This blog's name used to be "Wait For The Jump", despite being a more dressagey oriented blog. I switched it to Freestyle because I wasn't able to make up my mind about what discipline I wanted us to participate it, and I figured a jump reference title would confuse potential readers: it would never attract dressage readers, and it would turn off h/j readers when they realized there is really no jumping going on here whatsoever.
I changed my mind; I'm switching it back. "Freestyle" is just a plain old boring title and I'm tired of going "Meh" when I see it. The "Wait For the Jump" title has a story, and I'm going to tell you about it.
When I first started officially jumping, I took lessons with this trainer in the Guaynabo area in Puerto Rico who was famous for teaching kids to stay on anything. Anything. Most of her horses were bonafide bonkers by school horse standards, but they would have been stellar in the US Grand Prix jumper circuit. This woman picked horses that jumped. They would jump ANYTHING you put in front of them, whether you wanted them to or not. I didn't deal with refusals and stops until years later down the line, because this woman had a barnful of horses that were chosen strictly for their ability to lock and go.
Can you say long spot? This was Sunlight, a big chestnut OTTB. I LOVED him; he was one of my faves to jump. Check out his expression: like I said, lock and go! And mouth wide open because his only gear while jumping was Full Throttle. I still had long hair, and was wearing full chaps. I was 14. That's the trainer in the background, setting up jumps.
I rode with her for about 2 years, where I went from cross rails to a little over 3'. By the end of that time, I had the most solid seat I've ever had, could ride anything without stirrups for hours if you asked me to (which also trained me to pinch with my knees when riding...it took a long time to undo that), and could control a horse flying through a course at top speed just enough to be able to tell it when to turn. All that stuff about collection, engagement, balance, flexion, lateral work...all the fine tuning I'm obsessed with now? Oh, and the term "seeing a distance"? Didn't hear about any of that until a couple years later. This woman didn't teach any of that. But she certainly taught you how to stay on a horse no matter what it did.
The end result of riding horses that would only gallop through a course was that I was incapable of seeing a shorter distance. Longer distances? Hell yeah. The problem with this was that the minute you put me on a horse that was properly trained that needed to be set up correctly in front of the jump, I started rushing, rushing, rushing him to take the long spot. By this time, I had switched to my awesome trainer Ron Howe, who had a bachelor's in Equine Studies with a major as equestrian teacher. He was super well-rounded as a trainer, and he was the first one to teach me that riding on the flat wasn't just w/t/c; there was a lot more to it than that. He was the one who introduced me to the basic concepts of dressage.
Ron put me on increasingly difficult and technical horses who required a lot of skill to get over fences. He said he would exorcise my previous trainer's ingrained bad habits one way or another. (Lol!) He gave me the tools to later be able to train by myself for years (I didn't find trainers of his caliber until I moved to the US) and to be able to figure out a horse within a few minutes of mounting up.
During the Ron era, riding at El Centro Ecuestre de Puerto Rico (the Puerto Rican Equestrian Center, in the city of Santurce). Shorter spot, not jumping ahead *quite* as much, heels to China, flat back. Super long-ass reins. This horse's name was Antares, a privately owned horse that I was allowed to ride for lesson. He was a very technical horse, and I had been told to just stay out of his face over the jumps and just ride him with seat and legs, which is why I kind of overdid it with the reins. We had a super smooth, flowing course, though. Even his owner was impressed.
I was 18.
Years and years later. I was 25, riding in Tampa at the Brass Ring Equestrain Center. I had trained by myself for the previous 6 years, up until this moment, when I started exercising horses in exchange for lessons. This was a 3' oxer on Grasshopper, an awesome Appendix gelding who was aptly named. Still jumping ahead a bit, but I'm happy with the rest of my position, especially given the fact that we were galloping this course. Grassy was a known rusher to the fences, and only a handful of people were willing to ride him. I loved him!
