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Pondering about riding
So, as most of you know, I spent my early years horse-crazy, culminating in my parents finally getting a horse for me when I was almost 11 (after 7 years of "Can I have a pony, please?" I am nothing if not persistent.)
That horse - well, technically pony, and dear Gods, but she thought like one - was my beloved Dorothy. I'm not sure I could talk about her any better than I did in 2003 (around the 5th anniversary of her being put down.) So go read that here if you want to know why she's such a hard act for any horse to follow.
Dot is how I learned to meditate. How I learned to let my brain go, and just be, and experience. How I learned to breathe deeply when I was doing something else. How to get my brain out of the way of my body, and how to adapt and accomodate another being.
People keep asking me about why I haven't gone back to riding. And my answer, in brief, has been "It's complicated." It's partly about time - the occasional trail ride or even a once a week lesson won't satisfy the parts I want back, for one thing. And it's been partly about money. And it's partly about trying to fit it in with the rest of my life. But there's all sorts of other bits.
And I think.. I'm finally almost in a place where I can do something about that. Or, at the least, where I can have a 2-3 year plan for doing something about it, that might actually work. (And hey, now that I've finished grad school, and gotten a nice stable job, and am within sight of paying off debt, I need a new long-term plan, right?)
So, what do I need for it to be satisfying?
1) An ongoing relationship with the same horse.
It's the ongoing relationship that delights me. It was building what I had with Dot over years, and learning to work together seamlessly.
Now, your average horse geek falls in love with Thoroughbreds, rangier Quarter Horses, the new-fashioned Morgans, Arabs. Tall, stately, elegant. (Well, except the Arabs, who tend to be shorter.)
Me, I imprinted hard on Dot, who was built like me. Short. Stocky. Built like a tank and unlikely to give way if you pushed her. (She looked, in fact, like a medieval war horse scaled down to just around the pony-horse liminal space of 14.2 hands, or 5 feet at the withers.) Feet like platters. (I really do have to scan some photos.)
We think she must have had some Haflinger in her, due to her coloring, and her personality suggests it: I'd adore one from everything I've ever read about them. Also Friesians, some of the Welsh cobs. But really, I want sturdiness, and personality. Brains are non-negotiable. (I've ridden stupid horses. Boring!)
Fortunately, for both my size and weight, this tends to be a good combo for me. My legs go somewhere on the horse, and the draft/working horse crosses tend to be very sturdy and better weight carriers.
But this means that most of the common leasing options (who are mostly riding school horses, of more common breeds) are not as good a fit for me, and likely to be unsatisfying in ways I can't unimprint on anymore. (My thoughts on your average horse: "You have this head. It's way out in the next continent over. What am I supposed to do with that? And how are you not tangling those legs?") This is distracting, to say the least.
2) Thus, I need to build a life where I'd have time to ride at least 3-4 days a week (including weekends), because any less is unfair to the eventual horse.
This in turn means living near enough a suitable barn that I'm not spending hours on the road. (While I'm working and running a coven, mind you.) I don't think this is impossible, but it definitely takes some careful planning.
(Note that job stuff might work in my favor here: I can't do it yet, because I'm still throwing a lot of time into getting things running. But I anticipate in a couple of years I'd be able to reliably leave around 3:15 at least twice a week without too much pain, maybe three times, which would mean I could be a reasonable distance away to ride by 4 or 4:30, and be home by 7 or 7:30. Doesn't leave a lot of time for other stuff, but I'd be a happy human.)
3) This brings us to money: horses are not the cheapest pet on the planet, for obvious reasons.
I don't think it's out of my potential budget (at least not in a couple of years, and for various other reasons below, I think it's got to be a 3-5 year plan.) But it's not just a 'pick up and make it happen' thing either.
4) Some kind of ongoing goal.
I do well with sometime to compete against (even if that's me, myself, and I). Dot hated dressage (at least, the part about repeating the same test all the time. She'd memorise the thing and anticipate it.) I find it intellectually fascinating, but I'm also interested in the idea of endurance riding (because, hi, Minnesota, and would that not make for gorgeous rides?) but also because endurance riding is one of the most larger-size friendly disciplines.
I did combined training (which combines dressage, cross-country jumping, and stadium jumping) through Pony Club, and liked it - and I love the cross-country part. But realistically, I don't think I ever want to get beyond novice, because I'm just not up for that set of potential risks anymore.
