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January 9, 2016: Horsemaster’s Pony Club Meeting

Gotta Start Somewhere: This is as good a place as any

A humbling Friday evening. I had last night to deal with the fact that I really don’t know all that much about teaching horseback riding. Last night I had to work with nine riders at all ends of the ability spectrum. The most difficult for me to work with were those who know a great deal, which are those who have years and years of arena lessons with top-notch instructors.

And now there is me, an older woman who has taken it upon herself to start teaching. Being older and being lacking in arena riding experience makes me



“suspect.” As I did when teaching in the classroom, I found myself (after) focusing on those who seem to me to have figured out all the riding basics and then some. Working with such individuals is like biting into rocks. Maybe I don’t lack balls. Maybe what I lack is teeth. Well, two of my molars are now history – I need to hang on to my front teeth, otherwise I’ll be more suspect. No one in their right mind would see a riding instructor with missing front teeth as being credible.

I most enjoy working with those, like Cindy Medbury, who are getting back into the saddle after a lengthy hiatus. (Her reasons are medically related). And I enjoy working with kids. And I enjoy working with those who are receptive to my ideas. And I enjoy working with those who question my ideas because they want clarification. The experienced riders – they have not established the neural pathways that indicate that certain other things work for them.

So I’m thinking that once my arena is in that I’m going to have to (as I said in previous dispatches) start teaching workshops, with a focus on body awareness, agility, TTeam training, and Centered Riding. I am going to call my business “From the Ground Up” and my motto will be “the sky is the limit.”

I’d like to have riders begin by working on their own learning curves – say relate these curves to a certain time frame in their riding-related lives. I would, in the horse-related exercises, use our own horses. I might have the Lemay kids give me an assist. Can’t do Jack Shit right now because of the weather. But, perhaps I can do this at Saddle Up.

I just keep pushing the envelope. There’s a part of me that wants (after this particular lesson) to crawl under a rock and never emerge. Then there is a part of me that just keeps coming up with ideas that I feel compelled to act upon. This is obviously an ideas Journal right. There. An accidental ahh haa moment. Journal right. What a concept. Amen and pass the hot butter popcorn.

Next: January 10, 2016: Saddle Up et al.

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