Well, good bye wasn’t as permanent as I had thought. Typical of me. Like this blogger, I can’t decide why I blog. Furthermore, like her, I’m a rather private person and posting my thoughts to a forum that is available to anyone bothers me a little bit. The positive side of that is perhaps I’ll learn to keep negatives at bay. When I first began blogging, I was inspired by The Julia/Julie project, a daily cooking blog that has since been replaced by a book contract. At the time I suppose I fancied myself somewhat of a writer. Unfortunately, writing my master’s thesis has cured me of that notion. Yet, several of my regular readers (see comments from this post) said they’d miss me and wanted to keep up on my progress with riding Clipper. Their encouragement, not to mention a pretty hard fall the other day, made me decide to continue posting. This time I’m not going to feel guilty about the irregularity of my posting.
Having said all that, here’s the Progress on Clipper report:
First I have to preface this report by stating that I have been very stressed out about writing my thesis. I hope to have the darn thing filed by June 24 but that may not happen because I am just not a speedy writer. I have to work on my thesis then put it down and let it rest for a while, then repeat. I’m working on my second draft but only the first draft of the discussion section. Hopefully the other sections will only require very easy revisions. June 24 is an important day for a couple reasons. If I file by then, I don’t have to pay an additional filing fee. Also, Dave and I want to move. My last paycheck is July 1. It’s important for us to be moving by then, otherwise I have to find a temporary job until we do move. That’s a drag but I’ll do it if I must.
Anyway, this is everything on my mind as I also attempt to teach a green horse how to jump. Keep in mind that I’m only an intermediate rider. Maybe even only a beginning intermediate. Or advanced beginner. Whatever. You get the picture. Clipper is a pretty good boy but he does get nervous when presented with a problem that he doesn’t feel confident about. Since I’m still learning too, I’m not always in the presence of mind to help him solve the problem. Consequently he’s been stopping at jumps more frequently than in the beginning as we work on harder problems. I’ve been falling off more, which rattles my confidence.
Thursday morning I had the mother of all falls (so far). We warmed up with a hack and easy stuff: two trot poles set along the rail. The second trot pole was replace by a low jump. Clipper wasn’t sure about the distance between the trot pole and the jump so he slammed on the brakes at the jump. I made him check the jump out then we went back around to try again. Apparently I encouraged him a little too much before the trot pole because he attempted to jump the little fence from behind the trot pole. He made a gallant effort, knocked over the jump with his hind feet (after all, we came in at a trot). I was off balance from his enormous effort, then he took off because the jump scared him and I fell of amid thundering hooves. I landed on my right elbow, fell back and hit my head on the sand.
I was wearing a helmet, of course. I never ride without a helmet and would never think of doing so ever again. Clipper stopped and turned around to look at me with a puzzled or concerned look on his face. I’m sure he was thinking what just happened just like I was. I sat up and felt my head throbbing inside my helmet. My trainer immediately began lecturing me about rider error in a tone of voice just short of yelling. I thought I don’t need to hear this right now then she said that my fall scared her. Yeah me too I said. Then I realized that she was lecturing me because she was scared so I let it go.
I stood up, didn’t see spots but my head still throbbed. I got back on then attempted the same trot pole and jump. He was really nervous about that jump by then and stopped again but I made him look at it and petted him when he did. Then we tried again. He took off from the right point (with my help this time) but he was still nervous and tried running away after we landed. We stopped, I petted we tried again. A couple more times through helped him regain his (and my) confidence. We tried a few more jumps after that and successfully jumped them in a relaxed manner. Whew.
That was a hard lesson for me to learn and I wish it didn’t require my getting dumped on my head to learn it. What I learned is that he was stopping at jumps because he either wasn’t paying attention and suddenly there was a jump or he wasn’t sure how to handle it and I wasn’t helping him. I also learned that stopping at this point in his training is better than him freaking out and over jumping then running away from it. The key is to be able to provide him with the aids to help him do his job. I’m a little nervous about that but I think I’m cured from being aggressive about his training. I ride again tomorrow and will let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I’m pretty sore from the fall. My neck muscles hurt, I have a small bruise on the right side of my jaw, the base of my left thumb hurts, my right calf hurts, my right elbow is scraped and my ribs hurt. Thankfully the headache only lasted one day. I’m on a very steep learning curve right now. I hope that curve has leveled out now. Tomorrow should tell me something.
Corinna, I’m glad you didn’t give up your blog. I have times when I don’t write for a long while and I just let it stay there. You are so brave teaching the horse (and yourself) how to jump. I could never do this, I’d freak out. I have to admit I get scared when I read it, though, with memories of Christopher Reeve in my mind. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people have done this without his tragic results, but take care!!