Any kind of meaningful competition would involve a truck and trailer and other things that sort of blow my mind to think about, so we'll just move on from there for now, and leave that as a 'while we're contemplating future goals' thing.
The practical issues or "Why is this a 3-5 year plan?"
1) Allergies
If I'm going to do this, I really ought to seriously consider (and then start!) allergy shots, since most barns will hit many of my major ones (grasses, pollens, dander, and some molds.) Starting in the next 6 months would give them time to kick in by the time I got serious about the actually finding a barn part. (And it'd take a year or two to be seeing enough benefits, at bare minimum.)
But that means changing primary care doctors (to someone closer to me), and going through allergy testing again, and committing the time for allergy shots for a couple of years.
2) Finding a barn that meets my safety criteria.
This is no small thing, because I was trained in a barn that was incredibly rigorous about it, and because I saw all the ways things can go wrong when you mess up on it. (Ok. I don't know anyone who was killed or paralyzed. But pretty much everything else.) I take my barn safety as seriously as I take my ritual safety, and for pretty much all the same reasons.
Browsing training barn sites, for example, the number of people I see *in their web sites* riding without a helmet makes me wince. (You would too, if you'd seen someone fall, land smack on their head, bounce a foot in the air, and walk away from it, because they were wearing the most protective helmet out there.) I've gotten dragged and seen people dragged from the wrong boots (before I knew better.) So, yeah. Safety.
3) Weight issues
A lot of barns have an upper weight limit for lessons/leasing rides - it's usually around 220 or 225, and as of my last physical, I'm at something like 245 or 250.
Now, the reality is that a lot of that is that a beginner rider jouncing around on a horse's back is really hard on the horse (especially lesson horses, who have to deal with a lot of it.) The weight itself is less of an issue. But it does mean that I've got some careful negotiation to do on the 'riding for a bit before contemplating horse shopping'.
My reality is that while a lot of my reflexes are still there, the muscles aren't, and it'd take me at least 6 months of regular riding to get some of it back (i.e. at least once or twice a week. And oh, boy, am I not looking forward to the pain from that, because I know damn well what it feels like to use those muscles after not using them for a while.)
Losing weight is - as I've discussed before, ad infinitum - a complex issue for me. Getting in better shape would definitely not hurt the riding part, and having the goal of wanting to be in the best shape possible before I started looking to ride regularly would be good incentive. But again, not an instant process. (and being able to go to a barn saying "Here's what I've been doing" would help with the 'take me seriously as someone coming back to this' process in the right place.)
4) Finding a trainer that meets my standards and fits my end goals (i.e. being a better rider, but not being fixated on competition per se.)
What I want is not a common combo. I want somewhere with the rigorous standards of a (well-run and safe) competition barn, but without being solely competition focused. There's a lot of competition barns out there, and there are a lot of 'come board your horse and have a good time' barns, and not a lot in the middle ground.
In Massachusetts, I'd know exactly where to start. (Heck, two of the people I used to ride with are professional trainers in the right disciplines these days.) Out here, I'd start by talking to the local Pony Clubs, but that's something that takes some time and planning too.
5) Acquiring the appropriate equipment (helmet, boots, breeches, appropriate riding shirts.)
This is the easy part. It's also the part there's no point in doing yet, so it can wait.
6) The issue of laundry.
Right now, I do my laundry at the laundromat (because the little tiny house is tiny.)
I am looking at the idea of moving again in 2-3 years (ideally to something I own, but at least to something bigger, and with its own laundry), as I've already discussed with my excellent landlady. *grin*. But if I start riding again before that, I need to figure out something to do re: laundry. (I love the smell of horse. I'm not sure I want my house to smell like it, all the same, which it would in the current studio-style set-up.)
7) The issue of time.
Discussed above, but it means looking at some adjustments to how I spend time, and where, and whne, that will take some time to filter through. If I'm going to do coven stuff *plus* ride *plus* work *plus* some writing (and see my friends sometimes...) then I need to be uber-efficient at all the other stuff. (Housekeeping, cooking ahead, food shopping, other activities, etc.)
Fortunately, since I learned my time management skills in the "The better I am at these, the more time I can spend at the barn" school of time management, I am not inexperienced with most of these basic issues. I just need to get the habits in place that make them easier.
8) A need for some body modality work
The last one - and the other reason (besides finances and time and allergy shots, and such) is that I'm seeing ongoing issues from riding-related imbalances.
