending on the amount of free time, controlling for scenarios such as depression, which might leave a person with too much free time.

The basic result was that the sense of well-being rose with about 2 hours of free time, but dropped if the person had more than about 5 hours of free time. But, what counts as free time matters. The sense of well-being came primarily with productive free time, for meaningful activities such as hobbies, social activities, etc. “Wasted” time (undefined in the article, but for me it means things like doomscrolling, social media, and playing computer games) does not have the same effect.

So what is my takeaway on this? I’m mostly doing okay with making time for things I enjoy. I get enough fitness activities to be healthy. If anything, I need to start paying more attention to possible overuse injuries. Right now, I am dealing with what appears to be swimmers elbow. This may be a perfect time to rebalance my activities a bit, especially since the weather is cooling so I will be swimming outdoors less over the next few months.

My rebalance will probably involve more horse time. My daughter is looking seriously at a younger horse for her own riding, since she likes to jump and Fancy, though still healthy and eager, is 19. Like me, she is getting to an age where we need to pay more attention to the risk of injury.

She is still great for flat work though, which suits me fine. Until now, I have been riding about once a week so that my daughter could get as much time in as possible. However, I will likely increase that to two or even three times a week over the next little while. Will I ever reach the 5-6 rides a week that would be optimal for her? Probably not. That is a big time commitment, and would move this leisure activity into the category of becoming a real chore. Besides, as we continue to age, we are both going to need more recovery time between outings.

Fancy, a dark brown thoroughbred mare. The first picture is of her walking away, showing off her shiny coat. The second shows her relaxing after a ride by rolling in the dirt. The is a picture taken while I was riding. It shows her head and a long shadow of both of us in the sand of the arena.

And I’ll need that recovery time to do all the other things that are meaningful to me – gardening, elder care, cooking, sewing, spending time at my cottage property, possibly even some home renovations. More and more lately, I have been thinking about retirement. Unlike Sam, I don’t find my job as fulfilling as I once did, and I am definitely not as busy. Time spent on work increasingly feels like something that is crowding out the things I enjoy, and I work hard to cram them all in before or after work. Maybe my sense well-being will will improve if I make more free time.

Hmm… this post has taken a strange turn. How about you readers? Are getting enough free time to make you happy? If not, what might you do to adjust?

Diane Harper lives and swims in Ottawa (among many other activities).

fitness

Fitness and Climate Change

Diane Harper4 Comments

The heat waves this summer are making think about my fitness activities and how to do better. First, how to do better about staying active in the heat, but also how to do fitness better to minimize my contribution to climate change.

Staying active – I am lucky enough to live near an old quarry and an outdoor swimming pool I can walk or bike to every day. For me, both are great ways to exercise and stay cool. I can go to the quarry early enough in the day that I don’t even worry about sunscreen, which is good because it is in a conservation area and most sunscreens are harmful to water creatures.

Beyond that, it gets trickier. It’s too hot to ride my horse by the time I am done work most days, and she lives too far away for me to contemplate a ride before work. I still do my Zoom ballet classes, and there are video options for yoga, HIIT, pilates, various dance forms etc.

But how to do fitness better? One of the biggest pieces may be travel to do activities. At the Tokyo Olympics, there were lots of measures to minimize the carbon footprint, but COVID turned out to be the game changer. Without spectators to feed, house, and entertain, the carbon emissions dropped an estimated 12%. The carbon emissions from all the airline travel for fans to get to Tokyo appears to be on top of that.

That is something I have started discussing with my swim buddies. We meet about once a week at a beach that is relatively central for all of us. But all but one of us drives a car to get there. Public transit isn’t really a viable option given the times we swim and the awful cross-town bus service. I try to minimize my impact by combining that swim with other errands in that part of town, plus grocery shopping on the way home. It does have us questioning whether we will go further south for cold water swims as we have done in the past. And of course, we will all be back at the indoor pools once our swim clubs start up again in the fall; not exactly a low-carbon activity.

Biking is also an option that I want to explore more. Right now, I use it mostly for short commutes to do errands, but lately it has been too hot even for that. I joke that learning to ride a horse would help me survive an apocalypse, at the same time as driving to her barn in the country contributes to that apocalypse. Could I bike, then swim (or ride my horse), then bike home? Probably not, at least not yet. The spirit is willing but the legs are weak. Maybe in a couple of years, once there is a decent train service where I can bring my bike and just cycle the last few kilometres.

I understand the desire to travel in order to do interesting sports; I am currently living vicariously through Cate as she cycles her way around Bulgaria. I thoroughly enjoy all the posts about cycling in Prince Edward County or along the Guelph to Goderich trail, or canoeing in places like Algonquin Park. My bucket list has included a trip to Peru so I can hike to Machu Picchu for decades, and more recently I have dreamed of a swim trek through Croatia. Or even a trip back to British Columbia, which has so many sports options, including canoeing along the Sunshine Coast like these two women.

