Repost from 2016
Patience…
Life has been challenging these last few months. To pick up and move across the country, and attempt to start over, is a big task. I try to approach it with an eye on the positives: new opportunity, new friends, new everything. And extra time to funnel into personal growth, and education. I have always been goal driven, and without a path I can get a bit testy. I probably owe a few people an apology, the testy me has been hanging around, as I have been working more on clerical things and business development than actual riding. My type “A” self is needing to run a marathon at this point, I have so much pent up energy.
My lesson in life of late seems to be patience. I am having to pace myself and not rush into anything. The old life of 40 stalls, training horses, and lessons, not to mention three children, kept me full speed ahead 24/7. That is just how it was, and what my “normal” was. The kids are all off on their own, the 40 stalls are gone, I am down to my mare, and for the moment, that is all. While I know, I have more on the horizon, a month from now seems like a year. And for the last couple of months while I was healing from surgery, my mare was working on transitioning to life in a completely new environment. She had lost some weight on the trip over, and has been adjusting to a different type of grass/ hay. This created a space where neither one of us could do more than simply enjoy each other’s company. Grooming, feet care, extra food and love. The constant gnawing pressure to be moving forward, riding, training, working on tuning my skills, had to wait.
The approach to bringing my mare back to full fitness and strength, along with my own post-op rehab, has really got me thinking about how the training process and teaching needs to always stay mindful of fitness. Because my mare is not working at upper level, I have been forced to find ways to bring her education and fitness building together. The goal is to bring her up to a higher level, while not over working her or being too demanding. I am constantly mindful that she stays happy too. Working her to the point of being sore all the time would create an unhappy partner. Unlike humans, who can understand that working muscle can cause temporary soreness, and it will go away as you get in better shape, a horse does not understand anything beyond something being uncomfortable. To keep her a willing participant I have intentionally planned a variety of exercises and have been approaching it somewhat like a personal trainer would at a health club. Sets and repetition, and a different muscle group each day. At first more ground work than riding, lunging, piaffe, (beginning) Spanish walk, and long lines. Now we are doing more riding than ground work, but I am continuing to keep both aspects part of the program, and she still meets me at the gate every day, ready to work. It is the right path. She is more light and responsive than she has ever been since I bought her. Her muscle development is growing in places it needs to be, and she is more willing to do an occasional difficult exercise.
The old saying “the cobblers’ children have no shoes” is so fitting here. I have owned this mare for several years and have always loved her but never really nurtured her growth. I have never given her the dedicated focus she deserves. The 40 stalls, training, teaching, mom thing always taking precedent… until God and the universe forced me to slow down (by hobbling me with torn cartilage). I am once again reminded, that sometimes when things aren’t going the way I want, it is just that I need to slow down, and pay more attention to what I can create with the space I currently occupy.