Both of my worst falls were on my left side, and it's become increasingly apparent that I'm continuing to deal with residual protectiveness on that side (even though neither fall did lasting physical damage that shows up in any other way). When I'm tired or stressed, I collapse my ribcage on the left (which is a classic protective move), and my hips and lower back have been pretty constantly gripey for a while. (My chiropractor notes that I've only got about a 15-20 degree range of motion in the bottom of my spine.)
Fixing both of those *before* going back to riding would be a good move. I suspect it may end up being both chiropractic work and something that works with the deep muscle fascia, because I think a bunch of the compression issues are actually muscle driven.
So, what's the plan
- Spend the next year or two getting my life together.
- Do the chiropractic work and see about allergy shots, because both of those are worthwhile no matter what else happens.
- Get a Y membership and start swimming regularly: the discipline will be good for me, and it's a good overall stamina and balanced body exercise mode anyway.
It would not hurt to start going to things like the spring Equine Expo at the State Fairgrounds, or to keep an eye out for Pony Club or other relevant competitions and see if I can volunteer and help out.
And then in about 2 years (once the other stuff is in better shape), do serious hunting for a barn to do regular lessons at, and that would be a good fit for eventual boarding. (And that part's going to take a bunch of time and energy to sort through, because .. erm. Ok, there's a lot of comparisons between ritual group work and barns here, but I'm about as picky about both of them. It'll probably be my summer project, whatever year I do it, as I'll have more time.)
A year ago, I wasn't sure I'd have the stamina for this. This fall, though, I'm doing enough better (even in my usual roughest season) that I think I can make it work, without falling over in the middle. (And riding is very much a recharging thing for me, even though it's a lot of physical activity. Did you know that riding dressage, or the related training burns about as many calories as the same amount of time in an aerobics class? And that's not counting the grooming and cool down and all of that around the edges.)
That horse - well, technically pony, and dear Gods, but she thought like one - was my beloved Dorothy. I'm not sure I could talk about her any better than I did in 2003 (around the 5th anniversary of her being put down.) So go read that here if you want to know why she's such a hard act for any horse to follow.
Dot is how I learned to meditate. How I learned to let my brain go, and just be, and experience. How I learned to breathe deeply when I was doing something else. How to get my brain out of the way of my body, and how to adapt and accomodate another being.
People keep asking me about why I haven't gone back to riding. And my answer, in brief, has been "It's complicated." It's partly about time - the occasional trail ride or even a once a week lesson won't satisfy the parts I want back, for one thing. And it's been partly about money. And it's partly about trying to fit it in with the rest of my life. But there's all sorts of other bits.
And I think.. I'm finally almost in a place where I can do something about that. Or, at the least, where I can have a 2-3 year plan for doing something about it, that might actually work. (And hey, now that I've finished grad school, and gotten a nice stable job, and am within sight of paying off debt, I need a new long-term plan, right?)
So, what do I need for it to be satisfying?
1) An ongoing relationship with the same horse.
It's the ongoing relationship that delights me. It was building what I had with Dot over years, and learning to work together seamlessly.
Now, your average horse geek falls in love with Thoroughbreds, rangier Quarter Horses, the new-fashioned Morgans, Arabs. Tall, stately, elegant. (Well, except the Arabs, who tend to be shorter.)
Me, I imprinted hard on Dot, who was built like me. Short. Stocky. Built like a tank and unlikely to give way if you pushed her. (She looked, in fact, like a medieval war horse scaled down to just around the pony-horse liminal space of 14.2 hands, or 5 feet at the withers.) Feet like platters. (I really do have to scan some photos.)
We think she must have had some Haflinger in her, due to her coloring, and her personality suggests it: I'd adore one from everything I've ever read about them. Also Friesians, some of the Welsh cobs. But really, I want sturdiness, and personality. Brains are non-negotiable. (I've ridden stupid horses. Boring!)
Fortunately, for both my size and weight, this tends to be a good combo for me. My legs go somewhere on the horse, and the draft/working horse crosses tend to be very sturdy and better weight carriers.
But this means that most of the common leasing options (who are mostly riding school horses, of more common breeds) are not as good a fit for me, and likely to be unsatisfying in ways I can't unimprint on anymore. (My thoughts on your average horse: "You have this head. It's way out in the next continent over. What am I supposed to do with that? And how are you not tangling those legs?") This is distracting, to say the least.
2) Thus, I need to build a life where I'd have time to ride at least 3-4 days a week (including weekends), because any less is unfair to the eventual horse.
