Clarity

 Thunder has been an absolutely wonderful gift in my life. The last horse I had that I trusted as much as I trust him was his mother, who was retired nearly eight years ago now. He's a real emotional sponge, too: he seems to soak up all of my drama without allowing any of it to affect him, whether that's my panicky nerves on a show day or just some general angst on any ordinary afternoon. There is so much that I love about him and every stride he takes is a miracle - but there is one thing that we really need to fix, and it's not his fault. It's mine.

Literally the only recent pic I have of Thunder. The poor baby's itching has finally stopped now that the bugs are dead, but he looks so awful :( Scabby legs and face, rubbed mane and tail, and his coat is just generally... ugh. I actually have him on zeolite for his tummy just in case, and I've already saved up enough for a fancier fly mask next summer. Now just to put away enough for a fly sheet and boots over the winter.

Ever since Thunder was a youngster, he has been... an unresponsive soul, LOL. His Friesian blood has something to do with it, as does his doting upbringing. He just never had a reason to be reactive to random stuff. It makes him pretty bombproof, but it also makes him less inclined to actually react to my aids, and my riding has honestly not fixed it - although it has improved over the years.

Still, the one major flaw in his dressage work right now remains the simple fact that the horse just isn't forward and he just doesn't stay in front of my leg. And that's not on him. It's on me.

Lack of Thunder media means Noah spam instead. You're welcome.

I've been making excuses for myself for years when it comes to his lack of response to my leg. I've told myself that his stifle is a little weak, and that he needs more days off, and more high-energy food. But the truth is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Thunder. His stifle is the best it's ever been, his body is gorgeously sound and pain-free, and he's being fed like a king. He's been seen by a myriad of professionals and they all agree that he's a happy, sound, healthy, energetic horse. I can also clearly feel a difference between stiff or tired Thunder and just run-of-the-mill behind-my-leg Thunder, and I know that there is absolutely no physical reason why he doesn't go off my leg. The reason is simple: he doesn't move off my leg because I haven't taught him to do so.

At first I didn't teach him to get off my leg because I didn't know what that even was. When lessons with Coach first came along in late 2017, he massively improved - Coach didn't allow me to let him get too lazy. But we were also progressing so quickly and learning so much all at the same time that, while I was constantly working on getting him more forward, I never really dug in and just fixed the issue. There were so many other things to do.

He's grown so much it's kind of scary!

Now, though, we're busy test riding EM 5 and 6 and Medium 1 and 2 as he grows fitter again after his long lay-off. It sucked not to be able to ride him for six whole weeks between the biliary and the sweet itch and a mild bout of colic (as a result of all the medications), but it definitely opened my eyes to just how wonderful this horse is - and also how badly behind the leg he is. After riding horses like Lancelot and Vlinder and Navarro for those six weeks, who have always had Uncompromising Firn and thus go forward when asked, I realized that my best horse still has a massive training hole.

This is also a hole that I don't enjoy fixing. It's no fun at all to have to lay down the law about moving off my leg. With the in-hand work, I've taken him back to the basics, teaching him to understand the whip as an aid instead of a punishment. But there is still an element of having to say to him, "Listen, my dude, get OFF my leg NOW." He knows what it means, he's just used to responding to a poke instead of to a light squeeze.

Also, Titan and Noah are officially besties.

I've also made a crutch out of using the whip. As soon as I'm carrying the whip, Thunder is forward - almost without actually having to touch him with it. (Anyone else got a riding school pony for a Medium horse? LOL). Sans whip, he's a whole different horse. I don't like using a spur for forwardness, it exists for finesse in the lateral work, but I have got to start being more clear with my aids.

It's not about being more "strict" or "harsh" or "sharp" about moving off my leg. It's about being more clear. Thunder isn't behind my leg because he's lazy or naughty or stupid. Thunder is behind my leg because he doesn't know that he's not supposed to be, and the only way to fix that is to be clear. Not rude, not unkind, and not rough: but clear.

Noah discovered the sunlight patch!

I need to be uncompromising, not necessarily towards Thunder, but towards myself. I need to be disciplined about my leg aids and about getting the response I asked for so that he understands that he needs to step away from my leg the first time, every time.

This is all part of riding each horse like a Grand Prix horse, and about putting aside my angst in order to ride this horse as well as I possibly can. Because the truth is that this is an absolutely incredible horse, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of horse. This is an ordinary mongrel who is making it into the higher levels with an inexperienced rider, and he's my hero. I cannot let something like this - something as basic as this - be the thing that stands in our way.

