(“What was the main thing she had learned in the lesson?”)

An occasion arose recently—one slightly out of the ordinary. The cast: A Young Rider who has been showing her German riding pony and being confronted by the mysteries of fourth level. A second student who bestowed upon the first the gift of a ride on her wonderful Grand Prix schoolmaster. And the most important participant, Kasper, who has seen and done it all.

Not to bore you with the lesson. We dabbled in what it means to be “quick off the leg,” how to allow things to happen instead of always “making them happen,” how to make Very Collected canter and piaffe without restraint. And of course she had to experience some of the “tricks.”

Now we get to the interesting part. One the way back to the farm we stopped for breakfast. The mom asked her daughter what was the main thing she had learned in the lesson. Given all the cool stuff she had just done, the answer would have gone almost anywhere. I was most pleased when she replied with just one word, “Lightness.”

That’s the kind of observation I’d like a rider to make because when it becomes a part of you, it changes everything.

Then came another teaching moment. She said to me, “Riding Kasper wasn’t really what I expected. I thought he was going to be a schoolmaster, but I really had to do a lot!”

“He IS a schoolmaster,” I corrected. “You were expecting a school horse who would carry you around and do all the movements for you.”But that’s not what a real schoolmaster does. If you ask correctly, he gives you the right answer and it feels great. If your aids are less precise, he will give you some version of the movement, but it will be less than optimal. If the way you are asking really misses the boat, he’s apt to look at you like, “You have got to be kidding, right?” What also makes him a schoolmaster is that if you do ask incorrectly, you won’t automatically screw him up. He has enough routine that unless you’re wrong over and over and over, he can disregard you with no harm done.

A real schoolmaster is a treasure!