(“So we engineered a trade—one hat for one microphone.”)
Deadly serious. That’s what dressage is, and you can count on it!
There are exceptions—a few here that I can recall.
As you may have witnessed, my teaching voice can be loud. But occasionally, I’m granted the privilege of a sound system and a wireless mic, and it is hard for me not to amuse myself with it. One day long ago I was teaching “up behind the mountains” in Heber City, Utah, in an outdoor arena. A young boy of seven or eight came by, looking for diversion while his mom tacked up to ride indoors on her own. The kid was wearing a fabulous jester’s cap with fantastic multi-colored, stuffed horns tipped with bells. I had to have it! So we engineered a trade—one hat for one microphone. To make it a fair trade, I also taught him how to burp into it. He took instruction well, and strolled off with his toy. Unfortunately, the audio was being piped throughout the stable including into the aisle where his mother was working. Presumably she first heard the disgusting noises, then recognized the disgusting noises and their source. Sadly, shortly thereafter I had to give my new hat back.
Another microphone story proved more beneficial to the protagonista. This time I was teaching at the National Pony Club Festival at the Kentucky Horse Park. George Williams and I were sharing the big indoor hall, using two dressage arenas set end to end. Most of the lessons were groups of Pony Club Cs or Bs, but one featured three adult PC graduates, all the age of young mothers. Of the three, two were fairly competent, but the other had been off on a decade-long foxhunting binge during which she’d forgotten most of the niceties of arena work. Like steering, speed control, and rider position. In comparison, Captain Littauer would look like he rode falling over backwards. None of my reminders had much effect on this woman until I noticed her five year old son sitting in the first row of the stands. He and I quickly made friends, and with only a little coaching, he was able to wear my wireless mic and each time his mother went by to call to her in a pleading, little-boy tone, “M-m-o-o-o-m-m. SIT UP! M-m-o-o-o-m-m, LEAN BACK!”
It worked.
The third tale cheered me, if no one else. This was during a clinic in Miami in which I was being transported from farm to farm rather than the riders all meeting in one place. My hostess/organizer, Emily, would drive me to each venue, watch the proceedings, and then ferry me to my next assignment. One rider whom I met was fairly impossible. She was a young adult with a pleasant enough horse who had to stoically endure her whining about how hard everything was. None of it was remotely as bad as the drama queen made it out to be.
I was finding her complaining both tedious and a distraction until I flashed back to what I’d seen behind the seat of my escort’s truck. “Emily,” I said, “what’s in that case in the back of your Blazer?”
“You mean my violin?” she asked.
“Yes. Can you play it?”
“Of course,” she answered. “I’m in the orchestra.”
I asked her to bring it to the arena, and there she sat on the mounting block waiting for my cue for when the whiner would start up with her excuses. After a few brief serenades, my rider got the hint.
Exhibiting more decorous behavior, she knuckled down to learn something . And that glorious image of Emily at ringside sawing away on her fiddle has stuck with me for 25 years.