Non-riding Lessons

I grew up Catholic, so I get it when shame and guilt are used as instructive tools. Time-honored, and all that, but not necessarily effective. What worked for the Inquisition can work here!!! Ummm...maybe not so much.

My instructor was younger than I. That was understandable, I figured. Maybe this horse thing is a younger person's game. But surely there must be doddering oldsters who do this, too. Even doddering oldsters who want to start this late in life, like I did.

Her methods, I surmised, were a product of how she'd been taught. That's often what happens when we pass on what we know. We either teach the way we were taught, or we go in the other direction. We teach the opposite of how we are taught. I put together a scenario in my head that went something like this: Okay...she had a tough dad who taught her to ride when she was barely able to walk. Learn it this way, or dire consequences will result! You must do it the way I am telling you or I shall forever disown you as my child! I believe she chose this method to pass on. Or she came up with it on her own.

These were the thoughts that went through my head on my way home from lessons. Gee, I thought, this was the fulfillment of a life-long dream. I was in it for the fun, of course. But -- I certainly had a respect for the horses, for safety, for doing things the proper way. I wanted to not just learn how to ride. I wanted to become a horsewoman, too. But this wasn't fun.

I'm not dumb. I know it takes years. I know that starting late like I did meant I could never be the rider, or the horsewoman, that I'd be if I'd been born to it, like she obviously was. It was not second nature to me. I hoped I'd be a natural, whatever that meant to me at the time, but it turned out it was just going to take time, and practice, and hours and hours of work.

I did not want this to be like golf. Golf was something I also took up fairly late in life, learned to enjoy, never practiced and never got as much pleasure from, if I had learned the game better. If I were better. If I worked at it.

Quickly, I was passed off to assistants, likeable young women who also had ridden from birth and probably never had a lesson. They had just done it. Well-intentioned and fun, but not teachers. Already, after only a few weeks, I was frustrated.

For one thing, having a lesson once a week is not enough. To do this thing properly, one needs to practice in between. One needs to spend time and more time on a horse. And then some more time. Just sitting on a horse becomes an instruction. Besides, it feels great, just sitting. Way better than that old wooden sawhorse I sat on in my garage when I was little.

Now, to be fair, I learned things. Besides some of the rudiments of riding, I learned the beginnings of how much I had to learn. I also learned that words count.

What I mean by that is if a highly skilled, talented teacher cannot find the words to communicate the idea to the student...well, nothing ain't communicated! Words have weight, and emotion, and power.

Pick the right words and a picture is drawn. Aha! It all becomes clear. You may not be able to do the thing, but you get it. Pick the wrong ones and confusion reigns, or, even worse, the student is lost. You are demeaned, your confidence decreases and the fun goes away.

I loved the horses. I loved the barn experience. I knew I was pursuing a lifelong dream and I had to continue. Those lessons were just not being communicated to me in a way that optimized my learning experience, shall we say. Those methods might work for some; they didn't for me.

So! What to do next? I had been accepted at a horse massage school in Colorado.

Time to get another view of the horse. I was off to Colorado.