I’ve just spent two days riding in a clinic with Christine Traurig. She was on the U.S. Olympic team, and won a bronze metal, which was the best any American rider had ever done up to that time. Dressage at the World Cup and Olympic level is dominated by Germany and Holland. Our Olympic team has also been dominated by German riders — Christine, Gunter Sidel — and now we’re starting to win. Great cars (both my cars are German cars), great horses, great riders and great composers. But I digress.
My coach rode Vento on the first day because she wanted some help with his flying changes. He has a single change, but some days they get muddled as if he can’t figure out what to do with his legs. Christine watched the ride and her conclusion was that he’s just a baby (he just turned six on March 11th), and he doesn’t have the strength yet to hold the canter in a balanced way so he can effect the change. We just need to do more strength training. At one point she had Lauren slow the trot and he started to do a baby passage without any training. Christine says the Spanish horses just take naturally to the piaff and the passage.
But before Lauren rode into the ring we had a little psychodrama. Vento had had a belly ache on Friday so we stopped working him after fifteen minutes, and had the vet out to give him some pain killer. After he got to feeling better I gave him a bath, and walked him dry, then put him in his blanket. Well, Saturday morning the workers at the barn took off his blanket. I checked him and he was still nice and clean. Then I got fascinated watching several of the rides, and when I went to get Vento he had turned himself into a chestnut. The dirt out in El Dorado is very red, and Vento had found a real dust place and just wallowed.
I vacuumed him, I brushed and brushed, I tried spot remover and all that did was turn him into a red muddy horse. There was no time to bath him or even hose him off again. Lauren was furious. Fortunately it’s dark in the indoor arena so he didn’t look too awful unless you got up close to him. Then he was just gross. I was about to run into town to buy him a stall sheet when my friend mentioned she had a sheet that wouldn’t fit her horse anymore. She gave it to me which was very generous, and Vento and I went back into the wash rack for another session of bathe the horse. He pouted — a lot.
Once again I walked him dry then put him in his blanket. Sunday morning I raced to the barn at 7:30 so I could be the one to take off his blanket and put him in the sheet. Again I got the horse giving me the elongated upper lip, because rolling in a sheet just isn’t as much fun. It doesn’t lead to me bouncing up and down and making squeaking noises.
Sunday was my ride. I was nervous because Christine never yells, but she is very, very blunt and she never pulls her punches. We really worked on the canter/walk transitions which teaches a horse to balance on their hind leg and not just fall onto their front end. We also took the outside leg out of the equation as a cue for the canter, and just used the inside leg and seat(hip) to lift him into the canter. By the end of the fifty minutes we were really doing well. I also learned something about the half-pass which is that you send your weight straight down the inside leg into the stirrup. I was trying to push my inside seat bone forward and it was interfering with his movement.
There were a number of people observing my ride. (All women, of course. A straight man in this community would make out like a bandit). They all wanted to see the amateur rider on the six year old stallion. At the end of my ride they all applauded, and one woman told me she wanted my horse. Everybody wanted my horse. They can’t have him. 
I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’m a really good rider. There was a young woman riding in the clinic who has set up as a trainer and instructor. She’s a fearless rider, and will hop on any young horse, but she really doesn’t know very much. Yes, you can get a horse to accept a rider, but if you don’t understand the outside rein, throughness, elasticity, acceptance of the leg, moving from the seat, etc. etc. you’re not really training the horse. Unfortunately this young woman had a bad weekend. I talked with her some, and offered sympathy and recommended that she ride with my coach. I totally understood how she felt. I’ve had some bad weekends too in clinics.
I probably have said this before, but dressage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I’ve sung opera, and danced point in ballet, studied piano, and got through law school. This is the most intense combination of physical strength and coordination and mental agility. I love it, but I swear it’s a sport for people with OCD.
But my boy was a star and I learned a lot. I also learned he trailers like a dream, and that’s a big relief. Fighting to get a horse in a trailer is the worst thing in the world.
So tomorrow I’ve got to take part in a meeting to decide what to do with one of the gas wells, and get to work on my story for the Rio Hondo writers workshop, and of course, keep riding.
