(no subject)

[which_chick]

Conditioning today was more of the same. It's tiring but at least the weather has changed to more fall-like and lower humidity.



As we got back from conditioning, Liss came out of the house and told Cass to "take this kid riding". Now, it's pushing 7 PM on a school night. Cass has to go home and get cleaned up for dinner and bed/school tomorrow. So does Olivia. They do not have time to take someone riding, particularly not someone they don't know well. Cass says that she has to go home. Olivia (Cass's little sister, not eleven until November) says she will take the person riding. Olivia is not really big enough to supervise anyone at riding, especially if anything goes awry, and her mother probably will not be happy about her decision.

Eventually, Olivia's dad tells her to get in the truck. She does. I put her horse away. My horse is still out. The girl (17) still wants to go riding, even a short ride. She says she rides "a lot" and works at a horse barn and spends "a lot" of time on horses and takes lessons and jumps and canters and yadda yadda yadda.

I get Mariah out of the field because the kid is probably packing a buck eighty or thereabouts -- shorter than I am but rounder -- and Mariah is sturdy, fairly tolerant and not likely to turn out from under the kid even if the kid's chops are not all that. I put Kenzi's wintec saddle on her and I screws it down tight. (I'm doing foreshadowing. The phrase "screws it down tight" is used in the song Strawberry Roan. So that you don't miss the foreshadowing, I'm putting the link here for you. I agree that this is not particularly elegant or smooth but it's is better than having foreshadowing that totally goes over your collective heads.) I got a full cheek snaffle and put it on Mariah while the girl went to put on her riding boots, gloves and helmet (all of which she brought with her).

She stands on the wrong side of Mariah to get on. (Red flag.) I remind her wrong side and she goes around to the other side to get on, which she does reasonably correctly. Someone has taught her to ride with contact. Mariah knows how to set her head and does, without fussing, which tells me that the girl (Mia) has reasonable hands at the walk. Yay. I picked Mariah partly because she knows about contact.

Mia's lower leg looks good, not chairlike, heels down, moderate amount of leg on the horse. Her lower leg looks better than mine, actually. We cross the road. Mia asks Mariah to canter up the slight grade and into the alfalfa field, without warning. Mariah obliges. I am all like "Wait, stop, whoa! Sit up straight, pull back!" It does not look to me like Mia has any damn seat. Mia eventually gets Mariah stopped, but it doesn't look confident or solid. It looked to me like she was going to get run away with before she got a handle on Mariah. I was like "You really scared me, was that by accident or on purpose?" Mia was "I totally did that on purpose." Hrm.

We proceed at a walk to the pear tree and bear left towards the jumps. I put forth the "I know you ride a lot and all, but you'd be amazed at the number of people we get who say they ride a lot and are very experienced whose most-recent and applicable riding experience was not falling off at the pony rides when they were six. I'm not saying that you are in that group, but I only just met you and I don't know how you ride yet. I need about fifteen minutes, during which we will be warming up anyway, to check you out at various paces and activities and if everything looks good, then we'll go play jumps." Somewhat mollified, Mia agrees to this.

We pick up a nice medium-slow trot, looks okay. She's a little weight-forward (head and shoulders) on posting but her lower leg looks reasonable and she's got a decent rhythm right off. She's done this before. I'm like "Okay, sit up straight and ask Mariah to extend the trot a little. She's got a lot to work with there, you should have no trouble getting more." Mia asks for more, Mariah delivers. Mia's rein contact slips as she tips a bit more forward. At this point, Mariah picks up a canter. Mia has now tipped way forward, saddle is starting to tip practically over Mariah's shoulders. (Mariah is mutton-withered but this is typically not a problem for her. However, she's normally ridden by people who don't tip forward in distress. I honest to dog put the girth on tightly, not at the fist-between-girth-and-saddle looseness I typically ride with.) I'm all "Sit up straight, pull back" but she tries to pull Mariah to a stop by standing toes-down in the stirrups and leaning forward, which is not effective and exacerbates the saddle problem. Damn it. Mia tumbles off over Mariah's right shoulder, twisting the saddle on Mariah's back. It slides down to her side, stirrups banging her as she canters (rather briskly, I should add) in big counter-clockwise circles around the alfalfa field.

The alfalfa field is not fenced. There is a fairly busy hard road on the "towards the other horses" side of the field. Yikes. I halt Nick and dismount to stand quietly by Mia (who is crumpled on the ground) as Mariah's circles get bigger and faster for three loops and then get slower and smaller and slower and smaller until she is standing three feet from Nick, blowing hard and wondering if she should try the lush alfalfa. I gather up Mariah and fix her saddle. I check Mia out (Wiggle fingers, wiggle toes. Does anything feel broken? What did you land on?) and she's good enough to stand up. We walk a spell, horses in hand.

