It's incredible the amount I can forget about something. And not just with my mind. My body seems pretty good at forgetting stuff too. At the moment it's forgotten how to ride a horse effectively. It's not like riding a bike! It's a struggle trying to stay balanced and relaxed enough to stay deep in the saddle to give accurate aids - especially while my mind is trying to remember the difference between the aids for leg yield and shoulder-in! My arse muscles hurt now as well as my brain!
Admittedly it's been a long while since I did any proper schooling, having been a fairly sporadic rider since moving to London. I've never stopped missing being around horses but a few outings to local riding schools left me quite discouraged from riding regularly in group lessons - they can be mind-numbingly dull and the standard seems to not be very advanced - so I kind of gave up on the idea of riding much while living in London. The odd riding weekend and hack out here and there was fun along the way and kept me mindful of how out of condition my legs & backside are, and fence-judging at a few hunter trials and one day events also helped keep total withdrawal symptoms at bay (or perhaps made them worse - not sure which).
Anyway after years of unhorsey distractions taking up my time I decided a while ago that I couldn't stay away any longer so I've started riding again, taking some individual instruction at Aldersbrook Riding School where I've been riding Kasir, a 16.3hh grey ex-eventer who knows how to make me work hard! Everyone there is very friendly and its a nice contrast to some of the dour faces at some places I've ridden at!
On Friday Kas seemed to be concentrating on making me use my legs, threatening to go into a coma if I didn't put heaps of effort in, whereas today he was leaning on the bit and really taking it out on my arms and poor fingers. I think that means my legs are working better today! My instructor today, Steve, was excellent, nagging me into successfully getting Kasir into more of an outline, getting him to soften up and not lean on the bit, and we ended up with some nice walk-canter transitions and fairly collected canter in the end. Need to work on canter-walk-canter though, sloppy, and my lateral work was fairly meh! Fairly embarrassing, but not as frustrating as last week's attempt.
I'm picking up on different bad habits with each lesson. Last week was hands too low and close together, and today I found myself leading him with the outside rein to stay out on the track instead of more inside leg - and using my seat too much in canter, to compensate for my weak legs. I got got some pretty awful shapes going on the right rein in particular (I heard "like riding a plank" from Steve at one point, oops). Anyway it felt like we'd made some real progress today and that's given me hope that I can become a decent rider again - albeit with lots of work! I had been a bit worried that I might not be able to get back to the standard I used to be able to ride at, especially after being in such pain after my first lesson about a week and a half ago! Maybe one day I really will find myself galloping my own home-bred around the cross country course at Badminton (hah!) but last weekend I think I actually had full-on groin strain, ouch!
I've heard several people mention feeling nervous after starting riding again, compared with when they were younger and bounced better. I'm glad I've not had that problem even when a horse decides he sees something terrifying and legs it. Phew! I put that down to having to ride bareback a lot in my yoof - first on nice comfy Blaze (13.2 hands high, round, with a liking for jumping out of his field, tanking it with no warning, and biting people on the arse) and then on his bigger, narrower successors. Learning to stay on board while galloping over ditches and barrels with no saddle help develop stickiness! Thanks Gerry! :) Nope, my problems are all rusty muscles, and hazy memory (must re-learn where the letter markers in the school are because at the moment the only one's I'm sure about are A, C and X!).
Ok, so how is this related to work experience? Well it's not, directly. But I do have an exciting equine placement arranged for next month. Once my final A2 chemistry exam is over I'm heading for Newmarket to spend a week at the renowned Rossdale's Equine Hospital and Diagnostic Centre. I'm over the moon about this - and a little nervous!
I need to seriously brush up on my horse knowledge before I get there so I don't look like a totally clueless numpty. My 20-year-old copy of good old Capt. Horace Hayes' Veterinary Notes for Horse Owners was once pretty much completely contained within my brain, but very little of it has stuck through that much time. I'm now really glad I brought all my old horse books over from Ireland - they've all got dusted off recently as I try to find all that knowledge I stuffed into my head as a horse-mad teenager, while I should have been stuffing in maths, english lit., and the life of Peig (ugh). I put a lot less effort into maths in school and had to pretty much re-learn everything from scratch when doing AS maths earlier this year, and got promising grades so far. Biology I always liked and did fairly well in at school so I remembered some of it when doing my biology A level, which helped absorb the new stuff, and got an A* in the end. So I remain hopeful that I'll be able to dredge up stable management from the depths of my brain yet. Of course, like biology, the world of horsies has moved on - nowadays there's a bewildering variety of bits available, you can get modular saddles, and teaching methods have changed a bit, but the core principles remain the same. So there's a lot for me to catch up on.
The plan is to get my seat and hands back into some sort of decent state so I can arrange a horse share early next year, or even get one of my own if the testing market stays in the good shape it seems to be in, which will mean contracting should do much more than paying the bills. Horses can be expensive, but I reckon kids are more so even though they eat less! Good job I always preferred hairy 4-legged youngsters to hairless 2-legs then.
The other resource that horses need is plenty of time, so that's another factor that'll inform the decision to buy or share - I may still have some maths exams to finish in January, depending on how many I get through in June. An A in all three A2 maths exams this June is probably not realistic if I'm going to be working full time as well as studying, considering that I haven't looked at a maths book since June. And that A has got to be my top priority. I've got more work experience lined up too, so that's also got to fit somewhere!
I'll be lambing in Scotland for a fortnight in March & April, and I've requested a couple of weeks at an Arabian stud in August, so watch this space about that one... I'm also planning a week at an equine first referral vet, and another at a farm animal vets. I'm still waiting on confirmation of a week at another independent small animal vets here in London too, so I think it's time to give them a nudge and remind them about that. Before all of that though I've got the role of Dogs Service Organiser at Crisis at Christmas. We start setting up on Thursday, so look out for more about that in the coming week if I get permission from their media team to say a bit about it.
It feels like things are really moving along now with meeting the requirements for my vet school application - the UCAS application deadline for D100 is looming! October 2012: I finally get to submit my plea for acceptance by one of the vet schools. Then in November there's ANOTHER exam - the BMAT which the RVC requires in addition to A levels to help them filter applicants. More about the whole admissions process for the seven different vet schools in another post because I could really go on about that - it can be long-winded! (I know I can be long-winded too, so that makes for a very long and windy post).
Speaking of which, it's time I got off the internet. I'm dog-sitting today and there's a certain hairy little Sheltie here looking at me that could do with a run, and then I have some chemistry revision calling me!
Edit: Here's a short video of Robert Whitaker clearing 6'9" bareback at Olympia at the weekend:
