Erasing the good; I woke up with a migrane 3am Monday. At 10am, I figured it wasn’t sinus took migrane medicine and remembered my mother bringing me hot rags, or coming in the middle of the night with the barf pan and started to cry, then sob, then briefly sobbed uncontrollably.
The pain erased the good wonderful time I had at #Fresno Horse Park with my mentor and idol, #Connie Arthur. Neueebee was great and that erased some of my bad realistic anxiety about my ability at this stage of my life to manage his further education as I see it.
In the wee hours I staggered to the kitchen to see if a hot towel would help, no. I zapped ramen to see if salty broth would help, almost barfed at the smell.Was up and down, laying there hoping it would go away and hoping Brian would wake up and take care of me. He is less sympathetic to my pain when I have been off having fun, so he mostly ignored me until 9am and then keep saying he thought driving made my pain worse.
Just like education of young horses; so many Liam babies were at the clinic. I think my favorite is Miles beloning to Ari. I like his look, he is lean and athletic with beautiful long legs and and a super long, relaxed overstep. He is still a baby and sometimes looking for his coordination, but yet offers natural lead changes over baby jumps. But, talk about natural, Wyatt, ridden by Tracy and oft Connies competition mount, when he jumps the mid sized jumps, surprizingly called “Training Level”, his knees snap up like a puppet and he just sails through the air!
Young horses do best with Pro’s like Connie, or competent riders like Ari and Tracy. Amateur riders erase what Pro’s and good riders put on young horses. The young horses, especially the good of heart, like Liam babies, get confused. The good of heart horses don’t try to kill their riders, their less skilled, less strong and less confident riders just fall off and get hurt or killed more often. (Need i say, wear all your safety gear, ladies). Whenever we put the horses in an erase the good position, it is so important to go back afterward and put more good where the bad erased the sketches that make up a well trained, experienced horse.
I recently saw Clinton Anderson in Texas, another person who I greatly admire for his skill, honesty and stick-to-itness. He said, horses don’t cost so much for who they are, they cost so much for all the hours of good training it takes to make them reliably good. He said, either pay the money up front for a well trained horse or pay the price for taking the risk, or be prepared for paying the cost of good training later.
Training is incremental, I believe. We lay do a good foundation, then we provide small challenges to learn where we need to go back and lay more foundation before the challenge is a learned task. I know whenever I have gotten hurt or nearly killed, i created to great a challenge for the foundation I built. Another word for this is, impatience.
Take your time, take it slow, be honest and confident about your own skill, make sure that the bad doesn’t erase the good by trying to do more than what you honestly are able to do.
I never cried like that about my mom. I loved her reliably, and intellectually I knew she loved me and only wanted the best and did her best by me. As a parent, I believe, she could not erase the bad from her own past and I have oft callously erased the good. I love you, Mom, and I’m sorry for not always telling the world how much you loved me.