The one thing he yelled the most when I was approaching a fence? (You can see in the Sunlight photo why...)
"WAIT FOR THE JUMP!"
I'm an impatient person. People think I'm super calm, quiet and patient. I'm not. Charles, my brother and my mom can tell you all about it. I've become better as I've gotten older, but my mom used to say I would bulldoze through life to get what I want, one way or another. That kind of determination is a good thing to have. If I didn't have it, my life would be a complete opposite from what it is now. Sometimes you really do have to make things happen. But a lot of really good things in life require patience and just simply waiting for them to come. "Wait for the jump" became a common phrase in our house. Whenever I was impatient about something, my mom would put a hand on my shoulder and say, "Wait for the jump." I have it written down in notebooks, graffitied onto every backpack I own, and I should probably tattoo it somewhere on my body.
And that's why I gave the blog that name, and why I'm giving it back it's original name, even though Lily and I don't jump. It applies to the patience you need to properly train a horse; it applies to dressage, to the time it takes to develop a horse correctly so they can do the following moves on the training scale; it applies to rehabbing your horse step by step while allowing her to heal; it applies to quiet days in the ER as a vet tech waiting for the next emergency to come in through the door; it applies to allowing things to fall into place so you can get to where you want to be next. As a rider, as a couple, as a professional. It applies to everything in life. Sometimes you can't bulldoze your way through things; sometimes you've already done everything you can, and you just have to sit back and wait for it to come.
See the distance, sit back, and let the jump come to you.
One of the perks of living in South FL is the winter show season. The weather is mild, so some of the bigger shows in the country take place in Wellington, such as the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF).
Totillas himself was supposed to come to the US this year, specifically to Wellington, to show at the World Dressage Masters competition. Judy and I were about to buy the VERY expensive tickets to go see him in person, when we heard he had pulled out of the competition due to lameness issues.
However, Heather Blitz and Paragon were there, and took a second place in the Grand Prix Special.
She is now one of my favorite dressage riders. She is the first professional dressage rider that I've seen that actually wears her stirrups shorter than I do. She raised and trained Paragon herself. The horse is so expressive in his gaits that he almost doesn't know what to do with all that energy! Watch the video above to see what I mean.
There have been hunter/jumper and dressage shows going on every weekend at WEF this season, and Judy and I were trying to make it to see the dressage classes. We drove up one rainy Saturday but couldn't find the dressage arenas. So we watched the jumpers instead. I don't know when this happened, but apparently draw reins are now the norm in the warm-up jumper arena. We only saw 2 horses in the entire show that did NOT have draw reins in the warm-up! Wtf??!! I was horrified. I actually learned to use draw reins when I wasn't competing anymore; this was unheard of on the Puertorrican jumper scene and in the Tampa schooling show jumper scene as well.
There were a lot of gorgeous horses that could have been just as good at dressage as they were at jumpers. Except their heads were cranked down into their chests by draw reins pulled taught in some of the heaviest hands I've ever seen in person. Both Judy and I were horrified.
However, I still get melancholy when I watch top level riders at horse shows, because I came so close to being one of them. I always wonder what my life would have been like if I'd been able to continue down that path. I commented this to Judy, and she turned to me and said, "You can still do it." "In dressage?" I asked. I have no interest in going back to jumping. I've completely passed that phase in my life. "Yes. You are very talented-if you really want to go to the Olympics, you could do it."
I can't begin to say how good it felt to hear that again. To hear a trainer I trust, that has ridden with some top riders and trainers herself, say that she thinks I'm that calibre of a rider. When I graduated from highschool, I tried to flip my life over to make that dream possible, but all of the doors were shut in my face: the one trainer that was willing to take me there moved back to the States, I was accepted into a very good university in Massachussetts with an intercollegiate riding team that would've gotten me out of the island and right into upper level competition here in the States...but my father changed his mind and refused to help finance my first year (after that first year, I could have had a riding athletic scholarship!) at ANY university, and without those 2 pieces to the puzzle, my family simply could not afford the monumental expense of taking me to that level. There were simply no other trainers like that in PR at the time, no exposure to sponsors because all competition was local, and to move up the ranks to eventually get to that level, I would have had to compete in the States regardless. I let the dream go without a fight, because it seemed to not be in the cards for me.
