He freed himself, looking stunned. Woozy even. I worried he’d really brained himself, but after a minute or two he shook it off and went back to pestering me to let him in the barn, already. I didn’t worry too much. He seemed fine.

For the next couple of weeks, I rode him, but we seemed to have taken ten steps backward. What had been a beautiful, collected and active canter with lots of jump had deteriorated into a strung out, floppy mess. What had been soft bend through the jaw and poll became grabbing the bit and turning the head sideways. And then, while I was in Europe, he launched the trainer I’d asked to ride him while I was gone.

Not that B hasn’t been known to misbehave, occasionally rear, sometimes try to rub me off on the fence. Not that he hasn’t bucked me off once, and almost bucked me off more times than I’d like to count. He did all that and more for the first year or so that I owned him. But over time his behavioral issues have become fewer and fewer, and now, on 99 out of a 100 days, he’s pretty happy to work. So this was odd.

The vet, who also happens to be a chiropractor, came out to check on him on the advice of the trainer.  He found his mandible swollen, his jaw totally out of whack, and his right hip in spasm. Poor guy, I say again. I felt badly that I continued to push him through the work without noticing that something was definitely wrong. Sometimes my own insensitivity to horses is my greatest downfall when it comes to training. Although I know intellectually that I can’t blame myself for not noticing, especially given the fact the B really was a pretty bad boy when I first got him, I do anyway. For days I’ve felt guilty about sometimes getting angry at B for being so stubborn when he was really trying to send me a message, “Hey, I’m hurting here.” Unfortunately, he must have really been frustrated with us insensitive humans to finally and definitively toss poor Nicole on the dirt in my arena.

After his adjustment, he was miraculously better. I mean, it was really amazing. I have been skeptical of chiropractic adjustments for myself, but I’m pretty much convinced of their value for horses. I rode B lightly right after the adjustment. He was soft, and much more willing to go forward. He’s gradually gotten better, straighter and more willing, and the chiropractor is coming out again on Wednesday for another adjustment. The canter isn’t back to where it was before the incident, but at least he can maintain it and stretch over his back.

Lessons learned, I guess. When there’s a change in behavior, best to check that pain isn’t involved.

Belle is a little horse, for a Warmblood. She’s only 15 hands at four years old. Undoubtedly she’ll grow a bit more—after all, Warmbloods don’t really mature until they’re six or so—but for now she looks a bit, well, coltish. Mike’s a bigger man, too, and when he sits on her her legs splay a bit. He hasn’t actually done much riding in the past month, but he’s spent a great deal of time on ground work.

Mike’s methods are probably a lot slower than some people would want. When you ship your horse off to get backed, you want it to come back ride-able. I, personally, have had to work really hard on being patient with both Mike and Belle, trusting that he knows when she’s ready to go under saddle. I come from the old school—longe them, teach them voice commands, and then get on. Mike comes from the old/new school. Do hours of groundwork, confirm all signals, build a calm and confident horse, then get on. 

Since Belle had such a tough start in life—her mother rejected her when she was just two days old, so she became an orphan—she has some “issues.” Number one is a mortal fear of injections. Don’t ask me when this started, but stick a needle in her neck and she freaks out, strikes, rears, etc. So desensitizing her to the needle has been a primary job. Secondly, Mike has worked on Belle’s busy feet. Although not a nervous horse, she is an impatient horse. It makes it hard for her to learn to just “be,” where ever that is. In the cross-ties, with the horse shoer, waiting to be tacked up, Belle has learned to just stand, and even take a nap when the sun is shining on her face and she’s relaxed. This is tremendous progress for a horse that, in the past, nibbled, wandered, stamped, and needed to be in constant motion.

While I’m anxious to ride her—she’s a cute horse and a nice mover—I’m learning to be patient. Mike gave me a lesson yesterday, teaching me some of the ground work he’s been doing. Of course she’ll be so much better under saddle when the ground work is confirmed and solid. I know this intellectually. She’ll have all the skills that I’ll need—all the body language and cues—to build a really good partnership. Emotionally I want to get on and ride. I have to remind myself that horses live a long time. You can push them into work when they’re just a few years old, or you can build a lifetime partnership with them one small step at a time. I could have gotten on Belle last year. In some training programs I’d already be taking her to her first shows. But instead I’m convincing myself that slow and steady will help us have better experiences when we do get to our first outing. In the meantime, I’m learning new skills that will refresh my own training program.

While the grand prix is certainly the highlight of the day, there are nine or ten competition rings going in Wellington on a Sunday afternoon. Adult Amateur jumper classes, hunter classes of all kinds, and everyone at the top of their game; If you're a horse lover, you have to make it to Wellington in Winter just to see it.

Then it was on to Paris, yes, Paris, for a few days. I visited the famous Chantilly, called the horse capital of France,  just twenty minutes by train from Paris. Among the miles of bridle paths, the race track, the polo fields and the private stables there is the magnificent stables built by Louis-Henri de Bourbon, seventh prince of Conde, in 1719, because he believed he would be reincarnated as a horse. He commissioned a famous architect to build a home worthy of a prince—only for horses.

