(“’I didn’t ask for those!’ I blurted.”)

Not all escapes take place at break-neck speed. Remember the slow motion pursuit of OJ and Al Cowens in the white Blazer? Well, Fox News hasn’t cornered the market on snail-like runaways. It happens in the dressage arena too.

When you combine the words “runaway” and “horse,” what usually springs to mind is a panicked headlong dash across the fields with the rider clinging desperately to her crazed horse’s neck, hoping to get stopped before injury (or worse) occurs.

But your horse can just as well be running off with you in the walk if he’s setting his own tempo and ever so discreetly barreling through your half halts. What takes place may not even look to an observer like anything bad is happening, but if your horse knows he’s in charge, you’re in trouble!

Riders who don’t know any better, play the “I didn’t tell him to do that” card. About 40 years ago I tried that excuse while riding an old schoolmaster at the American Dressage Institute. As I tried to straighten his canter down the wall, he responded with some random tempis. “I didn’t ask for those!” I blurted.

“Yes, you did,” my instructor reassured me. No easy way out there!

Those weeks marked my first flirtations with riding a really well trained horse—a humility-inducing experience if you possess even a shred of self awareness. My counselor was Goldlack, Mrs. Serrell’s retired GP horse. I was not the first whom he had laid to ruin. At one point I inadvertently found his passage button. He was all too eager to oblige. Alas, I could not find his “off” switch. The more I tried to remember my lessons and squeeze him up into my hand for a downward transition, the higher and more expressive his gait became. I began to worry—Skidmore would need the arena on Sunday for a hunter show, and it felt like he might still be passaging by then.

Somehow, we got stopped . . . maybe the quarter ran out. And for a time I had to slide this experience into Bill’s Workin’ On Mysteries Without Any Clues folder, near-bursting with my dressage uncertainties.

Years later, I was cheered by another FEI rider/dressage judge who admitted much the same thing had happened in his past. As a young man in Vienna, he was fresh off the plane to ride with Ernst Bachinger from the Spanish Riding School. He had shown up at suppertime after having traveled for hours, and Bachinger was quick to get him started on one of the stable’s old pros. As my friend recounted, the same mortifying passage runaway was re-enacted, but this time before a large, amused audience behind the glass wall of the café built into the end of the arena. Apparently, this horse knew the drill quite well and was only too happy to supply the dinner’s entertainment and to put another goofy American in his place.