Shut Offs and A Fresh Start

As a certified instructor, Jill was not really supposed to teach anywhere that didn't have an Emergency Plan in place.  She'd been proud of her proactive professionalism and even thought it was a stroke of brilliance to include the electric fence shut off location in the paperwork she was creating, to address the need.  But this would prove to be a detail that disturbed the owners to the point of terminating the relationship.

Jill had wanted the info included to avoid what she'd seen once, filling in at a farm and alone on the property, to see a beautiful high quality brood mare, with a foal at her side and a foreleg caught in the electric wires against the boards of her paddock.  The mare was frightened and in pain and faol distressed as well.  Jill had been horrified, and, despite having a tour of the property with the farm manager, and a map of the place for reference, she was confused about which way to run to cut the power.  The poor mare, struggled against powerful jolt after jolt after jolt.  It was awful, and then, luckily, the mare broke down the fence and freed herself... just as Jill found the way to cut the power.

"The employee with the useless partner who did nothing but sit around in that apartment smoking all winter, but she at least did good work with the previously un-ridable bay.  I'll give her credit for that."  Did this horse owner have a good rapport with any past or current employees?  Jill should have seen it as a warning sign, but found the upside in that at least there was some credit being acknowledged in this one case... finally a positive word.

Jill thought she should stop eavesdropping on high maintenance dressage queens at the stable she was visiting, while being glad that none of them would be in the classes she was teaching.  Meanwhile, she was regretting how she had the privacy setting wrong on the comprehensive google doc she had created about what was to be one of her new teaching facilities. Not just those with access to the boss's email account but anyone with the link could see it.  Oops!  Because she had printed two copies of the draft  Stable Tour document (and thus allowed 2 copies of the complex string of digits to become available to others in the barn) her thus former bosses had freaked out.  Was it true the cops had looked at it?  And, with all the robberies in the area, felt the detail put the property at risk? Yowza.  There was nothing to be done but move on.  And, tell Roomie about it, for the learning and mentoring.  She was waiting for the senior coach to arrive at the facility.

Roomie finally arrived on site to audit the pony club sessions Jill would be teaching.  She was in a really uplifted mood, "Fall is beautiful in the country! I am so grateful for a car to drive through it in this year!  In the field across from our house, every day a different tree turns a different dramatic colour every day!"  She was coming from a riding lesson she'd taken where the Level 3, High Performance Coach had (finally) said "Correct him to you" about the dressage movement they'd been doing.  Returning to her childhood coach's farm for some tune ups, she'd been riding a bay that was a reliable school master in many respects, allowing Roomie to learn from him, and his fine execution when provided the smallest correct aid.  In this case, the fact that she should actually correct him, really made Roomie feel her instincts and fitness and finesse where finally coming back.  Her energy uplifted Jill and the pony club clinic was fun for everyone!

Work With What You've Got?

Looking out the window at the all the traffic parked outside the arena, you couldn't help but wonder if the dog club had looked yet at the handwritten, add-on barn rule about being courteous and respectful to the arena tenants.  This was the same sign with the handwritten further addition "No Kids Near Horses or in Barn."

The owner there would not allow her to host a clinic with an expert she'd hoped.  "Over in Europe, he would be a small fish in a big pond.  He hails from Europe yes, and he is a good horseman you can't deny that, but, no.  I'm not interested in his teaching."

Even at that place, Jill could spot a brood mare picking on a young one in the large mixed herd in the paddock, and shout her name from afar.  The bully chesnut, stopped what she was doing, looked up at Jill, fields away, and then went on to grazing anew, well behaved like.

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Jill wanted to run birthday parties called "Pony Makeovers".  She knew just the perfect pony partner! At every barn she went to, lol.

She was a bit dismayed when her mentor walked by the lesson she was teaching and commented to students directly with suggestions.  She then felt she was deferring control of the mother-daughter lesson to her boss, and felt a bit waffly in her coaching.  It was cool how there were two moms and two girls all thrown in the class together for the stand-in instructor session though, and in the boss's two second commentary, EVERYbody learned something, including the naughtiest pony.

