Old campaigners

I was reading through past posts on Mugwump Chronicles, and her Trained or Broke started me thinking. Once upon a time years back I was lucky enough to get a one-on-one lesson with a really good dressage clinician. (I don't ride dressage, but the lesson was a reward for an unpaid summer's worth of work for the barn owner.) The horse I rode was a big old NSH gelding, a national champion several times over in his day. Semi-retired, and used mainly for new riders who needed a very quiet gentleman to build their confidence, he would clomp happily around the arena in low gear, loved to be fussed over, and was an all around nice old boy. I'd ridden him a few times, but had no real clue what a prize I was getting aboard, lol.

The clinician, who didn't know either his background or much about mine, started the lesson assuming I had some clue, and the horse was "green" - a term which for her meant anything that wouldn't practically saddle itself. By 5 minutes in, she'd revised her opinion: Horse: knows exactly what he's doing, and will do it all IF cued correctly. Rider: doesn't know much, but can maybe take direction.

I was the greenie, and suddenly he was the teacher. Until then I'd only known the vocabulary, not the feeling. With her coaching, Big Fred gave me a taste of what riding a horse "on the bit" feels like when the horse is properly collected; of a round, balanced trot, followed by startling lengths of extension, and of the massive power that a driving hind end produces. After years of riding bareback any old way, riding western saddles for 4-H classes, and a few years of huntseat and jumping lessons on school horses with enough training to get them around a 3' course, but too many riders to make them truly great, at least in inexperienced hands, the feel Fred gave me was like a lightbulb going off.

I haven't ridden too many truly "broke" horses since, but that moment of epiphany has stayed with me. When I think of Big Fred I'm reminded that every single one of them green or broke has something to teach me if I'm willing to listen and learn.