Clearwater Bay 2- Against the Clock

by Kate Lattey

  I’ve probably been working her in at walk and trot for about five minutes before Abby appears, strolling casually towards me.

  “All loosened up?” she asks me, and I nod and slip my feet out of the stirrups, then lean forward, preparing to dismount.

  “Woah! Stay up there,” Abby tells me, and I squirm back into the saddle awkwardly. “You’re already on board, so you might as well stay there. I told you I’d teach you to ride, so let’s get started. Shorten your stirrups another three holes, then pick up your reins and start trotting. Two point, no rising. Ride a figure eight, sitting trot across the diagonal, both reins. Then the same thing in canter. Off you go.”

  Abby drills me for the next twenty minutes on my position and aids, and my legs are aching by the time we’re finished. But I have to admit that I’m feeling confident and in control, and I give Zoe a grateful pat.

  “She’s such a lovely ride,” I tell Abby, who agrees.

  “She’s a super horse, I’m very lucky to have her. She’s a pushbutton ride, just get to the fence with a good canter and as long as you’ve got your leg on, she’ll jump anything.”

  As she talks, Abby is walking around the arena adjusting jumps, setting three low fences on a curving line.

  “Right, now canter down over these three jumps, change the rein, jump back up over them. She knows her job, so just stay still, keep your leg, use your eyes to ride your line.”

  Zoe and I jump successfully down the row of low fences, and I give her a big pat. Abby walks up to the middle fence, the only oxer on the course, and starts putting it up higher.

  “Again,” she calls to me.

  I nudge Zoe into her super powerful, balanced canter, and approach the first jump. She clears it, and I look at the second fence, five strides away and baulk when I realise how huge it is now. I hadn’t been paying attention to how high Abby was raising it, but it’s now a massive square oxer set at close to a metre twenty, possibly higher. I panic, sit down hard in the saddle and kick on. Zoe speeds up, and as we get to the jump I grab a fistful of her mane and close my eyes, preparing myself for a huge leap. But Zoe skids to a halt, and I find myself swinging over her neck. Startled, she snorts and backs up, then trots off across the arena, with me still hanging onto her mane and struggling to get back into the saddle.

  Determined not to fall off, I eventually manage to regain my seat, and trot her back to Abby, who’s leaning casually against a jump stand with her arms crossed.

  “What was that?”

  I feel my face flushing, but I’m not convinced that it’s all my fault. I motion at the jump behind me. “What was that?”

  “It’s a jump.”

  “It’s huge.”

  “It’s only a metre thirty.”

  “Only?”

  “It’s child’s play for this horse, and if you had sat there and ridden it exactly the way you rode the line the first time, you wouldn’t have had any problems. But you changed your ride and stuffed her up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So I should think. Now go and do it again.”

  I pick up the reins. “I don’t want to ruin your horse,” I say apologetically.

  Abby just laughs. “How exactly do you propose to do that? Look, if you get it wrong, she’ll tell you off, and you’ll learn. She’s not going to die if you miss at one fence, so quit worrying and just get on with it.”

  I nod, deciding to be determined, and I pick up the canter again as we head back around to the first jump. Don’t change your ride, I tell myself. Pretend it’s just a small fence. It’s hard, but I focus all my energy on trusting Abby’s advice and her horse’s ability. Zoe jumps the first fence, then canters the five strides to the huge oxer. I sit determinedly still in the saddle, waiting until we get to the base of the jump to squeeze with my legs, and the big mare pushes off her hocks and soars through the air. I grab at her mane to stay on, and can hear Abby yelling at me to sit up. I lose a stirrup on landing, but I manage to stay focused enough to canter over the third fence too, which seems tiny now in comparison to the massive one I just jumped.

  “Super ride, good job,” Abby praises us when we land successfully. She gives Zoe a firm pat, then pats me on the leg as well. “That’s enough for her for today. Walk her out for ten minutes, then bring her in and hose her off, while I get the babies in. We’ll take them for a hack before lunch, then you can ride your pony this afternoon.”

