(“What was the best lesson you ever taught?”)

Mysteries abound in the delicate interactions of teachers and students—what we say, what you hear, what ends up making a difference, what does not. I can recall times where at the end of a lesson, I thought, “Wow, I really nailed that one! Hit all the vital points—crisp, clear, and deluxe. Wrapped them up with a big red bow and Delivered! And my student offered a perfunctory acknowledgement, handed me my check, and wandered off distinctly less impressed that I was.

Conversely, there have been occasions when I’ve felt conspicuously uninspired and taught my way through a “plug in the cassette” rote sort of hour only to be thanked profusely for such an outstanding lesson that “cut to the essence of the horse’s problem and illuminated [for the rider] a whole new approach to solving it.”

And all through the rider’s gushing praise, I’m thinking, “Huh, I only said the same old stuff in approximately the same old words that I’ve been dishing out to you for the past six months.”

But this time they worked. What can I say? Yes, it’s the instructor’s duty to keep exploring the best possible exercises, tone, imagery, and analogies to get through to our pupils, but sometimes it’s a little like being a tennis teacher. Start with a big, big basket of balls, and just keep bouncing them one at a time and hitting them over the net until your student starts to hit them back.

I’ve been asked, “What was the best lesson you ever taught?” I thought of the one where I suggested to a piaffing rider, “Now just stop doing anything. And the piaffe not only kept going but got better. Of specific lessons in which a student discovered the body mechanics of the half halt. Or where a rider has broken into a mile-wide grin and gasped, “Wow, my horse has never felt like this before!”

But if I had to separate out the very best ever, it wouldn’t have been a single session but a series of lessons I gave to a woman many years ago. I had started out not to be teaching her but to instruct her teenage son who wanted to improve his flatwork for eventing. Then I was further recruited to help his dad with a greenish novice horse that he wanted to take showing. And finally, the mom asked to take part. She was a very sweet lady—shy, dedicated to her family and her animals—who suffered from agoraphobia, that unfortunate condition that made her reluctant to go out in public or deal with the world outside her safe haven at home. At times it was severe enough that she thought people in the airplanes occasionally flying overhead were spying on her! She rode with me weekly—for a long time just doing walk and trot and not particularly asking her horse to be very much on the aids. That she could negotiate the figures was enough. In some lessons she pretended she was Kathy Connelly, and her pudgy little Appaloosa was Gabrielle, the refined FEI mare that she’d seen Kathy ride (on video) at the INSILCO Championships.

What we accomplished in her lessons wouldn’t have moved the Dressage Meter’s needle very far, but when one day she volunteered to go to a schooling show and ride in front of people—even just to do an Intro test—I felt my lessons had made more difference in her life than I’d made in any other person’s in all the years I’d been teaching.