Well, I’d been regretting that decision, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Belle’s behavior away from home. She gets really strung out—pawing and kicking, bolting and freaking—but only on the ground, not, seemingly, when I’m in the tack.

So yesterday was the day of that big horse show—or actually, little horse show, at the local rodeo arena, dolled up in a dressage costume. It was a cool day for April in New Mexico, and Belle was in raging heat. It was just a club schooling show, but I was as nervous as if we were headed to the Olympics—for two little walk-trot tests. I’m generally not nervous in the show ring. I’m nervous about everything besides the riding part. Here’s the internal dialogue: “Will the horse load? Will she run off and gallop into the road? Will she kick me? Will she pull back from the trailer and break her neck?”  Joe, the trainer I’ve been working with, came along and Belle loaded right away. Belle stood fairly quietly for the first ten minutes, and then the pawing began. Joe had me work her just at the end of her long lead rope for 20 minutes or so, until she calmed down a bit. And then off we went to the show ring.

Belle rocked it. She was 100 percent with me. She didn’t shy at the judge and scribe under their flapping blue tarp. She didn’t shy at the people leaning out of the skybox or the announcer. The only bad moment she had was when she tried to attack a stallion who passed too close during the warmup.

And Belle got second place in her first test and won her second class with an astounding 68.5 percent! Our scores? The highest I’ve ever gotten. I would have liked to have taken a photo with her actually wearing her ribbons, but that was a little too much for poor Belle’s already overwhelmed brain.

The ground work, Joe assures me, is coming. As for future shows? I’ve never been a huge fan of horse showing, but given Belle’s desire to impress the audience, I may just have to make some more outings.

When I was a kid, my parents moved us from the 17th floor of a New York City apartment building to a home in “the country.”

To my highly urban parents, this meant a house on a postage stamp sized lot in a town a mere three miles from the George Washington Bridge. Urban child that I was, I was pretty sure that the presence of grass meant I could have a horse.

When we moved to that house, the “no horse” news crushed me, so I invented a world in the yard that included a jump course and a stable and a whole bunch of imaginary horse friends.

I used to “gallop” courses in the backyard. On Sundays, my mother, whose exodus to the ‘burbs forced her to learn to drive, gave in to my whining and we ventured further out in the country to go to horse shows—which back then were listed in the sports section of the Sunday New York Times. I would watch longingly as girls more lucky than I would trot around on their fine steeds. I was cranky and mad all the way home.

Bless my mom’s heart. She put up with a lot.

In my backyard, I was better than all those girls, and my horse was more game. I still strongly practice imaginary riding games, more often than I like to admit.

For example, this last weekend I watched the World Cup of Dressage and Jumping, held over four days in Las Vegas at the Thomas and Mack arena. You can still watch by visiting www.universalsports.com and clicking on the video link.

I always try to use what I see. I visualize myself riding the perfect test, and sometimes I’m anxious to leave the broadcast and ride my own (real-live) horses right then and there. Maybe I can imitate Anky van Grunsven (who did not win, for once). Heck, I’m happy to imitate the last-place rider, because you have to be all that to make it this far at all. I go out to my arena, just as I did when I was a girl in that Jersey backyard, and pretend.

While the spring weather shaped up beautifully, Baleno and I practiced our moves, and with each step I said to myself, “ride like you’re Anky!” Who cares if I’m a stumpy plump gray-haired rider who drops her left shoulder. I can at least pretend, for a few minutes, that I’m tall, slender, blond with a rod straight back and a perfectly trained and obedient horse. I can pretend the crowds that went ballistic for Steffan Peters (who won the dressage for the U.S. and rode his freestyle to Led Zeppelin’s Sympathy for the Devil, a song that reminds me of my best teenage years in Jersey), are really cheering for me.

And of course, Baleno transforms from a sometimes difficult, lazy horse into the lightest, most lithe champion. I do sit a little straighter when I’m pretending to be Anky. I do manage to get both my seatbones on the saddle and my shoulders up and back. My horse can feel my newfound confidence and he responds, at least for a moment, while I pretend I’m someone I’m really not. And then a second later it all falls apart again. I repeat my mantra: “be Anky!” and I straighten up once again, and so it goes.

I know I’ll never be in the World Cup for real, but it never hurts to pretend.

Readers, thanks for your supportive comments last week. I’m happy to report that Belle and I are enjoying our lessons with Joe. Already she’s shown some really excellent changes.

This morning we tackled the irrigation ditch. I’ve taken her up the east side under saddle, with Volare, and then Baleno as company. We’ve never tackled the scarier, wilder, west side and we’ve never gone alone without a rock steady partner. To walk up the west side means passing Fernando’s house—abandoned since the old man died last summer, and true museum to junk: there is a POD (one of those white storage boxes); a satellite dish big enough to signal Saturn (so big, kids skateboard in it), there’s a collection of junked sailboats (Fernando must have been optimistic about the water sports opportunities in the desert), and skins hanging on the clothesline. Then we have to navigate the horse gate—a welded metal square that horses can step through but is meant to discourage motorized vehicles (doesn’t always work). We also have to pass the irrigation turnouts—huge metal doors and their associated wheels—as well as the sewer/water “circles.” I don’t quite know what they do, but these giant, concrete disks—about ten feet in diameter—are hollow underneath. Belle has learned to walk over the one on the east side, but the west side disk sits out in a field and is raised above the ground. All my horses find them spook-worthy, although Baleno just perks his ears now. There are very tall reeds on this side of the ditch, and behind them the “ghost horse” lurks—a light grey Arabian who tends to stay in his shelter until the moment we’re even to him, and then he steps out of the darkness. Once, ghost horse did this while I was trotting Volare, the most spook-proof horse I’ve ever known, and it startled him so we almost landed in the water.