On Tuesday, our last ride (my schedule, ugh), I actually showed up to the party for once and I was 100% determined to have him forward off my leg with every single stride - without having to rely on the whip. Was it a little messy at times? Sure. Was it fun? Not always. When one buggers something up, it's really hard work to un-bugger it. But after going back and doing some of the lateral work exercises that always get him more quick and responsive, we returned to the Medium 2 movement we're focusing on right now: track right in collected canter, V turn right, L circle 10m, P turn left in counter canter, R flying change.

And guess what? It wasn't just good. Once he was forward, it was effortless.

Celeste, my favourite Friesian in the whole world

My horse is an amazing horse and we are going to do the big levels together, but I have to start showing up and riding like it's more than just a pipe dream. Anything less makes him confused, tight, and unhappy in his work. I owe it to him to ride him well, and I owe it to myself and to my dreams to believe a little bit more fiercely in this thing that I was born to do.

With typically providential timing, our last church service - very much socially distanced, masked up, and sanitized, especially since we always sit up in the gallery like naughty children - was all about worship. Anyone who read the old Riding on Water knows that dressage is worship to me, a way that I can revel in and express my love for the God Who made horses and people and let them dance together. Our minister was talking about how worship is in everything we do, and that it's in doing it excellently. We worship by doing things joyously, wholeheartedly, and with our hearts fixed upon our Lord.

Also here's a pic of my man bc he's just freaking adorable 💜

I used to be concerned to the point of anxiety about doing dressage well, to a point where I would feel physically sick if I couldn't get something right. The past few years have been all about reframing how I feel about dressage, letting go of my worst anxieties and even overcoming show nerves in the last few months.

Now, I'm ready to throw myself into it again with all my heart, ready to once again strive for real excellence. This time, it won't come from a place of pride or competitiveness. It'll come from a place of worship and desire for that glorious place only a horse can take us, that place where their ribs betwen our knees seem to expand with the very wind of Heaven.

I'm so ready for it. And I know my sweet bay horse can take me there, but it's up to me to show him the way.

wintry mornings and our perfect cottage 💜

God is so very good.

Exploring the Western Neighbours'

 Now that I have a super outride horse again, I've been riding all over our farm, alone and with kiddos. It's no small space, either - 230ha (over 500 acres) and nearly all of it is super accessible on horseback.

I love our home trails and know them like the back of my hand, but we're both feeling ready for longer and more exciting adventures.

I really don't think there is any better place in South Africa to own horses than the farmlands surrounding Heidelberg. We're close enough to the city (Johannesburg/Tshwane) to be spoiled for choice when it comes to specialist vets and competitions - one of our country's main venues is a 60-minute drive from our farm gate.

Still, the area is gloriously rural. Heidelberg is an adorable historic small town, and farmlands abound. I could explore virtually endless tracts of land without having to do more than cross a road or two. Road riding just isn't a thing out here.

So when the time came to ride further, it was as simple as sending a text to our lovely neighbour on the west (who has helped me out with many hay bales in hard winters, and also leveled my arena area for me. You rock, lovely neighbour!). As usual, he was very happy for us to ride in his fields, so I rustled up K the ex-working student (now managing a riding school of her own) and Milady to go with us.

We took the usual route down the hill along the east paddocks, having to ride through the cows to do so. Lancey didn't care; Milady was fairly concerned, but kept it together.

Our moment of excitement occurred at the bottom of the hill. I wanted to canter the long stretch across the top of the soya bean fields to the border fence, and when I asked Lancey for a walk to canter, he instead launched into the biggest bucking fit I've sat in a while. It caught me off guard and he gave four or five good ones before I reeled him in. The little guy mercifully doesn't kick up behind, but he can dolphin leap with the best of them.

If it was any other horse - barring Thunder - I'd have bailed there and then. Because it was Lancey, my nerves only hit about a 3 out of 5, still acceptable. Also, I might not enjoy such hijinks, but riding the Friesians has given me a seat of steel, so I actually didn't even wobble in the saddle. The moment I got my reins together he also stopped dead and stood there like the good boy he had momentarily forgotten he is.

why yes I was riding in sweatpants, it was too dang cold for leggings

I took a deep breath and we trotted for a bit instead, and he didn't put a foot wrong. Any horse can have the odd moment. I considered walking for the rest of the ride, but my fear had stabilized to a 2 or so, and I didn't want to make an issue of it. So after a while we dropped back to a walk and then popped to canter and Lancey headed off at the sweetest little collected canter you've ever seen. He was truly perfect for the rest of the ride, barring a few of his usual little spooks, which always happen in place so they don't worry me one bit.