This in turn means living near enough a suitable barn that I'm not spending hours on the road. (While I'm working and running a coven, mind you.) I don't think this is impossible, but it definitely takes some careful planning.
(Note that job stuff might work in my favor here: I can't do it yet, because I'm still throwing a lot of time into getting things running. But I anticipate in a couple of years I'd be able to reliably leave around 3:15 at least twice a week without too much pain, maybe three times, which would mean I could be a reasonable distance away to ride by 4 or 4:30, and be home by 7 or 7:30. Doesn't leave a lot of time for other stuff, but I'd be a happy human.)
3) This brings us to money: horses are not the cheapest pet on the planet, for obvious reasons.
I don't think it's out of my potential budget (at least not in a couple of years, and for various other reasons below, I think it's got to be a 3-5 year plan.) But it's not just a 'pick up and make it happen' thing either.
4) Some kind of ongoing goal.
I do well with sometime to compete against (even if that's me, myself, and I). Dot hated dressage (at least, the part about repeating the same test all the time. She'd memorise the thing and anticipate it.) I find it intellectually fascinating, but I'm also interested in the idea of endurance riding (because, hi, Minnesota, and would that not make for gorgeous rides?) but also because endurance riding is one of the most larger-size friendly disciplines.
I did combined training (which combines dressage, cross-country jumping, and stadium jumping) through Pony Club, and liked it - and I love the cross-country part. But realistically, I don't think I ever want to get beyond novice, because I'm just not up for that set of potential risks anymore.
Any kind of meaningful competition would involve a truck and trailer and other things that sort of blow my mind to think about, so we'll just move on from there for now, and leave that as a 'while we're contemplating future goals' thing.
The practical issues or "Why is this a 3-5 year plan?"
1) Allergies
If I'm going to do this, I really ought to seriously consider (and then start!) allergy shots, since most barns will hit many of my major ones (grasses, pollens, dander, and some molds.) Starting in the next 6 months would give them time to kick in by the time I got serious about the actually finding a barn part. (And it'd take a year or two to be seeing enough benefits, at bare minimum.)
But that means changing primary care doctors (to someone closer to me), and going through allergy testing again, and committing the time for allergy shots for a couple of years.
2) Finding a barn that meets my safety criteria.
This is no small thing, because I was trained in a barn that was incredibly rigorous about it, and because I saw all the ways things can go wrong when you mess up on it. (Ok. I don't know anyone who was killed or paralyzed. But pretty much everything else.) I take my barn safety as seriously as I take my ritual safety, and for pretty much all the same reasons.
Browsing training barn sites, for example, the number of people I see *in their web sites* riding without a helmet makes me wince. (You would too, if you'd seen someone fall, land smack on their head, bounce a foot in the air, and walk away from it, because they were wearing the most protective helmet out there.) I've gotten dragged and seen people dragged from the wrong boots (before I knew better.) So, yeah. Safety.
3) Weight issues
A lot of barns have an upper weight limit for lessons/leasing rides - it's usually around 220 or 225, and as of my last physical, I'm at something like 245 or 250.
Now, the reality is that a lot of that is that a beginner rider jouncing around on a horse's back is really hard on the horse (especially lesson horses, who have to deal with a lot of it.) The weight itself is less of an issue. But it does mean that I've got some careful negotiation to do on the 'riding for a bit before contemplating horse shopping'.
My reality is that while a lot of my reflexes are still there, the muscles aren't, and it'd take me at least 6 months of regular riding to get some of it back (i.e. at least once or twice a week. And oh, boy, am I not looking forward to the pain from that, because I know damn well what it feels like to use those muscles after not using them for a while.)
Losing weight is - as I've discussed before, ad infinitum - a complex issue for me. Getting in better shape would definitely not hurt the riding part, and having the goal of wanting to be in the best shape possible before I started looking to ride regularly would be good incentive. But again, not an instant process. (and being able to go to a barn saying "Here's what I've been doing" would help with the 'take me seriously as someone coming back to this' process in the right place.)
4) Finding a trainer that meets my standards and fits my end goals (i.e. being a better rider, but not being fixated on competition per se.)
What I want is not a common combo. I want somewhere with the rigorous standards of a (well-run and safe) competition barn, but without being solely competition focused. There's a lot of competition barns out there, and there are a lot of 'come board your horse and have a good time' barns, and not a lot in the middle ground.
