The Clinic

Keeper

I’ve decided to take a clinic. It was weeks away when I signed up but somehow the time has arrived. I am a bit nervous. I have hardly been to any clinics. My horse, Keeper, hasn’t been out overnight without her boyfriends (the geldings), she hasn’t been in an arena (except for one rather negative experience) and because of the fears I somehow developed over the past few decades (probably from the rare but scary and painful falls I have experienced) she and I have seldom loped. She is seven now. I am 60. She is big and strong. I am getting slower and weaker every decade.

Out of the first 3 times I asked her to lope while riding her she fell down twice. She really thought that dropping into a crouch and bursting toward the other side of the riding ring was going to work and it might have if she hadn’t had a couple of hundred pounds of terrified woman on her back. She hadn’t planned on that.

We have trotted into a lope a few times since. She has even loped on request a couple of times. But I need someone to help make me feel confident again. I need some steps in between to better prepare.

I rode my last horse George for 16 years. He had a 2 week crash course before the auction sale that we bought him at as a two year old. He wasn’t very broke and I wasn’t much of a trainer but we calved a lot of cows and tagged and treated a lot of calves. We were a team. He knew where I was going just because I thought it sometimes. I trusted him to look after us.

Keeper was born on the ranch as was her mother. When she was three I had Ricky Anderson ride her for a month in the hills. I trail rode her for a couple of weeks a year for the next two years. Last year we covered quite a few miles on the trails and riding with the grandkids. She certainly shouldn’t break down from overusing her too young should she?

So I have gone from a horse that could do a canter pirouette with me on him (he taught me that in the sorting pen – he just liked to do it) to a horse that sometimes thinks the cue to lope means the same thing as a starting gate opening to a well trained thoroughbred. Not good. It makes me afraid which only makes her think there is something to be afraid of when I tense up.

I also want to take a clinic as I spend a lot of time riding by myself and I want some feed back. Someone else’s opinion besides the horses – sometimes I think they convince me to be too un-demanding. Their roommates pressure them a lot harder than I do.

I have judged whether I am putting too much pressure on Keeper by whether or not she comes home from out in the pasture when I call. It is hard to be more interesting and more fun than her herd and still ask her to do the things I want to do. So far she almost always comes.

Now I have to get us through this clinic and still go home friends. Clinics can be a lot of pressure for both the people and the horses. I have chosen the clinician, Jonathan Field because the few times I have heard him talk about training horses he has made sense, he seems like a nice guy who really likes horses, his horses like him and he chooses to work with a horse who is a lot like Keeper. He will understand how much I don’t want to lose the trust I have built with this horse and instead help me make it stronger by helping me better understand her. That is my hope.

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