  The rest of the morning flies by, as Abby and I take her young horses out on a hack around the farm. I ride Domino, a dun and white pinto, who Abby describes as “green but cute”. Halfway around the track Abby suggests that we pick up a canter, and Domino moves nicely alongside Abby’s bay mare, who is a bit unsettled and spooky. We bring them back to a walk and I pat Domino’s golden neck.

  “What height is this one competing at?” I ask her.

  “Dom? He hasn’t even started jumping yet. I only broke him in a week ago.”

  My jaw drops. “And you’re letting me ride him?”

  “Why not?”

  I can’t get over her generosity. “How did you know I’d be good enough?”

  “Jay, you’ve got to have a bit more faith in yourself,” Abby scolded me. “Anyone would think from listening to you talk that you’re a horrible rider. You’re not, so quit doubting yourself so much.”

  I feel myself glowing under her praise, although I don’t really feel as though I deserve it. I think back over this season so far, and feel myself sinking back into reality.

  “I’ve wrecked Finn though,” I mutter.

  “Do you really think so?”

  I nod.

  “Then why are you here?”

  I blink, and look at her. She seems to be expecting an answer, so I stumble one out. “Because I want to get better and…to un-wreck her,” I manage weakly.

  “Good. The first step is self-belief. Riding is a mental sport, which doesn’t mean you have to be mental to try and do it, though that’s probably also true. But so much of riding is in your head, and any doubts, any hesitations that you have, get transmitted to your horse. Just like your confidence levels do. You set out on this ride on Dom thinking he was well-schooled, so he was. If I’d told you when you first got on that I only broke him in last week, you’d have been nervous as heck. Wouldn’t you?”

  I nod, forced to admit that she’s right.

  “Likewise, if I’d told you that when I got Zoe she stopped like a demon and it took me weeks to get her to go over so much as a pole on the ground, you’d have been all worried about that. But you rode in there only knowing the Zoe of today, who flies around big courses without batting an eyelash, so you rode confidently. For the most part,” she adds, and I’m forced to smile. “Leave your baggage at the door, and ride the horse you’ve got in front of you. Not the horse you used to have, or you want to have, but the one you’re sitting on at the moment. You can’t change the past, you can only influence the present. So you have to make every minute count.”

  After lunch, I have a lesson on Finn. It’s short and intense, but incredibly useful. We don’t jump, just do flatwork, but I work on my position like I’ve never worked before. If I thought I was tired after my lesson on Zoe, it’s ten times worse on Finn.

  “She’s small and she’s reactive, so everything you do when you’re in the saddle makes a difference to her,” Abby tells me. “You can’t do too much, but you can’t just sit there being ineffective either. We need to get her a bit more rideable, so that you can teach her to carry herself and carry you more comfortably. Pick up a trot and let the reins go.”

  I slowly open my fingers and let the reins slide through them. Immediately Finn speeds up and flattens out her stride. I feel myself losing my balance, and grab at the reins to slow her down. Finn tosses her head and goes sideways, almost crushing my leg against the arena railing.

  “Get out of her face,” Abby tells me. “Soften your hand, soften your seat. She can’t be soft if you aren’t, because she can only react to
what you do. You have to be the leader, you have to let go first. I want your reins flapping in the breeze – give them to her, let her decide what to do with them.”

  We trot endlessly, and although at first Finn just rushes around with her head in the air, after a while she starts to relax and slows down. Abby gradually lets me shorten my reins, but I always have to stay very soft and gentle with my hands. Eventually I start to get the feel for the soft hand that Abby wants me to have, and she’s quick to praise me when I get it right.

  “Good! Much, much better. Back to walk and give her a loose rein. That’ll do for today.”

  Relieved, I give Finn a big pat as she stretches her head down to the ground.

  “Keep riding her like that. Soft and forward, with a giving hand. She’s too sensitive for you to try and ravel her up. Any questions?”

  I think for a moment, then ask. “If I have to ride her on a loopy rein all the time, then how do I get her to go on the bit?”