Photo by Chris Montgomery, via Unsplash

Then there are all the gear questions. Microfibres, miracle knits, water-resistant clothing versus old-school linen and leather. Most days it doesn’t seem like much of a choice. I won’t give up my comfy streamlined bathing suits or goggles and caps, but I can at least limit my purchases to essentials. Just this week I reluctantly threw out a suit I have worn for a decade because the latest repairs were giving me sores when I swam. I have started looking for companies that sell gear made from recycled plastics. So far I haven’t found a swimsuit I love, but I do have gorgeous comfy leggings that get a lot of use.

I wish I had some snappy conclusion, but this is a complicated issue. Getting out and being active allows us to both notice what is happening in our environment, and to be more resilient to its negative effects. At the same time, I live in a city with Canadian winters, so it is hard to do all the things I would like without getting into a car. I am not brave enough for winter cycling. I could focus on more seasonal sports such as cross-country skiing along the nearby river, and give up pool swimming, but that would mean giving up on both friends and an activity where I feel strong.

Do you ever think about how your sports affect the environment? What are you doing to adapt as the world gets hotter and the weather more unpredictable? What trade-offs are you willing to make and what is too important to give up?

Diane Harper lives and swims in Ottawa.

fitness · Guest Post · swimming

Adapting (Guest Post)

Sam B

by Diane Harper

This year has been full of adaptions and adjustments, not least to our fitness routines. Some adaptations have been relatively small; when the pools closed in March, it was no big deal to move outdoors once it got a bit warmer, because I swim outdoors year-round. When the roads to our favourite swim spot became impossible because everyone else suddenly discovered the lake, my group pivoted quickly to staying at the river spot we normally use in spring and fall, and we figured out longer swims to get some distance in. When I didn’t need to cycle to work every day because I was working from home, I developed after work walking routines and even took up cycling to buy groceries.

Other adaptations have been more challenging. Ballet class in my living room means no more big movements across a huge studio floor. For months my barre was the back of a chair. Most jumping and pirouettes are gone – partly so we don’t crash into furniture, and partly because it’s hard for a teacher on Zoom to give individual corrections to people in tiny squares, all moving at slightly different times because of lags in the music.

So far in 2021, adaptations to my routine have become more important than ever. Like many I started January with Yoga With Adriene 30 days series on YouTube. I can’t do crow. I couldn’t do crow last year, either, and I gave up on the series because the failure intimidated me so much. Despite last year’s failure, I dipped in and out of yoga practice throughout the year, and joined a lunch-hour chair yoga series offered through my work this fall. That instructor offers lots of adaptations for people who might not be up to doing certain stretches. I was intrigued to hear her reminding us, twice a week, that we could switch things up in ways that were more suited to how we were feeling that day. That acknowledgement of alternate possibilities has been really helpful. This year, despite that dreaded crow pose showing up around day 19, I kept right on going with Adriene. I simply decided that crouching with my hands on the floor is a good alternative to crow (just getting to a crouch was plenty for me). Similarly, her happy hop to the front of the mat for forward fold, and graceful moves to lunge then plank are all ungainly scrambles for me, but just fine because I’m still showing up and having fun.

Some of the adaptations are dictated by our physical abilities. I started a  dryland training program with a local swim club in January; it is an hour of HIIT led by an athletic youngster. I had never done a HIIT workout before the Christmas break, so I am learning to take advantage of every adaptation she offers in order to make it through the hour without collapsing in a puddle. Other adaptations are more mental. Due to the latest lockdowns in Ontario, I get a two hour window to ride my horse just once a week (she lives at a horse boarding facility on the edge of town).  For several weeks in a row, Fancy didn’t want to be caught, so I spent an hour or more circling the haybale trying to get close enough to put her halter on. I couldn’t ride, so I counted steps instead. It wasn’t the workout I had planned, but I was outside and moving in the fresh air.

Has COVID forced you to adapt your fitness routines too? What have you changed and how has it worked for you?

Image: Diane in a colourful face mask, with Fancy, a bay horse wearing a blue halter.

Diane Harper is an aging athlete in Ottawa, who is slowly reconciling herself to the fact that she may never be able to do all the things.

Selfie of a woman in a black mask, with an extreme close-up of a brown horse's head Better balance through horseback riding (Guest post)
fitness · Guest Post

Better balance through horseback riding (Guest post)

Sam B

by Diane Harper

Woman in a black helmet riding a dark brown horse in an arena.

I started riding as a survival mechanism when my daughter was young and I had to sit in an unheated arena watching her lessons. By January of the first year, I decided it had to be warmer on a horse, so I started taking lessons with her. It turned out to be a wonderful mother-daughter bonding time. We rode together in various classes for years. She loved (and continues to love) jumping, while I adored dressage. We made friends we still keep in touch with – former classmates, coaches, and people we met while volunteering at events. I learned to ride a variety of horses, each one of whom taught me new things. Horses, just like people, have stronger and weaker sides, are more or less flexible, and have good and bad days. I learned to be aware of how each horse was different – every single day – and how to adjust in order to get as much as possible from every ride.

As my daughter grew up, she struggled with some mental health challenges; horses provided a place where she could get exercise, fresh air, be responsible for a large non-judgemental animal who relied on her, and build confidence as she used her relatively tiny body to guide a 2,000 lb animal with its own ideas. This was a form of balance I had never previously considered. All those sappy books and movies about young girls and their horses suddenly made sense. But teenaged girls aren’t the only ones who get something from being around horses. Kids and adults with physical and mental disabilities, as well as parolees and people dealing with addictions all benefit from equine therapy.

Eventually, my daughter’s love of horses led to us acquiring Fancy. She did all the research, took me to see horses for sale throughout the Ottawa Valley and Western Quebec, and even to southern Ontario. We settled on an off-the-track thoroughbred who knew her paces, but was a bit older than we wanted, needed some TLC, and turned out to hate being indoors for more than the time it takes to groom and saddle her. She does remarkably well living outdoors year-round at a boarding farm where she has her own little her of mares, a large shelter, and people who feed her grain every day and ensure she has constant access to water and hay or pasture. It makes horse ownership manageable since we live in the city and can’t get out to ride or visit every single day.

Fancy has been healthy, but she is now almost 19 years old and has a bit of arthritis in her hind legs. I am fat and I need a much stronger core. I have had foot surgery and a broken arm, both of which kept me out of the saddle for months. Even after being cleared to ride, I had old injuries and tight muscles so I constantly struggle to find the centre of my saddle, keep my weight evenly distributed in my stirrups, and have my spine and shoulders straight but flexible. Fancy is a very honest horse; if I don’t get things right, she adjusts her body to compensate. Her head up, tiny steps, or crooked body and neck are all signs I need to correct my position. When she races or refuses to listen, I know it is time to engage my core muscles so I can use my seat more effectively to tell her what I want her to do.  When I get the adjustment right, I can see (or feel) an immediate change. She will stretch her neck down to engage her back muscles, step more freely with a bit of sway in her bum, and bend or go perfectly straight, as required. My daughter and I balance our time and Fancy’s training. She jumps and canters during her rides; I do circles, loops and other bending exercises to ensure Fancy is as flexible and balanced as possible, focusing on walk and trot. It turns out that horses also have a preference for one side. Fancy’s strongest and least flexible side is the same as my weakest side, so I really need to work my weak muscles to get her to bend.

With the arrival of COVID, lessons with my coach were cancelled, and have been put on hold again with the latest lockdown. I’m really happy that I have finally reached a level in my own fitness and understanding that I am comfortable riding Fancy on my own and know how to adjust my riding based on what she is telling me. I will never be a brilliant dressage rider, but I being confident, safe, and able to use my imagination as I pretend to be in the Grand Prix ring feels pretty good.

Back view of a woman in a brown coat leading a brown horse towards a blue barn.

Diane Harper works for the federal government in Ottawa. She loves to break the stereotype of the stodgy bureaucrat by trying new things and pushing limits as often as possible.

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Middle Age Horsing Around

Susan Tarshis9 Comments

snowbound
This picture features a white woman in a pink sweatshirt that says, A ride a day keeps the therapist away. She is holding onto the bridle of a large white horse with a pink and grey nose. is name is Snowbound. He is not the horse that she is referring to in the rest of this piece. He is a bit of a Jerk.

I ride horses once a week for the sheer pleasure of it. It is a lesson but that’s because it is the easiest way to get on a horse and I might as well learn something while I am doing it. What is odd about my lessons and my horsing as compared to most of the other people I encounter at the barn (the tween and teen crowd) is I don’t take these lessons for any purpose. I don’t show and I’m not in any hurry to do that. I am utterly not feeling competitive about this sport. I love the animal and the activity.

However, it’s still a lesson and my new-this-year coach is excellent. She occasionally switches me to a horse that is more “challenging”. In the last few months, I’ve asked her to stop doing that. There is a horse I ride who I am really in tune with. She goes well for me and I can get her to behave in ways most other riders can’t. She doesn’t jump high because of her construction. But she likes to have fun and she is game for any number of skills improving exercises in the lesson. The more interesting the lesson is, the better she goes. It’s really great.