In Massachusetts, I'd know exactly where to start. (Heck, two of the people I used to ride with are professional trainers in the right disciplines these days.) Out here, I'd start by talking to the local Pony Clubs, but that's something that takes some time and planning too.
5) Acquiring the appropriate equipment (helmet, boots, breeches, appropriate riding shirts.)
This is the easy part. It's also the part there's no point in doing yet, so it can wait.
6) The issue of laundry.
Right now, I do my laundry at the laundromat (because the little tiny house is tiny.)
I am looking at the idea of moving again in 2-3 years (ideally to something I own, but at least to something bigger, and with its own laundry), as I've already discussed with my excellent landlady. *grin*. But if I start riding again before that, I need to figure out something to do re: laundry. (I love the smell of horse. I'm not sure I want my house to smell like it, all the same, which it would in the current studio-style set-up.)
7) The issue of time.
Discussed above, but it means looking at some adjustments to how I spend time, and where, and whne, that will take some time to filter through. If I'm going to do coven stuff *plus* ride *plus* work *plus* some writing (and see my friends sometimes...) then I need to be uber-efficient at all the other stuff. (Housekeeping, cooking ahead, food shopping, other activities, etc.)
Fortunately, since I learned my time management skills in the "The better I am at these, the more time I can spend at the barn" school of time management, I am not inexperienced with most of these basic issues. I just need to get the habits in place that make them easier.
8) A need for some body modality work
The last one - and the other reason (besides finances and time and allergy shots, and such) is that I'm seeing ongoing issues from riding-related imbalances.
Both of my worst falls were on my left side, and it's become increasingly apparent that I'm continuing to deal with residual protectiveness on that side (even though neither fall did lasting physical damage that shows up in any other way). When I'm tired or stressed, I collapse my ribcage on the left (which is a classic protective move), and my hips and lower back have been pretty constantly gripey for a while. (My chiropractor notes that I've only got about a 15-20 degree range of motion in the bottom of my spine.)
Fixing both of those *before* going back to riding would be a good move. I suspect it may end up being both chiropractic work and something that works with the deep muscle fascia, because I think a bunch of the compression issues are actually muscle driven.
So, what's the plan
- Spend the next year or two getting my life together.
- Do the chiropractic work and see about allergy shots, because both of those are worthwhile no matter what else happens.
- Get a Y membership and start swimming regularly: the discipline will be good for me, and it's a good overall stamina and balanced body exercise mode anyway.
It would not hurt to start going to things like the spring Equine Expo at the State Fairgrounds, or to keep an eye out for Pony Club or other relevant competitions and see if I can volunteer and help out.
And then in about 2 years (once the other stuff is in better shape), do serious hunting for a barn to do regular lessons at, and that would be a good fit for eventual boarding. (And that part's going to take a bunch of time and energy to sort through, because .. erm. Ok, there's a lot of comparisons between ritual group work and barns here, but I'm about as picky about both of them. It'll probably be my summer project, whatever year I do it, as I'll have more time.)
A year ago, I wasn't sure I'd have the stamina for this. This fall, though, I'm doing enough better (even in my usual roughest season) that I think I can make it work, without falling over in the middle. (And riding is very much a recharging thing for me, even though it's a lot of physical activity. Did you know that riding dressage, or the related training burns about as many calories as the same amount of time in an aerobics class? And that's not counting the grooming and cool down and all of that around the edges.)
no subject
Also, your planning-ahead detail is, as expected, quite thorough and eminently reasonable.
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Pwnies are the best.
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And yeah. They are.
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*nod* Especially since that brings all those aforementioned allergens into the place. Allergy shots being incremental, you'll hit "OK with exposure at the barn" rather before you'll hit "OK with exposure at the barn and at home".
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P.
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In my case Scoop was a thorobred. He was my dressage teacher and my friend for 20 years. When we had to put him down in 1996 it broke my heart and I haven't had room in me for another horse since then. I still hate to even go in the barn and see his stall. And I have avoided riding or thoughts of getting another horse now for 12 years.
And now of course we're looking at the strong possibility of moving somewhere in the next couple of years, so that makes trying to buy a horse now and then move them a complication I'm not ready to take on.
That being said, I am beginning to feel the need for a horse again. Now that I'm retired I have the time to ride. I'm working hard on losing weight and getting physically fit. So maybe when we get moved it will be time to find the right barn to board in and the right horse to fill that empty spot in my heart.
So I'm right there with you.
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Very cool. As always, much cheering and encouragement from here.
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