How Long Have You Been Riding?

The cats did not look well.  They were eating and drinking and all and they felt soft but didn't have a sleek look, especially Lucie.  Was she lethargic? There was still the headshaking with both of them, but she saw no signs of fleas.  "If was at an office job right now, I would not be witness to this" she told herself about a few of his ailments... vowing NOT to go to the vet again so soon.  It always cost at least $100 and most of the time didn't even address the concern she'd travelled in with!
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Meanwhile, at her new lesson factory, one horse started licking her right away.  Okay, now this was getting weird.  Was she diabetic and leaking sugar or something? They all just loved the attention she doted on each of them!  And, she loved it right back -- obviously she was not getting enough snuggling at home, ha.

The teacher she was replacing was moving on to work full time for a vet, including the rehab rides.

She liked how many horses went in bitless bridles, and how every single rider sat so lightly on the horse's back as they mounted, using a mounting block and proper line up procedure. She did not like how they adjusted their stirrups, letting go of the reins and kicking both feet out of the stirrups.  Or, for that matter, how they didn't learn to do their estimates and adjustments from the ground while killing time in the barn anyway.

When she was officially the teacher, she would keep an eye on the clock and ensure they tacked up on time.  With a schedule like this one with half hour breaks between classes, there was no reason to ever run late!  She was also glad coaches were able to oversee the duties of the volunteers in this way!

She wanted to organize a colours, markings and measurement event, and a mane pulling clinic, as well as a saddle fitting clinic.  Her first lesson plan with all riders was going to be helmet fitting, to document checking up on this AND to teach them what to look for themselves.

She had a wonderful back to school feeling, and couldn't wait to create student profile forms and horse bios and binders and binders and binders of organized notes ha.


Eventually her surveys to the riders/students she was meeting changed from "How long have you been riding?" to "How many times have you fallen off?"  It was fun to get them to splain their history in this dramatic way!


Jill remembered one of the first times she fell off her big bay 7 yr buddy, she hit the metal fence part at the end of the ring.   She had the wind knocked out of her, and in fact ended up with two stripes in across her back from the fence bars - one bled and one later turned into a huge black horizontal stripe across the top of her butt... and she suffered a terrible tailbone tenderness for a long time afterwards.

As she got up, staggering to her knees, her coach pointed to where the metal was bent outward at the end of the ring.   "See what you did?" Jill was in such agony at first that she actually believed her, which was just as well...  "Who tries to make a rider with no air in their lungs and who knows what injuries LAUGH?!" Jill would   f i n a l l y  jokingly complain about to her teacher about her response.