The shift that happened for me was my acceptance that I don’t need to “progress” for progression sake. I don’t need to jump higher. I don’t need a more forward (fast) horse. I don’t even need to learn to do flying lead changes (a hop and a skip in the middle of a canter/lope) if it’s going to freak her out. We just need to have fun and stay moving.

I’m a pretty confident rider with a solid skill set at this level. I am game for occasionally schooling (teaching) a horse to pay attention to a rider and stop shenanigans so that younger riders can benefit from that. But I have no desire any more to be the rider that conquers the wild horse or risks all sorts of injury while riding an animal that is too much for me.

I’m so chill with my new-ish settled attitude and honestly, it just makes riding more fun.

Go go ahead, do the fun thing and don’t worry about improving. It’s okay!

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Guest Post: Moments of Glory (Horseback Edition)

tracywaideboer3 Comments

DSC_0233.JPG

Breaking from a trot to a gallop.

Growing up in the prairies, I rode for most of my life. I was terribly allergic to horses– (probably the dust and hay in the stables, actually.) But I was one of those girls who freaking loved horses. So, cowboy boots on and tissues up my nose to stop allergy-induced nosebleeds, I insisted on riding.

The horse’s name was Miss Terrific and she was a sweet and temperate horse, as her name would suggest. She was probably a quarter horse, which is a very common breed. But in my mind, she was an Arabian (a beautiful and mystical breed—think The Black Stallion—they carry their heads very high and have distinctively angular faces).

The Taylors were a kind and hospitable older couple who owned the property (and horses) where I rode. I had started riding with them when I was about eight or nine. My sister was a bit too young to ride (and not that interested in horses as much as she was into the sheep on the property and the three-storey tree house). So while I rode, she spent her time as Queen of the Sheep.

I was in the sandy arena with the others in the class, a mix of kids my age and adults who would bring their own horses to the lessons (which were about $10 an hour, if you can believe that!). Dan Taylor was our instructor, an older man who was pure, distilled Alberta with a bit of a drawl and a dirty white cowboy hat he always wore. His wife, Dawn, rode in the arena with us with her beautiful grey-and-white spotted horse and would demonstrate for us what we were supposed to be doing. She and her horse always seemed so impossibly in sync with one another; as if her horse could read her mind. Dawn would barely gesture and the grey-and-white would respond immediately, seamlessly.

IMG_1834 (1).JPG

At this point I probably hadn’t been riding that long. It might have even been my first or second lesson. We would start by all riding around the arena at a walking pace, building up to a trot, learning to post (which is stranding up in rhythm with the horse’s movements to avoid being bounced in the saddle), then galloping. I hadn’t galloped yet. I’m not sure if it was the speed that intimidated me or if I just couldn’t get Miss Terrific to go that fast.

A trot is a four-beat movement. You can feel all four of the horse’s feet hit the ground and if you don’t post, you’ll be bounced constantly and uncomfortably. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow… But a gallop is a three-beat movement—smooth—almost like gliding. In a gallop, the horse has at least one foot up off the ground. Just like when a person runs.

So there Miss Terrific and I were, four-beating it around the arena while others passed us, when another young rider came up alongside us.

“You’ve got to cluck to her,” he said, and clicked his tongue. (Some people give kisses—make a kissing noise to encourage the horse—or make clicking or clucking sounds, using audible cues rather than physical taps or nudges.) I could hear Dan over the speaker also encouraging Miss Terrific (come on, Miss Terrific, come on), and clicking into his microphone.

Alright, I thought. We can do this. I urged her with clucks and clicks and kisses and then suddenly—

We broke into a gallop. It felt smooth and perfect and somehow way better than the slower (and safer) trot I had been stubbornly hanging on to.

“Now you’re flying!” the other rider shouted to me as I took off past him. It was exhilarating. We had done it, Miss Terrific and I.

Over the years, I had the privilege to work with lots of different horses, both in Western and English styles. The Taylors always insisted that riding many different horses made one a better rider. And Miss Terrific was really their “beginner’s horse.” Eventually I graduated from her and learned to work with other horses; some who were feisty or faster or challenging in other ways. Some who were never property trained, some who tried to fight me, and some who just loved to eat and roll around in the mud. In later years, I learned how to barrel race and how to jump a course.

Even after nearly twenty years, I still find it the slightest bit intimidating, working with a horse. While you’re technically “in charge,” you should never forget that you’re working with a one tonne animal who could kill you if something went wrong, or at least kick you or throw you off. There’s something humbling to that.

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Sometime ago I was told that the Taylors had sold Miss Terrific to people who had more pasture for her to retire in. She was old, even when I knew her. It’s silly that I believed it. That’s got to be the one of the oldest lines in the book. I’m deeply grateful to her and I’m sure she’s peacefully grazing and galloping away in horsey heaven.

 

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