We did run into the one problem with riding with K and Milady. K is very sweet with this nervous dressage auntie, but Milady definitely does not canter at the same pace as a well-schooled Arab with a nervous nelly aboard. Poor K was stuck trotting behind us for much of the way until I settled and pushed him to something more like a medium canter.

It remains to be seen what solution we'll come up with. K reckons I should just loosen up and have a little gallop, but I reckon she should teach Milady to canter properly, LOL. 

With that we were passing the last bean field - walking now to save Milady's little TB toesies on the rocks - and then we had popped out into the lanes around the neighbour's mielie (corn) fields.

Our goal was to find a way around the poplar grove to the game camp on the east side of the farm against the tar road. There are some amazing animals in there, and I've only seen them from the road. Game viewing on horseback is brilliant - they're not as frightened by horses as by cars.

We rode up towards the farmhouse. There are new barns and things there, but we passed by the back of them and came upon some very old outbuildings. Swaelkrans has been around for generations, and the old klipkraal - a small enclosure built from stone taken from the very koppies upon which the farm is built - was a giveaway that these buildings were very old. No one builds klipkrale anymore, but they were the order of the day a hundred years ago or more.

The farm has the most beautiful tracks everywhere. We headed along a field that looked like it'd been planted with winter grazing, then along the bottom of a poplar grove - and there it was. The game fence was right there!

Of course, the game had chosen to graze on the other end of the camp, so we could see neither hide nor hair of them. We decided to try riding up the other side of the trees to see if we could spot them.

The trees were pretty spooky, with a lot of rustling going on, but Lancey was fantastic. He had one or two little looks and kept trying to go behind Milady in his nervous moments - a relic of early training with a lead horse - but as soon as I put him in front, instead of next to her, he was pretty happy to just trundle along.

We had a canter along the grazing field then, and that was amazing. He didn't put a foot wrong and I even got him into a medium canter so that poor K could canter too. 

Around the trees, we didn't see any animals, but we did come upon a real treasure: an ancient oak tree, gnarled and twisted and golden with autumn. It was so beautiful that we dubbed it the magic tree.

The tree was beautiful, but also pointed to how old this farm really is. Oak trees aren't indigenous. Whoever laid the stone for that old klipkraal planted this oak tree, perhaps a sapling or an acorn then, for children of future generations to play beneath its boughs. That tree probably saw the Anglo-Boer War, during which Heidelberg was briefly the capital of South Africa, and decades of British colonization afterwards.

We'd been out for a while then, and I had promised the man I'd make pannekoek for lunch, so we started heading back towards home across the hay field.

Avoiding the shooting range, we headed between two bean fields, a road so long and straight and uphill that the horizon called even my name. I agreed to have another canter, and we were off.

Lancey was absolutely amazing for this. K's bleats of protest from behind me spurred me to finally take a light seat and allow Lancey to open up just a bit. He got a little heavier in front, but when I asked, he half-halted instantly. His neck was long, his tail was up, and he was just eating up the ground.

My worst fear came true when Milady came up alongside me, and then cruised on past - but Lancey didn't give his left sock. He just went on cantering like a good boy, and I let them pull away from us for a little before asking him back down to a walk. We were fine, but I wanted to know if I could ask him to walk even with another horse cantering away. He obliged immediately, jogging a couple of steps on a loose rein before falling into a quiet walk on the buckle while K pulled up Milady some distance ahead of us.

That was super confidence-building for me. We walked the rest of the way home in the interests of keeping Milady from becoming a joggy, snorty mess, but I was feeling really good even after the bucking fit we'd had early on in the ride.

It's all about making deposits into that trust bank. Lancey has been giving me good experience after good experience, and my trust bank is full enough with him that he can make the odd withdrawal without affecting it.

He power-walked on the buckle, eating up the distance with his swinging Arab stride, and K and I had a chance to chat and enjoy the sunshine. Winter days are picturesque in the Highveld, and even though it had been heavily frosted and well below freezing this morning, the afternoon was balmy and lovely.

