Training for Tests

by Francesca Prescott

I did it again. I signed up for a show. It’s a month away, but I’m already stressing out over how things will go.

Despite having ridden for most of my life, I have very little experience with competition. To give you an idea, I’ve probably taken part in less than twenty competitions in my five decades on the planet. I’ve always had conflicting emotions about competing. I want to, but at the same time I know I’m happier in the arena at home, working towards four perfect strides, concentrating on refining my feel for certain movements, trying to get my body to find the keys to asking for, say, a good turn on the haunches. I want to be the queen of turns on the haunches! And of half pass! The queen of everything, really!  I love the finicky stuff. I love doing things over and over again, taking my time to get things just right, feeling my way. I could take lessons every day, all day long. I find training fascinating.

The problem is, you can’t take your time and do things over and over again when you’re riding a test. You can’t say, “hang on a second judges, I know I can do a better turn on the haunches than that, because I didn’t use enough outside leg to push the quarters around nor did I hold the outside shoulder enough, and I could have used a more inside leg for impulsion and bend, and besides, Qrac was being a piggy and going lalalalalala just then, so can we do it over? And over? And over?”

I’m not used to riding with competitions in mind, so neither me nor my horse are used to riding one figure after another.  Qrac may be rising nine, but he was an extremely green seven-year-old when I bought him, he’s not test savvy, and being of an anxious nature, tends to become fractious when asked to halt at X, go straight down the centre line, turn left at C, then extend down the diagonal, etc etc. And that’s before we add the judges and the flowers and the other horses and the noise. It’s all too quick, all too too what-what-what-comes-next??? Before we’ve gone past A he’s no longer focused on me and is all in a flap, doing a horrendous, Thelwell-inspired pony-trot.

It’s strange, but when I think about it, character-wise, Qrac is very similar to me. He’s super-sensitive, mostly calm, yet ridiculously quickly upset. Like me, he’s a big worrier. He does, however, tend to have a shorter fuse than me and can sometimes be rather rude when asked to venture out of his comfort zone. But with a little gentle persuasion he can eventually be swayed into trying, and once he’s figured out that YES HE CAN, he’s all proud of himself and game to do it again. Ok, sometimes he forgets that he could do something the day before and needs a little reminder. And sometimes I get frustrated, wondering what the heck is wrong with me that I take lessons, and more lessons, and more lessons (up to three a week), and work ever so hard, and lots of people drool over how gorgeous he is and how amazing he looks, yet, almost two years down the line, we’re incapable of doing a basic test smoothly! And then I think back to how Qrac was in the beginning and I tell myself we’re not doing so badly. I think about my horse a lot.  

So anyway, Qrac and I are signed up for a show the last weekend in March. Call me pessimistic, but I have very low expectations. The venue is indoors and spooky, the arena is small, and I know my horse is going to look at everything, that he’ll be tense and explosive. But my goal is to do more shows this season, because Qrac needs to go out and see things, he needs to get used to the show ring, and maybe over time we’ll both get used to riding tests, not to mention riding tests in unfamiliar places. Who knows, at some point, maybe we’ll even start really enjoying competing. Maybe, eventually, someday, we’ll place! Maybe we’ll “win the cup” (as my riding girlfriends and I say jokingly). Wow, wouldn’t that be something!

What are your experiences of training inexperienced horses towards competition? If you ride dressage, how did you approach working on a test? And whatever your discipline, how do you deal with a nervous, spooky horse on your first few outings?

LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY

Driving back from the stables earlier today, I suddenly found myself overcome by an intense feeling of joy. I got a warm and wooshy sensation in my solar plexus, my eyes welled up, and for about ten kilometres or so I just couldn’t stop smiling. As an old friend used to say, I felt “lucky-lucky-lucky”, blessed on so many levels. Wow, I thought, I have a wonderful family, live in a lovely house with a big flower-filled garden in a beautiful part of the world, and every morning I get up and organise my day around riding my beautiful horse. What more could I want?

The feeling was so overwhelming that I’ve been feeling utterly blissed out ever since, despite having done laundry, cleaned the house, been grocery shopping, and taken my car to the garage to have my winter tires replaced by my summer tires. Even now, hours later, I’m still diamond-eyed and sparkly inside.

