(“Hey, it’s the next string over. What’s the difference?”)

A word about routines. We all have them. My question is how much of a slave to them do we become. Your horse has to eat a certain time. His feet must be picked up in a certain order. The gelding may only be led in first. We have to do it this way. You have to do it that way. Before things get too out of hand, let me propose that the most useful routine to build into your horse is to teach him that his “routine” is to do whatever you want! Why should you let him expect anything else?

Bon Mot of the Day Number One: It’s not just your car you have to detail, it’s your riding!

If you teach, have you ever noticed that when you tell a novice to do something—anything—including to trot or make a canter depart, they always start on a circle. At some point riders graduate to being comfortable just making the transition or the movement. But not in the beginning. Then riders cling not to their guns and religion but to the safety of their circle.

A regular clinic student of mine is a bit haphazard with her arena geometry. She is also married to James Connors, the principal cellist with the Florida Orchestra. To try to persuade her to take greater care, I suggested her lack of concentration was like Jimmy saying to his concert master, “Hey, it’s the next string over. What’s the difference?”

Bon Mot of the Day Number Two: I’d rather have a little confusion than a foregone vanilla conclusion.

And this:
I taught a “girl” in a few clinics back in the mid ’90s when she was in college. As we all do, she moved on and we lost track of each other. Twenty years later she’s back with me as a loyal student, and she recounted this story:

In the late 90s she was living in Miami and experiencing the worst emotional drought of her life. Her career had not decided to happen yet. Her relationships were in a shambles. She was living in a tiny, grim apartment far from the fields and open spaces she would have preferred. One day on the way home she poured through the Yellow Pages and found a simple riding school where she could go take a lesson. A “life saving” one of sorts that thanks to the instructor’s (whose name she never forgot) interest, righted her ship and restored her mental equilibrium.

Time passed. A job. A husband. A child. A small farm, and one by one, some better horses to ride. We reconnected and began to work together again. Eventually along came a schoolmaster of almost anyone’s dreams and last year as a partnership they made their Grand Prix debut. As she got ready to ride her test, she asked me what I knew of the judge.

“Lisa Hyslop?” I answered, “Oh, I’ve known her for years. Did our “R” program together. Used to be Lisa Payne.” A light went on in Laura’s head. The judge for her first Grand Prix would be that same instructor who had given her that most meaningful lesson back in those Miami days. I forget the score, but that Grand Prix ride was comfortably in the mid 60s. A “full circle!” . . . I think that’s the definition of “closure.”