Preemptive bitching about clinic with DLB
Mar. 30th, 2017 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chick.
When we ride for Barb, it’s walk and trot, the bulk of our work on a thing that I call “remedial jogging” due to its incredibly boring and stupid and slow and annoying nature. This is apparently because we suck so much that we aren’t allowed to canter like the other fat, middle-aged ladies.
The other fat, middle-aged ladies who can’t fucking ride get to canter on their placid lesson horses. I get remedial jogging, no cantering, on my stupid little baby arab. This would not piss me off nearly so much except that it makes the other fat, middle-aged ladies think that they ride better than I do.
Because they get to canter. I STG this is really how life works. We’re all pushing hard at fifty, if not past it, and it’s still fucking Saddle Club Drama up in here.
All right, fat middle-aged ladies, you are riding, like, lesson horses. You are afraid to canter outside the ring. You can barely GET a canter let alone identify what lead you are on (peeking or no peeking). I canter outside of the ring on a young arab I started under saddle myself without any help. I taught him about leads and canter departures. I can ask for (and get) a lead and I know what lead he’s on (usually) without looking. Also, when I ride your lesson pony, she looks way better for me than she does when you’re aboard. (I do not point any of this out because it is unkind and there is no benefit to doing it.)
Right, right. Enough about your cantering woes. Nobody really cares anyway. What is Remedial Jogging?
It’s where you mini-post and let the horse have a shit-ton of rein while he slops along in the slowest possible thing that can be classified as a trot while leg-nagging his ass every couple of strides to keep him from dropping out of it. You do this on a circle. Endlessly, on a circle. If you want excitement, you can do it on a three loop serpentine because WOW there are TWO RE-BENDING OPPORTUNITIES THERE SO EXCITE. Go ahead, be daring. Mix it up. Live a little. Because, sweetheart, you’re gonna be doing it for TWO FUCKING YEARS.
Probably it would take less time if I had some idea of what I was doing. Like, y’know, when a guy goes down on you – if he’s just faffing about there aimlessly without any idea of the general geography of the cunt or what areas might be helpful for him to lick, he’s gonna be there a while. Whereas a guy who has some idea of a plan and/or can take direction… that guy is going to get r done quicker. I’m clearly in the faffing-about category so it takes me longer to accomplish whatever the fuck remedial jogging is supposed to be accomplishing.
And while I freely admit that I’m in the faffing-about group of “dressage” riders, this is not because I’ve failed to ask Dressage Lady Barb for more ideas on what to do. I’ve fucking asked for direction. Repeatedly. She doesn’t want to give me any. I’ve been like “So, aside from Remedial Jogging, what all should we be working on?” and “What else can I go home and practice?” and she says “You should be doing this.” “Do this for six months.” “I really can’t think of anything else you need to be working on for right now.”
Da fuq? Do you seriously think, Dressage Lady Barb, that I am not going to do the damned remedial jogging if you give me any other things at all to work on? I cannot remedial jog the horse and NOTHING ELSE EVER for the interim. Both he and I would go insane. You know I’m gonna go work on other stuff, too. So… why won’t you give me some things? Argh.
Is the problem that you think I’m too fucking stupid to understand anything other than remedial jogging? Do you not trust that I will do the work? Lady, it’s eighty bucks to ride for you. That’s two weeks of groceries for me, two weeks of feed for the horse, two MONTHS of electric bill… I am not putting this money out there so that I can roll my eyes and ignore you. And when I specifically ask you for homework that I can go work on during the space between eighty-dollar outlays, you have repeatedly told me “remedial jogging”. (She does not call it that. That’s just me.)
Returning to our cunnilingus metaphor (yeah, I don’t know how that became the metaphor except that I’ve spent more of my life getting bad, ineffectual head from people who don’t fucking take direction than I care to have spent and it’s not like you can just get up and leave because there is such a thing as politeness and all), probably the issue here is that Dressage Lady Barb is laying there nekkid going “Yo, the clit” and I’m there getting a crick in my neck going “Yeah, right, I know, but what else can I do?” and Dressage Lady Barb is “Honey, the clit. That’s what you need to pay attention to, here. I know it’s repetitive and boring and stuff, but that’s where it’s at, so to speak.” And I’m tired and my jaw hurts and I don’t really see what we’re going for here or have any idea how to tell if my actions are having the desired result and this seems like an endless slog for no payout. (As a metaphor, actually… yeah.)
Y’know, if I wanted a life where I mini-posted and let my horse have a shit-ton of rein to slop along in the slowest possible trot while leg-nagging his ass every couple of strides, I would show western pleasure.
My god, I hate remedial jogging. I hate it with a passion. It is infuriating and stupid and I do not fucking want to do remedial jogging anymore. So I’m gonna spend a bucket of money that I don’t actually have to ride for the lady who’s told me for TWO FUCKING YEARS that my horse needs ‘moar remedial jogging’. Imma do that because I’m a mouthbreathing redneck of limited mental capacity and I like being told that I suck and that my horse sucks. We are never ever going to do anything other than trot for Dressage Lady Barb.
Every time I go ride for Dressage Lady Barb I feel super good about what we cover and I am ever-so-inspired to go riding but this time instead of a shitty green horse torqued leg yield of shittiness or a fraught and inverted canter departure that lacks subtlety, balance, and grace, I sometimes have Downward Stretchy Trot instead of regular trot and sometimes it’s even when I ask, like, a DST that is purposeful and has intent. I want Dressage Lady Barb to be impressed (which I am sure she will kindly pretend to be given that it’s taken me two fucking years to get this thing that most people’s beginner horses are doing after thirty days under saddle) with our LOL-Nope progress.
This conversation will likely go as follows: (I just want to use colons.)
Me: “Lo, Dressage Lady Barb. Regardeth thou my handful of shit. I Made It Myself! IS IT NOT NIFTY?!?”
Dressage Lady Barb: “Oh, honey, no. Shit that you make All By Yourself is still shit even if you are proud about it and inclined to show it off to others. Whyn’t you try wishing in the other hand for a change of pace?”
People who say that dressage is “about the journey” are assholes. In this world, there are six year old horses who do things BESIDES remedial jogging. My horse, though… remedial jogging. 4 Lyfe, apparently. Because he’s a piece of shit and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and neither of us is progressing at all. Our dressage journey is nothing more than going round and round in circles at a very slow trot.
