I've spent some pleasant hours over the past few days exercising D and acclimatising him to barefoot work. I've spent some time thinking too about recent posts and the fascinating responses received: thank you to each reader who commented.
Something that I am grateful for, after many hours and even more miles in the saddle, is a sense of comfortable fluency riding. It is a fluency that can come only with time and distance, indeed a state that seems as easy and natural as walking on my own feet.
I did characterise my riding as a working relationship with a horse. However that does mean a partnership, not purely a hierarchical relationship ,although a successful rider ranks higher than his horse in the herd hierarchical sense. I find it hard to compare riding to socialising with a horse, since there is an objective (to trail riding anyway) and parameters governing how to get there.
Having had my back treated by a chiropractor, I am walking tall and straight for the first time in years. Not only that, but I am sitting straight when riding, and this is shown by symetrical sweat marks on either side of D's back (and P's when I have ridden him). It took one adjustment to get my stirrups equally long on either side, and a second adjustment to even out the sweat marks. I feel a whole lot happier and more fluent in the saddle as a result.
A visitor who saw me four or five years ago would hardly recognise me now, for that fluency has come over time, and was not there during the earlier years in Eastern Europe. Back then I did not enjoy a home life that promoted harmony and confidence, only a stubborn will to survive.
It's curious how some of us prefer mares, and some prefer geldings (and stallions). For the most part (in a very small sample), the women prefer geldings, and the men prefer mares. That makes me the odd one out. I don't really know why. Perhaps because now I am more of an intellectual and look on riding as a working partnership, hence I relate better to a steady, predictable horse? (D may be a stallion, however he has a calm personality and is straightforward to work with, provided that one has a certain strength of character that he respects.) I don't work well with emotionally unsteady flappy sorts of horses (mares, in other words), or people either. I got on well with male staff, and with several female interns who were tomboys or had tough quasi-male personas. I worked less well with a female guide who could be a girly-girl and flapped for help (or withdrew and sulked) when difficult clients, blood or other disagreeable things appeared to challenge her.
That's odd because more a decade ago I used myself to be rather less stable, when I was medicated for depression and was finishing (albeit rather late) the whole rebellion issue against parents and their middle class values and indeed the selfishness and greed spawned in Britain during the awful Thatcher era. I'm sympathetic to those facing similar issues, however I protect myself from being dragged back down. I don't mind socialising with some of the flappier people (they can be quite amusing after a drink or two), however working with them leaves me feeling frustrated and vulnerable to regression. In part, it's because I've found that an emotional response to many problems can be quite unhelpful. In part, one never fully heals: a view in a mirror can be disturbing.
P just chases flappy people around and steals their horses when they enter his field. This may not be the most helpful solution either.
Having had a spell of rebellion, craziness and instability - and, more to the point, finished sane and happy - does give a good persective on sanity, on what one can and cannot change, and indeed upon what is worthwhile.
Back to horses. Stallions can be strong and unpredictable. But, I think, unpredictable only in a loutish male way: a rather limited repertoir. As T E Lawrence put it (writing about peasants): their thoughts revolve about the region between the knee and navel - food and sex. The comment that stallions need to be kept working is spot on.
A mare is more complex. A good mare might go an extra mile, if one can find her, and if one doesn't get dumped off or hurt along the way. I've been injured intentionally by two mares and hurt by the irrational antics of a couple more. Dealing with them, especially the lively ones, has a little too much of the character of Russian Roulette for my liking. And yet another person does brilliantly with mares. I had three great mares at the riding centre, which were ever popular with clients. They had been handled extensively since birth (but stayed in the herd to learn manners), and were lovely to work with. The fourth of that year's crop, the most capable of the four and a definate Alpha, was a bitch. But a bitch who would go an extra mile.
Geldings are safe and predictable, and seem (to me, anyway) to be more playful than mares or geldings. Perhaps a gelding never really fully grows up, thanks to losing what the vet removed, rather as pet cats and dogs never attain the full behaviour of their wild relatives?
I half expected to be criticised for banding about stereotypes (or whatever else un-PC I had done) in my post of two days ago, and was pleasantly surprised when it attracted postive feedback. It would be nice to think that this post is interesting enough to deflect criticism.
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