I put Mia back on Mariah. I stay on the ground a while to lead Mariah and get everyone settled. We do that a while and then I let go of Mariah but still walk alongside, just in case. Everything seems OK, so I hop on Nick and we jog a little. It's OK. Mia sits on Mariah and asks me to jump over fences with Nick (so that she can watch me) so I do that. We aren't all that but at least we can do the 2' fences without a huge amount of whining now.

We ride a little more, some slow-ish trotting and some walking, around the non-complicated sections of the field. Mia rides with contact and headset ALL THE TIME and keeps Mariah at a way slower walk than I find appropriate. Nick is quietly fussing at the pace but such is her nature and she's not being loud about her fussing. She's chewing the bit too much, is all.

Assessment:

Mia has taken lessons somewhere. I have no doubt that she has had some measure of formal training on the "riding horses" front.

What she rides at lesson is a school horse of some sort. It is a bigger, more lumbering horse that isn't half as quick or forward as what we ride. Mariah's forward surprised the hell out of her and she rides like she expects the horse to be about 1/3 bigger. (Mariah is not a live wire, either, not like some of our other critters.)

She has never ridden in a non-enclosed environment or anywhere with unlevel footing. She has no grasp of going up or down hills, let alone how horses need to use their head/neck for that sort of thing.

Her balance is not as good as she thinks it is. She cannot tell when she is unbalanced and she cannot recover when she becomes unbalanced at any speed faster than a walk. She depends rather significantly on her saddle to save her. I do not think she has logged any time bareback on a horse. (This would really, really benefit her. Mayhap I will suggest it.)

She may be "doing jumps" at lesson, but they are most certainly just the bare minimum beyond ground poles. She does not have enough seat and lower leg to stay properly steady and balanced over anything that would qualify as a "real" jump. (I do not have enough seat and lower leg to stay steady and balanced over "real" jumps, but I'm getting there.)

Her situational awareness and troubleshooting of issues is severely lacking. She has no problem-solving abilities, possibly because she has never had any problems of a horsey nature to handle.

For the sort of riding that we do, Mia is a rank beginner who needs a somewhat phlegmatic horse with a well-fitted saddle on robust withers. Jessie's in the field...

***

Further assessment:

I noticed that when I said "Mariah is the minimal-white pinto buckskin by the water trough" the horse that she grabbed hold of was Ceres, the solid bay with a small star, already wearing a halter, who was standing by the cow trough. Maybe she didn't hear me? I took the halter from Olivia and went to catch Mariah myself.

I noticed that she tied Mariah with an improper (not quick-release) knot.

I noticed that she didn't put the bridle or saddle on Mariah but instead went to put on "boots and gloves and helmet", leaving me to tack up her critter. I wonder if she can tack up a critter.

I saw her try to mount from the wrong side and still let her be in front of me crossing the road. My bad.

I saw her canter off on Mariah, get surprised at the forward and nearly run off with and I still let her go onward. My bad.

I saw her tip forward slightly at the slow-medium trot and still encouraged her to extend it. My bad.

But... she SAID she rode all the time. She has a prettier lower leg than I do. She can post and her damn legs don't move. How can she not sit a horse with legs like that? Why does she have zero balance skills? She said she jumped. She said she cantered. Mariah has not got a dreadful trot. It's actually pretty decent.

Crap. I want to believe people when they say they can ride. I hate being a suspicious nasty person. Looks like I need to spend some more time being suspicious nasty person, though...

Damn it, I do not tell other people what a great rider I am. I tell people I have some experience with horses, that probably I'm an advanced beginner level or thereabouts. I figure it is better to have people be maybe pleasantly surprised than sorely disappointed.

Comments

[alyse-nicole.livejournal.com]

well... thought number one, you're super observant (like painfully i hate that i've ridden infront of you observant). With more training you could be a pretty excellent instructor or even judge given ya know some training in that sort of thing. She may well be jumping 3feet on an old hunter horse who never takes anything but an even stride, you'd be surprised what they have at some of these lesson barns. You can brace on their wither and needing a seat is never an issue. The real red flag for me was the whole cantering up a hill on a strange horse with out warning. Had it have been me i think there would have been some verbal reprimanding involved there, being as she's a minor and you're like liable for her brainmeats and what not.
And uh... i try to mount from the wrong side, like weekly. judge away.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about my observational skills -- I only see what I look at purposefully, which makes for a tunnel-vision life. If I'm not TRYING to assess skills, skills assessing doesn't happen by accident. (If I am TRYING for skills-assessing, then there is a lot of that going on but I might not notice, for example, that the rider is naked or the horse has been painted green. I'm pretty sure the rider was dressed today, but I could not tell you what she was wearing.)

