PrintMaybe, instead of giving the pony a show name that fits him perfectly, I should have chosen something more…say, submissive. Please Kiss Me, I’ll Do Whatever You Want. Kissing The Way You Like. Kiss Me, And I’m Yours! But no, I had to go and call him Kiss This, and someone told him, and now he won’t live it down.
After having a lot of fun soliciting fashion input, half-washing the pony (focus on the white parts), and cleaning my tack within an inch of its life Sunday, we set off this morning to the pony’s debut with an Olympic rider.
From the moment I got him out of his stall, the little stinker was sassy. He tried to blast through me, then scoot away on the short walk to the trailer so he could score some prime grazing time. Luckily, I had the dressage whip in hand for loading. A swift tap on the chest put a stop to that nonsense. And at Black Brook, he actually came off the trailer like the cooperative pony we all know he is in his heart. Then the clinic started.
Black Brook Farm borders Great Brook State Park. It’s a really gorgeous area. We did a little warm up in the fields bordering the ring, giving me ample time to gaze longingly at some of the cross-country fences still marked from a recent hunter pace. Okay, semi-longingly. The other part of me was really glad I knew today was mainly flatwork, and no one would point us at them. The fences were beautiful, though. While I was out there, I met my lesson buddy, Penny, a chestnut mare.
Eric waved us in when he was done with the group before and had us give him the 411 on our horses. I sometimes think we are tempted to talk a little too much in this phase, so I just said this is my pony, I got him from a lesson program that didn’t work out for him, he’s been in work with me for six months, I’ve been concentrating on basics, and he just did his first two beginner novice events this fall. I was lucky. Eric, as it turns out, likes things simple. We started the lesson with a warning about how we need more universally defined words to talk about riding, and about how he was going to overhaul our vocabularies, and then he sent us out to do some trotting in a circle around him.
The pony was crooked. And feisty. I did my best to just ride him forward into the contact. Predictably—and I mean this in a good way because it says we’ve been on the right track—Eric nailed him right away as needing to be more responsive to my leg. “Think like an employer,” he said. “I wouldn’t hire your horse…he’s the one coming to work dragging his feet, like he doesn’t really want to give his best.”
Then we did some good trot and canter work concentrating on forward, and got yelled at in the walk, where he loves to die out immediately. I’m always nervous about clobbering my horse in front of a clinician, but Eric gave me permission, so the pony got a Thelwell kick or two. And premiered an episode of “If you whack, then I will buck.” In which I prevailed, after earning demerits for laughing out loud during a clinic. :)
