And get this: Sally Swift didn’t write Centered Riding, a must-have for any and all equestrians, no matter the discipline, until she was 65. That’s right. She worked at the Holstein Association (cows, not horses) until her retirement and then penned that fabulous tome that I’ve come to rely on for inspiration, ideas, and now, hope.

Yes, if you’re a middle aged person who feels like her best work is maybe behind her, like I do, remember Sally Swift. Not only did she write that first book at 65, she wrote the second one just a few years ago, well into her 90s. And it’s just as good.

I thought about Sally Swift a lot when I was out riding my youngster, Belle, on Sunday. As a little horse with just about two months of riding on her, I am always keenly aware of how “centered” I am on her. If I’m unbalanced, she will be, too. Since she’s super sensitive, anything I do with my body is directly reflected in her movement. So I remember Swift’s four building blocks—breathing, building blocks, centering and soft eyes—when I’m riding Belle, or any horse for that matter. It really works. I can still clearly see Swift’s drawings of the rider’s body divided into different blocks, stacked on top of each other.  I can easily envision the soft eyes she advocates. I take lots of deep breaths to remind her, and me, that whatever is really scary in that corner of the arena isn’t scary at all. Breathing like that, sometimes I can feel Belle match my rhythm.  It’s pretty cool, and it works.

Swift’s concepts came about because she had a severe scoliosis of the spine. Back then, they did some physical therapy and it was through those sessions that Swift learned the importance of physical and emotional connectedness—which she later applied to horseback riding and articulated in her wonderful book.

Finally, there’s this lesson: It’s never too late to embark on a new and exciting project. For Swift, it was Centered Riding. For the rest of us, who knows?

Nope. Not my life.

I grew up in the suburbs, in a tiny house crammed in amongst a million other tiny houses. When my family moved from the apartment in New York City to a house with a lawn in New Jersey, I was convinced I'd be able to have a horse (we had land, after all). But of course, Northern New Jersey is really no less urban than Manhattan. Our yard was measured in square feet, not acres. No horses for little Emily.The dog, however, substituted, and I built little jumps out of fallen down pickets from our fence.

My mother tried, she really did. She looked into getting a horse for me, but the world was just too foreign--and too expensive--for immigrant, raised in New York City parents. In the end, I was consigned to weekly riding lessons at a stable nearby. It's still there, and when I visit I like to wander in the barn aisles and get a whiff of the place.

It's smaller than I remember, more crowded. At the time, I thought it was luxurious and huge and the horses all gleamed and were perfect. But standing ringside as two instructors taught lessons at the same time in that small-ish indoor arena, I remembered that the ponies were stubborn, I had my first fall off a palomino who bucked, and that sometimes I just wanted to get out of the arena and gallop, gallop, gallop! I also remember counting down the days between riding lessons. In my childhood journal, I wrote pages and pages of practice letters asking the owner if I could have a job. I envied his daughter, who had her own pony (she's now an Olympic contender). I would have gladly traded my parents for hers.

I'm glad to see the place is still operating. It's just as it was, filled with little girls who were born in the wrong place--the suburbs, not the country--to parents who can't really understand where "this horse thing" came from. As I'm wandering through the barn, I hear them talking to each other, their small fantasy lives unfolding. The horses, for that two hours on a Saturday afternoon, are theirs alone.

Daisy is a bit of a mystery. At 13 hands, a bright palomino, the best estimate is that she’s about two years old, but when Jenny found her she was severely malnourished and is probably stunted in her growth. She may, in fact, be a pony. Or a small horse. Or a quarter horse who will grow.

Anyway, as you can imagine there were some exciting herd-establishment fireworks. Baleno is about as alpha a horse as you can get—he was probably at one time a stallion, and was “cut” late. He was quite upset about Daisy, and spent the first few days making ugly faces at her over the fence.

I turned Daisy and Belle out together for the first time a few days ago, and Belle really went after her, but ultimately never made contact. By the end of the second day, it was quite clear to me that whatever animosity existed between the two girls was gone forever. Belle and Daisy had become inseparable, thick as thieves, totally and completely in love.

Now I’ve got an altogether new problem: Whenever either one leaves the herd of two to go somewhere—for Daisy it was a walk along the irrigation ditch, for Belle a work session in the arena—they pine for each other. It’s gotten quite noisy around here with girl-horse-love.

My husband noted about this entire herd-integration project that fillies are just like women. They hate each other, then they can’t stop talking to each other. There’s never anything in between.

It’s just too hot for the intensity of dressage. Instead of five days a week of arena work, I vary Baleno’s routine with a little jumping and trail riding and long walks in the deep sand out in the field behind my house. It’s good for both of us. It keeps the boredom at bay and works different muscle groups. We’re really enjoying each other again, too, after a period of frustration. He’s playful instead of mad. I’m laughing instead of crying. It’s a great relief, I think, to have let go of that high-brow goal, at least for now.

In retrospect, I don’t know what got into me that I felt the need to push us both so hard. It was like some force outside myself had crowded into my brain and forced out the essence of why I love riding and horses. Why, suddenly, did I need the ribbon and high score and the recognition? Perhaps it was the publication of The Adult Longeing Guide —I needed to “prove myself” by excelling in the competition arena. That’s how I felt, anyway. I remember talking to my editor about this, the venerable Steve Price. I said, “but I’m not an Olympic rider.” And he said, “but you are a very good writer. And you can express yourself well whereas some great riders cannot.” But all along I felt I’d be “outed” as an imposter if I didn’t ride as well as I write.

Thing is, dressage is all about “the test.” And I’ve never been a good test taker. In school, I had low scores for any exam even though the grades on my homework were always superior. I chose a college that preferred to see a portfolio of creative work as a standard for admission rather than SAT scores. In grad school I employed a tutor to help me with the mathematics tests, and when I started law school and realized that the whole thing depended on one very long and very intense exam, I dropped out, choosing instead a program that allowed me to graduate with honors on the basis of my writing and analytical skills. Know thyself.

No matter how well I know the material, I don’t test well. Just before the last dressage show I entered, I had an absolutely wonderful ride on Baleno. We knew our material. He was really through and listening and with me. I felt, all of a sudden, that both he and I were ready, once again, for a horse show. We’d do great this time! I could feel it deep down. And once again, we bombed out in front of the judge, he getting pissed off and jumping up and down, me feeling discouraged.

And that was when I let go. I realized how much we both disliked doing it. I realized how unhappy we’d both become with our partnership. I realized, most importantly, how little fun we were having. Every lesson had become simply working through issues, rather than learning new movements or moving forward. Every ride was a recap of every lesson. And every circle, leg yield, shoulder-in, was an exercise in failure.

Yesterday I got the jumps out for the first time in a long time and set up a little gymnastic. Baleno perked right up when I pointed him at the jump, and for the first time in a long time I felt him spring forward rather than resist against me. His ears perked up.
All we did was jump some little fences—nothing more the 2’9”, but boy, did we both have fun. And that’s what it’s all about, for me. It’s about fun.