One thing I have noticed in people's self-assessment of riding skills is that the people who make a big deal of how often they canter are frequently the people who can still count the number of times they have cantered. Mentioning that you "canter a lot" is a red flag as well. People who really ride do not mention this as an informational item because it is like saying "I drive stick shift and I use fourth gear ALL THE TIME." Of course you use fourth gear. It's one of the gears. D'oh.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_the_firedancer/]

The having a pretty lower leg but no balance is a sign that she has had some semi competent teaching but has no core muscle. I say semi competent because trot, sitting and rising, without stirrups should come before canter and well before any type of fences.

As to being a nasty suspicious person; it's not like people deliberately over estimate their competence, it's the learning curve thing in action. Everyone starts out knowing nothing and knowing they know nothing. They move onto knowing something but not knowing how little that something is, then they hit the stage where they know how little they know compared to how much there is to know and some people eventually get to the stage where they know most of what there is to know and have a good idea of what they don't. Expecting most people to be at the second stage is just aligning your expectations with reality, nothing nasty about it!
You're dead on about the canter thing, as an instructor, people who say they can canter as though it means something automatically get dropped into a walk/trot class for assessment.

[cassandramorgan.livejournal.com]

This is why I specifically under-rated myself when I signed our group up for the trail riding outing. While I know what *I* can do, I don't know their horses. For some reason, people seem to think that all horses are equal. Anyone with actual riding experience knows differently.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

It is quite striking to me how many judgment calls you have to make as an instructor, and I can't help but wonder how much that contributes to why riding is such a dangerous sport.

In comparison, rock climbing and aviation seem to have pretty strict and straightforward go/no go decisions for an instructor. Do you think riding would benefit from a strict checklist and skill progression, so that red flags actually abort the activity and you can't do thing C until you have mastered things A and B?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

There is no one authority for riding. It's pretty fractured -- matters equine have many different organizations and club structures. So, when you ask people how well they ride, they don't have much of a framework to use in offering you an answer. If you speak Pony Club and say "I hold a C-1 certification" but the person doing the asking has no idea what that means, no effective communication has taken place even though Pony Club has a nice, well-organized set of standards and rankings. Everybody gotta speak l33t for Pony Club rankings to work as a standard.

Second, you're kind of apples-to-oranges, here. Flying and climbing are activities where human beings control or interact with inanimate things (planes and rock faces). Riding is a human being controlling (or attempting to control) a horse. Horses have thoughts, feelings, opinions, and reactions that are not entirely under the control of their riders. This adds considerably to the difficulty level of riding, PARTICULARLY for novice riders.

Finally, the nature of one's mount STRONGLY influences how well one tests on any metric of riding. A well-broke "packer" horse will enable a marginal rider to pass skills tests with flying colors. An inexperienced, somewhat sudden horse can make the same rider look almost hopelessly incompetent. Because riding is not something that a human does alone, it is a more difficult thing to test or rate than either flying or climbing. See, there's a horse involved and horses are moderately sentient. Which horse it is *matters* a lot. Which horse it is can be a significant factor in the overall success or failure of the outing.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that riding doesn't have important fundamental differences. Differences among horses surely do mean it's a lot less predictable experience.

Imagine if planes literally had minds of their own, and personalities, and went crazy now and then, and didn't have dual controls. That would not make me *less* likely to want learner pilots to get a card that says that they know the controls and when and how to abort takeoff and so on before they got in the cockpit.

That is why I am imagining that a student could be expected to get a card saying they're 100% on the things you listed (tie the right knot, mount correctly without prompting, lean correctly to slow the horse...) before they get on a horse at all, or before they get one that isn't extra-forgiving. Is that crazy?

(I realize that making that actually happen is a complex human problem, I'm just wondering whether it's a dumb idea for a reason I don't understand or if it's something that makes sense that just hasn't happened yet. It took decades for safety norms to develop in the high-risk sports that interest me, and none of them had the inertia that one could imagine arises from the history of horseback riding.)

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Standards would be nicer than what we do have and there are a lot of human-learnable skills for interacting with horses that will improve safety. Enforcing standards or even setting them up as a "good idea" definitely falls into the "complex human problem" department, though... and I hadn't considered the idea of inertia at all.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

As far as "advanced beginner", I could probably pass a D3 pony club skill set (riding) tonight after work. There is nothing in it that is beyond my abilities. I could probably NOT pass a C1 pony club skill set because I am not particularly comfortable jumping more than about two feet and you gotta do that for C1. That puts me as "advanced beginner" level for skills and I'm OK with that.