(“Give it a sharp twist with your thumb, and then discover that the threads are crossed.”)

I’ve been told “Elvis is everywhere”—well, maybe not in Michael J. Fox—but just about everywhere else. For some of us, dressage is like that, too. I literally dream of teaching dressage lessons some nights. In them it’s never about those magical times where the epiphany lamp suddenly flashes on. They’re just the plain old “more inside leg, stop hanging” truisms that carry me through to dawn and leave me refreshed and ready to face another day. [add emoticon here]

Dressage is everywhere. I see it constantly in that strange, endless movie that plays in my head. And I see dressage all the time in mundane, routine activities I perform.

Being a Manly Man, one activity of which I must partake after windy days on the farm is chain sawing. And in that activity there is dressage. Now before you jump to the wrong conclusion, I’m not referencing the roaring, throbbing engine pulsating between my knees which threatens to rip nature asunder. That would make me an event rider.

Let me explain: The other day I was hacking up fallen limbs and tossing them onto the burn pile when the saw ran out of fuel. I wandered with it off to the garage where I keep the gas can. After I refilled the saw’s little tank, I experienced dressage. It’s a cheap saw, you see—yellow and largely plastic if that further identifies it. The filler cap is black, and its threads are very coarse.

It’s very easy if you’re in a hurry to slap the cap on, give it a sharp twist with your thumb, and then discover that the threads are crossed. Tip the saw upright, and the gas/oil mix leaks all down your jeans and onto your sneakies.

Now being a man on a mission with a lot of things to do—more throbbing and pulsating and then some photoshopping—it’s natural for me to yank the cap off, stab it back into place, quickly rethread . . . oh, damn. Jammed again. And again.

It’s like the way I see people make canter departs.

But there IS another way. A deep breath, a meticulous aligning of the cap on its seat, a delicate counter-turn of 90 degrees until it just feels right. At that moment I know in advance that the cap will screw right down to a satisfyingly tight seal. Guaranteed.

And when you make your canter preparations the same way—looking for that totally aligned, connected feel followed by a decisive and confident aid—your success there will be equally preordained.