Judy was willing to go the distance to help get me there, but once we started discussing cost, the battle seemed more and more uphill. Charles would've supported me in this decision. However, I looked at this path long and hard for 3 weeks. Judy talked about breeding Rose to elite stallions (she is a registered Azteca, remember, with nice bloodlines-she is out of the Andalusian stallion Romerito II) and selling her babies to get the money together to get me a really good horse on whom I could get noticed. This would have taken a minimum of 3 years, assuming everything went smoothly, and that's just to get The Horse. It would've been at least another 10 years of training, competing in recognized shows (= lots and lots of $$$) to work my way up the ranks to the highest levels of dressage and competition, and then trying to qualify for the Panamerican Games, to then see if I would qualify to be on an Olympic team...the idea of the process was daunting, full of "what-ifs" (what if The Horse got injured, what if we didn't make the cut in one of the lesser competitions and had to start over, etc), and with a necessity for good luck to be on our side just to make it all the way there on the first try... We discussed creating a partnership, moving to a different state to be able to afford multiple horses (so I could keep Lily and this Wonder Horse), riding Rose up to 4th level in recognized shows to get noticed for a sponsor (or sponsors) in the meantime (the logistics of this was difficult-if a mare is popping out babies and was at Training Level to begin with, it would be very hard to condition her up to 4th Level in a span of 3-4 years in between pregnancies-I didn't see how this would work out). But then the chiropractor came out, and his diagnosis of Rose's problems was pretty grim. It would be very hard to take her to that level of competition without injuring her. If she could even make it that far to begin with, before her physical issues got in the way. So that kind of annulled half of the plans.
I continued riding Lily, willing to watch and wait to see what would happen, if we would get some big revelation from the heavens about whether I should dare to hope that money would somehow pour out of the skies and we'd be able to even think about shooting for this for real. Then one morning, I was going to take Lily on the trail for a nice relaxing ride, and the minute I got on, she started bucking. She had an absolute fit in the barn parking lot, for no reason that I could see or imagine. I somehow managed to stay on. These were mean bucks, too-not her happy crowhopping. She wanted me OFF. I couldn't understand why. I'd worked her the day before, and there had been no change in tack that day. Prior to me getting on this day, we had done some nice stretches in the cross ties, and she had been her usual calm sweet self up until the moment my butt sat in the saddle.
So I got off (once I was able to get her to stand still for a couple of seconds) and lunged her. She wanted to run, and run, and run. So I let her run. And when she didn't want to run anymore, I made her run some more. She galloped on the lunge line in both directions for a good 40 minutes, of her own accord mostly. She was extremely reactive, acting like she thought I was going to beat her, which I wasn't even hinting at with my body language. It drives me crazy when she does that-when Lily gets upset, she regresses.
Once she got to the point where she wanted to walk on the lunge and listen, and the sweat was just dripping off of her, I got on again and just rode her in the arena, mostly walk and a little bit of light trot on the bit. It took forever to cool her down. I still don't know what got into her. Maybe she was going into heat? Her back wasn't sore when I untacked her, and there was no pain anywhere that I could tell. I gave her bute for the next 3 days, just in case, which she had off anyway because I was back to work.
