Fourteen lovely minutes

So the last two days, though mostly fine, have been marred by a few pieces of genuine bad news. One isn't mine enough to share publicly. Another is that T, the horse I rented for nine months until last spring, died a few days ago. He was living happily and well at the farm he went to after mine, and he died of one of those stupid things that sometimes affect horses and can't be made right quickly enough to save them. 

I miss T's sweet spirit. I miss his sense of genuine good. I'm grateful for the time we had together.

I hadn't been planning on riding today. I've got an appliance repairment whose arrival was originally scheduled as "between 8 and 5" and my husband's partners and their spouses are coming for dinner tonight. Thankfully, the broken appliance is not required to cook the dinner, and all the guests are bringing a dish. I spent some time this morning ironing my good napkins, very grateful that, unlike last year, I had a reason to use them this year--which is probably the only time I've ever been grateful to be ironing--and then the appliance people texted that they were narrowing their arrival time to "between 4:41 and 6:11" or, in other words, "perfectly arranged to screw up your dinner, but hey, now you can leave the house."

So I did. I went to ALI World Headquarters to fill one last order that came in before the schools shut for break, and then I grabbed lunch with my husband, and then, while we were in the middle of eating, the other bad news showed up and put a damper on everything. So after lunch I scoffed at my housework and went to the barn.

I'd have to go to the barn anyhow, of course, to feed things. The cats milled around, frantic, having not eaten since they scammed an extra meal yesterday. The horses looked peeved. Yesterday, when I went to feed, I found their water trough entirely empty, and it was clear from the reproachful way that they guzzled once I'd filled it that they blamed me entirely. Which was outrageous, since one of them--and Sarah, I think we all know it was you--had knocked the halfway full trough off the blocks it sits on precisely so that Sarah can't dump it over, dumped it over, flung the water heater halfway down the field, then stomped about in the mud puddle they'd created. In short, not at all my fault.

I put them in, then zipped my riding boots over the yoga pants I was wearing--close enough to breeches if you're not doing much. Fetched Rosie from her stall. Rosie's the little mare I bought last July. We went out to my small sand arena, and Rosie, I was pleased to see, let out a little sigh of happiness. The small arena is for flatwork, dressage; historically, neither me nor any horse I ride has enjoyed dressage. But Rosie and I are starting to get the hang of it. Rosie loves it when I ride well and hates it when I ride poorly. She doesn't buck or kick or doing anything awful, but she puts back her ears, gnashes her teeth, and stiffens her whole body whenever I do something wrong. Sometimes I'm not sure what I've done wrong, but with Rosie's immediate feedback I know I've screwed up something. For awhile I was dropping my inside shoulder on upward canter transitions. Lately I've fixed that, but been putting my outside leg too far back at the trot while using my inside leg to make her round. She starts to transition to canter, realizes I'm not actually asking her to, just flailing incoherently, and goes back to the trot pissed off about it. Rosie has a smart forward walk--unless I tighten my seat, in which case she slows and stiffens and glares at me. You see how it goes.

As a result our flatwork sessions have become amazingly zen. I need to be fluid and balanced and precise with my body; I need to be focused yet relaxed, clear but soft in my aids. And Rosie rounds herself into my hands, and we dance--sometimes for as many as six or seven strides before I tighten somewhere and screw us up again. And then we take a deep breath, and try again.

I time my rides on the exercise app on my watch. Today Rosie and I were right more than we were wrong. We found harmony. She practically purred.

At times like that it's tempting to just keep going, to push yourself and your horse and see what else you can achieve. Lateral work? Perfect downward transitions?

Not today. I needed some good news, and Rosie gave it to me. I patted her and called it quits, and when I dismounted saw that I'd been riding for exactly fourteen minutes.

Sometimes that's long enough.