Roomie told a funny story how in her day, she made her whole entire gym class go for a riding lesson field trip.  After she had gone into the weight room at her high school, where the boys had some sort of rivalry lifting going on.  The handsome Wayne Ryan had just lifted the most of anybody on the leg machine.  Roomie had sat down out of curiousity to see how such a load felt, and accidentally lifting it, to everyone's surprise.

Since she had their attention, she instantly decided to mention how strong horseness obviously makes one, not to mention tough and brave.

Then, she pitched the teacher, and her riding teacher, and everybody got on board.

At the barn, Roomie said she'd always remember how she was surprised to be gratified by seeing rep. hockey and rugby team members she was normally intimidated to be around, terrified once mounted on horse back.  Was it the altered centre of gravity?

She sounded nostalgic laughing about her mind's eye memory of Glenn Thompson, on Tess, ha.

Breaking Bread

Over their first shared loaves, Jill told Roomie about her last horse home.

One reason she couldn't resist that other new job then, was that the boss-to-be said the gig included accommodation, a "private cottage." Jill had told her friends it would feel so freeing to have like have a private, park-size, horsey, rural landscape to sing freely to everyday, without her pesky little sister making fun of her musical efforts all the time. "Just think, my very own place!" she'd exclaimed, thinking to herself about the cute potential co-worker she'd hoped still worked there. 

"What if that handsome Irish thoroughbred who caught your eye at the clinic turns out to be on the equine-team you are about to work with?" her friend Matilda had envied. "And I bet that cutie Jim remembers you from the show where you still had pink hair! When you were walking back and forth between Moxy at the dressage ring, Rue at the first aid tent and the activities of Bucker and the rest of the pre-training team, reporting on each to us others you went!"

Oh that day, groaned Jill, "I was so embarassed to have been running after Kelly Joe saying your dressage whip! Drop the whip! In an effort to remind her what she already knew. What if he saw that?"

She could still easily remember how when they'd arrived at the show that day, and she was walking into the barn for the first time. A magnificent, spotless building made with no nails, and how she'd said entranced "would somebody build ME a place like this?" To her surprise her famous-and-esteemed-facility-survey-companion said "Well, that depends what you want to do."

When she met the stable manager, who was a partner to the rider the place was built for, she couldn't stop saying how impressed she was with the barn. "It is so clean and beautiful that I would eat off the floor. Seriously, just lay planks across the beams up there and I'll move in. I LIKE a treefort bed, that's all I need." she only half joked, smiling at guy's handsome brother, who seemed to work there too.

Not long after, they did offer her the job, with accomodation. Her teacher put in a good word for her with the Olympic level rider Jill was ready to sign on with, but added, "I want her back when you're done with her."

Other phrases that stuck in her head were "if you need a couple hours off every day to write, I don't have a problem with that" and "but I'd like to see you riding every day though" (talk about win win).

After she'd accepted the new position as groom, she heard some stories that unsettled her. One was that usually, while the riders stay at the Ritz, the grooms stay in a hockey arena. On cots, together in one massive room where they don't even turn off the lights most nights.

She also saw a side of a show jumper rider that troubled her deeply. After the horse ate the oxer, because of said rider's error on the approach, and they had both hit the ground, she limped out of the ring leaving the also limping beast to the ring crew, having, apparently, lost all interest in him. Her friend refused to see the downside "You should have met her at the gate and made her an offer."

Her friend also told about an Oprah show she saw a while back, where they were releasing a survey of the 10 worst jobs in America. The speaker's husband at the time was a garbage collector which was the second worst, and which is why she remembered the show so clearly.... She teased Jill that she sometimes wished for a husband with the only career on Oprah-earth considered even more thankless, underpaid and grossly difficult than that one?vvCOWBOY is apparently the absolutely worst career of 'em all.

Roomie did not sleep well. Between the chipmunk and squirrel noises in the rafters and the horse’s freaking out in the stalls below the loft and some kind of supernatural fly buzzing into something all night she had awake and exhausted in my uncomfortable bed for hours and hours and hours.