This Horse Is Impossible!

One thing Jill really enjoyed about her current internship, was the way the radio played in the indoor riding arena. It was fun to change your current mount's rhythm to match whatever song came on next, and singing along out loud while riding was surely a good exercise. She said to Angie, her coworker, that she wasn't learning anything, but it was fun.

She had been wishing for mirrors in the indoor school, in order to coach herself. But then she heard about how a horse can mistake a mirror for an extension of the arena when freelunging. That they have been known to jumpinto the wall mouted mirrors. Ow! With sharp broken mirror bits everywhere? The thought made her wince. With all the jumps and poles and rails and jump cups on the loose around, clearly this stable was not the diligent sort of place for covering up and uncovering big wall mounted mirrors. And, they didfreelunge frequently, it was something Jill actually liked experimenting with. And so, she stopped wishing for mirrors because she never, never wanted to see an accident like that.

One day, the arena door opened so she could be told off for using too much hand, with a boss-selected "rather severe bit." At that point, Jill was barely able to keep the athletic little bay she was working, in trot and he had been spooking at EVERYthing, while she tried various exercises to get his attention and ask him to settle into a rhythm. She always used 3x the leg and was only using as much hand as she thought was absolutely neccessary, as in, for survival, ha.

She tried to explain this all, simply saying "This horse is IMPOSSIBLE." 


The pony spooked twice at nothing during the quick sentence exchange. So, the door was just as abruptly closed again and Jill could hear orders for a reduction in this horse's feed being issued to the other staff, instead of the socalled free lesson/shouted criticism and lecture to her being continued, whew. Jill was glad to be left alone, to relax and improve and she suddenly understood what her co-worker meant when she had said doesn't want to ride because "it would just be another thing to get yelled at about."

When Jill came back into the barn a half hour later she said "that was like an amusement park ride or something. He was so fast and so frisky to begin with, and then the the radio started going off, so we could hear the skidoos roaring around outside, sounding very horse eating and scary and close to the wall, before the radio would come back on, randomly, at full blast. On. Off. On. Off. And then, Angie, you started clunking around in the hay loft on top of it all. ACK. What a house of horrors!!! I am lucky to be alive!" 


As, she pulled the bridle off the sweaty, still snorting fearfully/foolishly at shavings bags in the hallway bay, she added, "but, I LOVE riding, don't get me wrong..."