  Abby shudders. “I so hate that term, ‘on the bit’. The bit honestly has nothing to do with it. If Finn is going forward into an even, consistent contact and bending through her body, she will naturally flex her jaw and carry herself in a more collected frame. Be ‘on the bit’, as you say, or ‘soft and round’ which is how I prefer to think of it. Adjustable and willing, not curled into a ball in front of the saddle and trailing power out the hind end.”

  I nod, sliding down from Finn’s back and taking the reins over her head.

  “She hasn’t had much dressage schooling,” I admit. “I’ve tried, but I’m not really sure what I’m doing and I just get frustrated with her.”

  “That’s a vicious cycle,” Abby concedes. “The trouble is that your pony has no faith in your hand. It’s too strong and erratic, and she’s scared of it and she runs away from it. So what we’re working on is a training contact that tells her that if she is soft, you’ll be soft. Gradually you can take the contact back up, but for now I just want her relaxed and stretching forward into the contact, learning how to balance herself and accept your hand instead of trying to escape from it.”

  I swallow hard, because being told that your pony is afraid of the way you ride isn’t exactly encouraging. I’m about to start wallowing in self-pity again when Abby grabs my hand as she walks alongside me and brings me to a halt.

  “Think of it like this,” she says, my hand still clasped in hers. “Imagine you’re a little kid, about to walk across a busy road. You’re with an adult who reaches down and holds your hand.” She closes her fingers tightly around mine, squeezing hard, then takes a step forward, yanking my arm after her. “Come on!”

  I instinctively pull away and try to snatch my hand free, feeling overwhelmed by her suddenly forceful attitude.

  “Exactly,” Abby says, relaxing her grip on me but not letting go of my hand. “Too strong, too sudden, too dominant. Try this one.”

  She pretends to look both ways for imaginary traffic, then steps forward again. This time her hand is so gentle that it’s practically limp in mine, her fingers barely closed around my hand. If I opened my fingers, her hand would fall away, and I hesitate for a moment before following her.

  “Better?”

  I shrug. “Sort of,” I hedge, and she grins.

  “But it was too passive, right? Like I didn’t really care if you came with me or not. Didn’t exactly engender confidence. Okay, third time’s a charm.”

  Once again she clasps my hand, and this time her grip is relaxed but sure. “Look both ways, and off we go.”

  Abby steps forward, and I follow her lead without even thinking about it. A few strides later she stops, and I instinctively stop next to her without even realising I’m doing it.

  “That’s contact,” Abby tells me, and lets go of my hand. “Not too aggressive, not too passive, just somewhere in between. Does it make sense?”

  “Completely,” I assure her. I flex my fingers, my head reeling. I’ve never had it explained to me like that before, and now all I want to do is get back on my pony and try it out.

  “I should’ve showed you that at the start,” Abby muses, clearly on the same wavelength. “Oh well, tomorrow’s another day, so you can put it all into practice then. But seriously, try and expunge that ‘on the bit’ phrase from your mind. It’s no use to you.”

  “Soft and round,” I reply. Her terminology makes sense, and gives me a much clearer idea of what I’m trying to achieve.

  “Soft and round,” Abby confirms. “Now let’s get these horses fed so we can have dinner, and get a bit softer and rounder ourselves!”

  The next three days fly by in the same routine of feeding, mucking out and exercising the horses. I continue my flatwork lessons on Finn, slowly improving although it’s hard work for both of us to learn to relax and trust each other.

  “You’re getting there,” Abby assures me, and I pull a face at her, finding it hard to believe.

  “It doesn’t feel like it. I can’t get my body to do what I want it to!”

  “Muscle memory,” Abby replies. “You’ve trained your body to instinctively tense up and grab at the reins when Finn goes forward too sharply. Now you’ve told your brain that it’s wrong, but your body is still reacting before you can get the brain signals there. And it’s harder because it’s a defensive response from you, so your body pumps out adrenalin to help you react faster, when what you actually want is to relax and react more slowly.”