Ghost horse did his thing, and Belle stopped and looked. She did not run sideways or bolt forward. She was alert, and stepping sideways here and there, but per Joe’s instruction I let her reach down for a nip of grass, talked to her, made her stop and back up before we turned for home.

It was so uneventful I wondered why I hadn’t taken her up the west side ditch before.

I was so optimistic that after our session, I came in the house and filled out our very first horse show entry and stuck it in the mailbox with my tax returns!

Now comes the harder part: Convincing all the trainers that I encounter to leave me alone while I work it out. See, here’s what happens to me. I get to a show, or to a clinic, or to a lesson, away from home. Belle is excited, irritable, distracted and difficult.

Time and again, I put myself in a subordinate position—a place where I’m clearly doubting my own ability to handle my horse. Then someone steps in to help. Usually it’s a trainer-type person, who has their own way of doing things. In the past, that has included working with Belle just as I do—a little bit natural, a little bit tough love. That’s been fine. But then there are others who believe a little more “force from behind” will do the trick. And that has made Belle nervous and uneasy when we go away from home. She doesn’t know what to do, because suddenly there are strangers involved, doing things with whips, making her move this way and that, tapping her on the side or from behind or from the shoulder. And that freaks her out.

Who can blame her for being stupid away from home? 

I blame myself, now, for not being more confident and calm in these situations; for not saying, “thanks but no thanks” to offers of help. For not breathing deeply.  Just last week, when I took Belle to a saddle fitting, a nice gentleman who I know is a good horseman offered to help me load her in the trailer. I was proud of myself. For once I held my ground. I said,

“You know, it just takes a little while. I appreciate your help, but I think we’re okay.”

As it turned out, I did need him to hold the door open since the wind had kicked up, which he did. And Belle got in after just about 15 or 20 minutes of reluctance. I used my method, which she understands. And she got in.

I don’t know precisely when I started doubting my abilities, but in all this struggle with Belle, I’m surely regaining some of that confidence. It’s a slow path; at times it’s even a little humiliating, but it’s my own journey.

In classical training theory, there is this nice tidy pyramid (like the nutrition pyramid from the USDA) that you can follow that starts with rhythm and relaxation, and builds gradually toward collection.

1.Rhythm
2.Suppleness
3.Contact
4.Impulsion
5.Straightness
6.Collection

If you move up the pyramid without having those basic levels confirmed, common wisdom has you and your horse returning to rhythm and relaxation and suppleness and contact—even if you’re well beyond that but run into a training snag.

As far as I know, there is no “offical” training scale for groundwork. What I do know is that my red mare can be a royal giant pain in the neck on the ground. She pulls, she ignores, she even can occasionally rear. She pins her ears and threatens. She loads reluctantly and does not want to be tacked up away from home. If she doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t go. Basically she doesn’t lead.

In the meantime, she’s doing trot leg yields under saddle and we’ve started to work toward building impulsion. When I ride her, she’s at level 3 on the pyramid (which is not, mind you, third level). When I handle her on the ground, she’s a badly trained foal.

I’ve been skeptical of natural horsemanship with Belle because she can turn a little mean. Horse whispering falls on deaf ears with her: I feel the need to shout (and yes, readers, I know this is not the right reaction).

I found a guy in the neighborhood who works with racehorses; he’s a Parelli guy (one of you readers told me a few posts back, “do a month of Parelli. That will fix it”), sort of. A friend who’s a reproduction vet for racehorses recommended him.

Belle’s had two lessons with him so far. He does get tough when he needs to, but most of all he’s helping me with my relationship with her—and this, to me, is the most important thing.

Since Volare died I have felt a strong sense of loss around “the relationship” I had with him. Yes, I miss him horribly, but I’d hoped that one day I’ll have that kind of love and friendship with another horse. I don’t have is with Baleno, who is a great performer and somewhat of a clown but overall quite aloof. I thought I would have it with Belle, who I bred, birthed and bottle raised. She used to be my shadow, following me around the property when I did chores, pretty much my pal. I taught her tricks and she’d follow me anywhere. But now, at five, our relationship has turned adversarial, a power struggle on a frequent basis.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m discouraged and sad about Belle. I’m embarrassed that when I take her places other people feel the need to tell me how to handle her. I’m even more embarrassed that I somehow have lost the self-confidence to tell those know-it-alls to back off—that I’m in good shape (it’s obvious I’m not).  I occasionally consider selling her, even though I never take on a horse I don’t plan to have for life. I know when we’re on the other side of this hard work we’ll both be the better for it—I’ll be a better hand and she’ll be a better horse. Maybe we’ll love each other. It will be, no doubt, a different kind of love than what I had with Volare, but it will be there nonetheless. Belle is the nicest, most athletic horse I’ve ever owned or ever known. Everyone who comes in contact with her oohs and ahhs. Many offer to buy her. On days when she’s trotting around like a champion, I ooh and ahh too. But on days when she won’t load or walk down the street or settle down and let me tack her up, I’m tempted to just post that classified or call those friends who said, “if you ever decide to sell her…”

I’m hoping we can make this work. I love to ride her and I love her, most days. I’m hoping our “back to basics” ground work will help us build that relationship we both want—respectful, loving and positive.