Now, the stables house the Living Museum of the Horse, a 20-year-old project of the Bienaime family, where the goal is to bring horseback riding and classical dressage training to the masses by making it accessible and entertaining. They have 33 horses of all breeds, including a rare Indian breed who's ears are Arab-like in shape but point to each other instead of to the front. 

And then on to Cologne, Germany, for the wonderful SPOGA HORSE trade show, where Europe and Asia and the Middle East gather to trade in equestrian brands… there were some American companies exhibiting as well as some tack stores shopping. If you love finely made bridles and saddles and brushes and breeches, this is heaven, only it's a little expensive for Americans right now, give the state of the American dollar compared to other world currency.

But no matter: There are deals to be had and plenty of interesting things to see—some 16 countries have booths here, and there are attendees from dozens of nations. A truly international trade fair.

Tomorrow, I board the long flight home, and I'm more than ready to see Baleno and the gang, find out how Belle's training is progressing, and visit with the old man horse (and the old man husband!)

Happy trails!

Maybe because my riding has taken a substantial leap in the past two years because of this three-way training program, I’ve recently been thinking more about how instructors have their own language. It doesn’t matter whether they speak German, English, or Swahili at home: they have their own particular vocabulary they use to get their points across, their own vernacular. I asked an acquaintance why she wasn’t taking lessons with the Germans, as we call them. “Well, I just don’t speak the same language,” she said, and by this, she meant horse-training language, not spoken language. And those are two very different, although intertwined, things.

Sometimes it takes a while to find your niche when it comes to finding the right trainer. Or sometimes you just need a different voice to tell you to sit up straight and keep your heels down. For me, it took, literally, years of experimentation. When I came upon this particular combination, I began to make enormous progress. So even though we don’t speak the same language in our respective countries, it appears that we’re all using the same horse training vocabulary. I’m more aware of the differences in training styles as I’ve become a more educated horse person.

So when Nicole and I work together during the few weeks a year she spends here, I understand her perfectly, even if she occasionally loses a word or a phrase, or I have to repeat what she’s just said to make sure I understood her correctly. In fact, that’s not a unique phenomenon with just the Germans. I’ve had to do that with American trainers, too, people with whom I share a mother tongue. For my own students, taking lessons from the Germans reminds me to mix up the way I say things if I’m not getting my point across. Sometimes you have to change your language—literally.

Call me the Imelda Marcos of the equestrian world, an obsessive tack purchaser who never passes up a good deal, or any deal at all when it comes to leather goods. Maybe it’s because I spent so many years hoping and waiting for a horse that I suffer from a severe case of pent up purchasing. Whatever it is, the scope of my problem became pretty evident thanks to two recent incidents.

Incident number one: My youngest riding student, Natasha, seven years old, was tasked with going into the tack room to get a bridle for Volare, my old school horse. Natasha’s still too young and inexperienced to bridle a horse herself, but she’s learning to hold and hang a bridle properly. Natasha went into my tack room. “Miss Emily,” she said, “Why do you have so many bridles?”

“Well, I like them. You know, like how some women like shoes?” At this point, her dad piped in, “You know, like how Mommy likes purses.”

I took a look at my bridle rack from Natasha’s perspective: A medusa of strap goods. Seven bridles hanging on three hooks, only two of which are in active use. And that does not include the peg board of hanging bridle parts: cheek pieces and brow bands and headstalls and reins, umpteen reins, plus a couple of rope halters that some would consider bridle-like.

The second incident took place when my (non-horse-y) husband, who had sixteen days of Christmas vacation, decided to clean out the garage. When he was done, he had stacked three Rubbermaid storage trunks on the back porch.
“You need to go through those.”
“What’s in them?”
“Oh, I don’t know, horse junk.”
Among the stuff in the trunks were yet more bridles and bridle parts, along with galloping boots and old saddle pads and spent horse shoes, hoof dressing that had congealed and separated, empty bottles of horse shampoo (spilled into a goopy red puddle at the bottom of the trunk) and a horse blanket way to heavy to be useful for central New Mexico’s mild winters (left over from Massachusetts, where I haven’t lived since 1999).

When I was an event rider, each of the three disciplines required a different bit, and to avoid having to change them between phases I just bought a bridle for each event. That way I could be sure my bit wouldn’t fall out of my horse’s mouth as we galloped over the solid 3’9” scary-as-heck bank jump because I’d failed to assemble my bridle correctly. And I needed backups—an extra set of reins, an extra bridle in the trailer in case you forgot to pack one. Another extra bridle with a stronger bit in case the horse was feeling particularly fresh that day. You get the idea.

But it was clear: what had once been practical had morphed into obsession. Last year in Germany I bought a beautiful, light brown bridle because it was unique. Not because I needed it, but because I could imagine a day when I might need it.

What is it they say? The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem? Well, I admit it, but when I started to sort the junk into piles to be donated to the local disabled riding program, I couldn’t bear to part with it. Like clothes that no longer fit, I could imagine a time in the future when I actually might need a moldy hunter bridle long out of fashion. I’ll have to do a little more work to get over my tack obsession. When some people die, they find them buried in old magazines. When they find me, I’ll be happily submerged in bridle parts, having had a last delicious whiff of leather.