We were all happy and chill when we got back, and even though most of Lancey's clip has grown back out again, he'd barely broken a sweat even though we'd done about 7-10km in just under 2 hours.

It was a really great and confidence-building experience for both of us. We have so much space to explore without even having to cross the road, and I really look forward to seeing more of it between these little Arabian ears.

Just so grateful to be blessed again with a glorious horse like this, a horse I trust, to enjoy this absolutely breathtaking landscape with. There is no better way to see the Lord's awesome creation than this.

Despite the cold this week, I also rode Thunder several times. He feels great and pretty strong considering that he's had such a long break, so we've been riding movements from the Medium tests, leaving the more strenuous preparation for Advanced work for now. Medium 2 has some complex geometry in it, but he finds the trot work easy (the extended trot notwithstanding). The canter work was fine, although he got a little tired and started missing the right to left flying change towards the end. This is typical; his canter left is always the first thing to lose strength after a break.

Hopefully I'll have pics of him soon. We should be having a lesson in two weeks, and then Lancey will (God willing) trot down centreline for his first Elementary tests later this month. 

Bonus pic: Noah continues to be adorable and getting more cuddly! 

Scripture reading has been interesting. I'm into the reign of Solomon now, and have finished Song of Solomon (whoa) and almost done with Proverbs. There is just so much practical advice in that book, advice that holds true even so many centuries later, the Word of God as living and active and dynamic and applicable as always.

God is just so good 💜

And then we had a cat!

 I've never really been a cat person. There are barn cats on the farm, and my sister has cats, but growing up we always just had dogs. Still, I could appreciate kitten cuteness - even if adult cats still kind of puzzle me. I don't really speak cat. Yet.

When we moved to the farm, we quickly amassed a wonderful menagerie of animals. We had two dogs and a pig when we moved in - the pig was unplanned - and I vowed that we would get no more animals. That was another dog, another pig, and four bantams ago, not to mention the beloved's growing chicken farm, although they don't count as pets because they're a business. (Even if they have names and are extremely cuddly!)

Over the last year or so, cats started to come up in conversation from time to time. I was growing more enamoured with them and it seemed like our adorable cottage just had to have a contentedly purring cat curled up on a pillow in it somewhere.

Still, the beloved was fairly allergic to cats as a little boy, and we didn't really discuss it seriously until the mouse appeared. I'm pretty cool with the majority of critters - I enjoy spiders, I love snakes, and when a toad comes hopping into the house, I'm the one who scoops it up and takes it outside. But mice and rats? I can't. I turn into a shrieking, leaping, climbing, howling city slicker in 0.4 seconds flat. What was more, the mouse got into the flour, and then into our clothes, and that was the point where the beloved had had enough. We agreed that I could have a cat.

His eyes!

That is where Noah came in. And even though it'll be a long time before he's big enough to catch a mouse, we are nonetheless thoroughly in love.

His toe beans!!

Noah didn't come from an ideal situation, so we got him a little too young - he's around 6 weeks now. As a first-time kitten mom, the first day or so were pretty nerve-racking for me, but Noah has handled everything with absolute aplomb. He already comes over when he hears my voice, purrs anytime one of us strokes him, and - after a false start or two - uses his litterbox like he's been doing it all his life.

I expected adjusting to the dogs to be a little bit of a challenge. Our dogs have chased the barn cats, but they also coexist peacefully with my mom's house cat, so I knew they could do it. Still, they're not quite sure whether tiny Noah is a snack or a friend just yet. He has a crate for now where they can see and smell each other but Noah has hiding places and the dogs can't hurt him, and actually they've been making good progress.

As for the beloved, he was pretty adamant at first that this would be my cat and my problem. He was still leery of his allergies and didn't want too much to do with Noah... for about half an hour.

The beloved has the gentlest heart of anyone I know. He spent about ten minutes playing with Noah and a piece of ribbon, and now he's hooked. Actually, I think he spends more time with the kitten than I do, and is constantly sending people photos of "his" cat.

I'm still just a few days into kitty ownership, but so far, I love it. Noah is a ray of sunshine and such a happy little addition to our home. He spent an hour or two yesterday afternoon stretched out on my lap, fast asleep in the winter sunshine and purring up a storm every time I reached down to pet him in between my work. It was uniquely soothing.

Most of the time, obviously, he's still a tiny imp of destruction and chaos.

Welcome to the family, sweet little Noah kitty. You're so welcome here! 💜

God is good!