I was incredibly frustrated with this episode, and almost irrationally angered by it afterwards. To the point where, when Judy sent me pictures of this wonderful little colt from an ad on Craigslist, I told her I wanted to go see him that same day. He was half Hanoverian, 1/4 Paint, 1/4 TB. Gorgeous little guy, and very unusual coloring-he was a red roan sabino! He had Donnerhall in his bloodlines, and was out of a lovely eventing stallion. We went that afternoon and I fell in love with him. He was a stunning mover, completely uphill, with good bone in his legs, beautiful conformation, and a quirky, playful personality. I LIKED him, and the feeling seemed to be mutual, because he kept following me around the paddock, despite his owner and Judy being in the paddock with us. On this horse, I would've really gotten noticed riding into an arena, and the best part was that he was just under a year old-I could have done all of his training myself and turned him into whatever I wanted. He also fit my "unusual breeding" requirement. His price was extremely affordable for the superb horse he was, but not something that I had sitting in the bank at the time.
I put up a "For Sale" ad for Lily that week. The colt, however, sold to someone else before I had my first inquiry on Lily's ad. I followed along with the inquiries just out of curiosity to see what would happen (I have never sold a horse) and also because I just had this weird sense of separation from my mare. It felt like I was just watching everything from a distance, with absolutely no emotional involvement. I had 2 inquiries. The first was disastrous-a girl that said she rode First Level came and tried Lily out. My first concern when I met her was her weight-she was not a thin rider, and Lily's abusive experience was with at the hands of a heavier man. I was afraid that Lily was really going to act up.
After going over how Lily should be ridden (with soft hands, letting her reach for the bit on her own), the girl got on, my mare walked off, and the girl immediately started snatching at Lily's face, trying to force her into a frame. Lily did not like that AT ALL, and proceeded to do a beautiful leg yield to the left at a trot of her own accord, throwing her head up in a way that almost unseated the girl. I had advertised my mare truthfully as the hot and sensitive creature she is, and this had been discussed with the girl and her trainer prior to allowing her to get in the saddle. This girl was afraid from the get-go, and unbalanced. The ride lasted all of 10 minutes, with the girl just walking Lily in a corner of the arena thanks to her trainer's coaching. Watching her made me mad. She was NOT a First Level rider-she had bragged about this repeatedly in her communications with me prior to having her come out. Maybe she can get a First Level horse to do what he's supposed to, but she was not at that level herself. If she's First Level, I'm Prix St. Georges!!
The second girl was actually a good match, and rode Lily beautifully and calmly. To make it even better, she had a Selle Francais gelding that she was trying to sell, and I went to try him out, considering a trade. The horse was fun to ride. The way the girl had described him, it sounded like he was dead to the leg and a giant brute, but he was actually quite responsive and a fairly big mover. However, I wasn't terribly impressed while riding him (despite having a decent stride length, he was stiff as a board laterally, and while I liked him, I didn't feel that "click" with him) and even less after watching the videos of us together-Lily was a nicer mover than he was, and he would have required a LOT of work to get him to the point where I have Lily now. After riding the gelding, I hand-grazed him while talking to his owner, while watching one of the barn lessons. Some of the students in the lesson using big bits, martingales, and hauling on the reins to get difficult horses to obey. This is when I woke up from my Hanoverian colt-induced stupor: I immediately started worrying about Lily's destiny, and wondered what the HELL had been going through my mind when I'd decided to sell her! It was a no-brainer: I went to my barn after trying out the gelding, rode Lily, confirmed that my mare is so much nicer (just in case I hadn't noticed before...), realized I really couldn't imagine my life without her, and went home to take down the ads.
Phew! I'm glad I realized what a huge mistake that was before it was too late. Whatever got into Lily that day she tried to buck me off must have affected my brain, too. I talked to Judy about the whole thing afterwards, and my final decision was the original one: I don't care about being an Olympic-level rider anymore, I just want to take an unusual horse and turn him/her into something outstanding. It was nice to revisit that dream, and to hear again from someone I respect that I have the talent to get there, but I choose to use that talent to train an unusual horse to do something big. Maybe a USDF bronze medal? That would sure be nice. :) And even if we never get there, competition, like life, is more about the journey, not the destination.
We'll see. In the meantime, Lily and I continue to work hard, play hard, and wait for the jump.