  I groan, flopping forward onto Finn’s sweaty neck in a gesture of defeat, but Abby just laughs.

  “Hey, nobody ever said this sport was easy.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Later that afternoon, Abby and I are hosing her youngsters Miska and Domino off after their ride when a dark blue Jeep drives into the yard and Steph steps out. She casts an eye over Miska, looking thoughtful.

  “She’s finally starting to fill out. Might make a decent horse after all.”

  “Green is an ugly colour on you Steph,” Abby tells her.

  For a moment I’m confused, because Steph is wearing a pink polo shirt with dark blue designer breeches and tall black boots. She looks like someone out of a horse catalogue, with her blonde ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades and jingling silver bracelets on her wrist. Then I realise that Abby is accusing Steph of jealousy, and grin to myself.

  “Whatever you have to tell yourself to make you feel better,” Steph replies with nonchalance. “Do you have time this afternoon to come and help me ride out? I’ve been in town all morning and I’m running out of day to get everything worked.”

  Abby glances at me. “Well I was just about to give Jay a lesson in bandaging,” she tells her friend. “But I suppose we could do that later.”

  “Great. I’ll get the nags in. Be over in ten,” Steph replies, climbing back into her Jeep and starting the engine. She reverses out quickly and drives off up the road as Abby slicks the water off Miska’s coat with a sweat scraper.

  “What do you want me to do, while you’re gone?” I ask.

  Abby gives me a strange look. “Nothing. You’re coming too.”

  I’m not convinced that Steph had that in mind, since I’m well aware of her opinion of my riding ability. It seems very unlikely to me that she would want me anywhere near her horses, let alone on their backs, but I can’t quite bring myself to tell Abby that, because I’ll just end up getting another lecture about not running myself down. So I follow her nervously as we turn the four year olds out and get our boots and helmets together, then cross my fingers as she drives us down the road to Steph’s.

  The two farms are situated next door to each other, but could hardly be more different. Steph’s driveway is lined with grand old oak trees, and horses graze in post and rail paddocks on either side. The drive swings off to the left before we get to the house, but I glimpse it through the trees, a big wooden homestead with landscaped gardens out the front.

  “Wow, I had no idea her family had so much money,” I comment as we pull up in fr
ont of a big American style barn.

  Abby shrugs. “Not as much as you might think. There’s a long story behind how they got this place, and trust me, it didn’t look like this when they moved in. They’ve worked hard on it over the years.”

  She climbs out of the car, and I follow her as Steph walks out of the barn leading two horses. As I predicted, she seems surprised to see me, and I’m very aware of her blue eyes scanning me up and down, then lingering on the helmet in my hand.

  “I didn’t realise you were both coming,” she says. “I’ve only tacked up two.”

  Abby is unfazed. “That’s all right, I know the tracks around here like the back of my hand. I’ll take Echo, Jay can ride Meadow. Where do you want us to take them, up the hills?”

  Her hand reaches forward and takes the dark bay gelding’s reins from Steph’s grasp, who relinquishes them slowly, still eyeing me cautiously. I feel like a bug under a microscope, and brace myself to have a pin stuck through me. Abby is adjusting her stirrups and doesn’t seem to notice Steph’s hesitation.

  “Have you been riding Abby’s horses?” Steph asks me.

  I nod, and Abby turns her head. “She’s been riding Dom and Zoe, and she’s doing great,” she tells Steph. “Jumped Zoe around a metre twenty course this morning like a boss.”

  She grins at me, and I smile back, but Steph seems unimpressed.

  “A baby could ride Zoe,” she says dismissively, and my feelings are hurt until Abby replies.

  “That’s what you said about Gypsy, until you tried to ride her when I went overseas and she bucked you off every single day,” Abby reminds her, and I try to hide my grin. “Come on, stop being such a fussy old mother hen and let Jay ride Meadow, instead of making her stand here like she’s waiting for the firing squad.”

  Steph sighs and scratches her head, looking uncertain. Finally she gives in.