It’s not that I’m usually pottering around, mullen-mouthed and all woe-is-me, because woe-certainly isn’t me. Nor do I waft through life with a beatific smile plastered across my face, blowing kisses. Normally, I’m just, well, normal happy. You know, coasting along contentedly. The thing is, if I bobbed about keeping count of my blessings twenty-four-seven I don’t think I’d ever have the right to complain about anything, but, from what I’ve observed, normal people don’t operate like that, and those who do (or pretend to) tend to be annoying, don’t you think? Besides, there’d be drawbacks to living in a perpetual state of intense joy, such as streaky mascara, and a tendency to yawn a lot (maybe I’m weird, but when my solar plexus throbs it triggers my yawning mechanism). 

What brought on this abnormally joyous woosh? Frankly, I’m not sure, but it’s probably linked to spending time with Qrac, my Lusitano. Just thinking about him makes me happy. Oddly, today’s lesson with my trainer, Marie-Valentine, didn’t go wow-ishly well. Nor did it go badly. It was kind of standard, really. Qrac and I are improving steadily, it was a good, positive lesson, but there was no major breakthrough that might have triggered my sudden bliss: our trot-to-canter transitions still tend to be a little croupe-high, or croupe-out, or wiggle-wiggle-go-against-the- leg-to-escape-and-just-trot-faster. When I ask for canter, I’m still never a hundred percent certain I’m going to get canter, although Qrac’s positive responses to my canter requests are definitely increasing. The greatest improvement in the last few months is in the right lead canter: Qrac used to hate the right lead canter and would switch leads at the slightest excuse. This hardly ever happens any more, and there are days when I feel we’re both more comfortable on the right lead canter than on the left.  We can extend and come back into a collected canter without losing our balance, and we can super-collect the canter and sustain it for far longer than we could a month ago. Qrac’s muscles are building up week by week; I recently had to have his eight-month-old custom-made saddle refitted to suit his badass bulges.

Maybe what got my gooey going today was the fact that we worked on a dressage program for the first time. I’ve mentioned umpteen times on this blog that I’ve never been particularly fond of competing, that my nerves tend to get the better of me, that I spend the entire pre-show night tossing and turning in a state of hyperventilative-sweatiness. So show-shy am I that I tend to need the bathroom just browsing the Internet for listings of potential dressage events that Qrac and I could attend. But lately, the topsy-turvy feeling I get in my stomach while browsing dressage competitions is beginning to feel a little more like excitement than just dreaded Draino-gut. And although I know we’re nowhere near ready to dazzle the judges with perfect circles (we’re brilliant at random sized egg shapes!), laser letter precision or flashy elevation, all of a sudden I just want to get out there and see what happens when I put Qrac in the show ring. So yesterday afternoon I printed out one of the lower level dressage programs and, this morning, handed it to Marie-Valentine.

After warming up and working on the usual basics, we did the program. I hadn’t had the chance to learn it by heart, so Marie-Valentine read it out loud, and Qrac and I did our best to follow her instructions. And you know what? It wasn’t too bad. Sure, we’re going to have to work on shooting straight down the centreline instead of wiggling a little bit to the left and a little bit to the right, and we’re going to have to improve our trot extensions (Qrac doesn’t have a natural extension in trot, so those diagonals are particularly challenging), and strive to ride ten metre circles and not giant eggs, and try to strike off our canter precisely at A and at C. And so on and so on and so on. I imagine it takes a fellow-dressage rider to fully understand how difficult training these simple things can be. I’m guessing that only a dressage rider can grasp the satisfaction of riding your first perfectly round eight-metre circle (I rode one about two weeks ago and was so delighted that once it was done I dropped the reins and pumped the air like I’d won the World Championships! Pff!)

When will be going to our first show (uh-oh, did I just feel a quiver of Draino-gut?!)? I’m aiming for early July, as there’s a nice one not too far from where Qrac lives, and I’ve been there before with my now retired schoolmaster, Kwintus, so I know my way around. After that I’ve jotted down a couple of potential follow up shows that will take us comfortably (?!) into the autumn, and hopefully get us used to going out and competing. Maybe competition nerves are a state of mind; if I decide competing is no big deal, maybe it could become my reality. Maybe competing could become fun…

  

Anyway, today, in the cosy afterglow of my blissful euphoria, nothing seems like a big deal, anything seems possible. All is right in my little corner of the world. I’m lucky-lucky-lucky.

How about you? What triggers your bliss? Have you felt lucky-lucky-lucky lately?

(photos by Olivia Bossert www.oliviabossert.com)