Chapter 6

The arena was large and open, the bumps, lumps, and lines in the ground suggested that Lynn had recently taken a tractor to the dirt. I stopped at the gate before entering and looked either way before entering. Lynn was on one of her horses and was coming from my left.

I heard the unmistakable sound of weight being put on the bleachers set up along the outside of the arena. Glancing over, the sight of Ethan gracefully taking a seat on one of the front-most seats closest to the arena greeted my eyes. I turned my attention back to the mare accompanying me.

I approached her left side and tightened the cinch to an appropriate tension to keep the saddle secure during our ride. After assuring that the cinch was snug and buckled, I placed my left foot in the stirrup and swung myself up into the saddle. I arranged my reins so that they were neat, untwisted, and an appropriate length to start out with. All of these actions came naturally, thoughtlessly, out of a habit that formed after years of repetition.

I signal the mare under to walk forward and we walked a few laps. Lynn trotted up next to me before breaking down to a walk so that we could chat as I warmed up Karma, just like back when we were youth riders on a local show team.

She offered me a smirk. "So, what're your thoughts about that new client of yours?"

I shook my head exasperatedly. "I think that he's an impulsive idiot with too much time and money on his hands." She chuckled at my statement.

"Then I guess that you two will get along pretty well. You tend to be a bit of an impulsive idiot too, you know?"

I sighed. "I guess." With those words, I signaled Karma into a forward-moving trot that I could easily post to. The familiar motions of warming up the athlete carrying me around the arena relaxed me, and I remember a lesson that my childhood coach had drilled into me about the . First and foremost, before any training could successfully be accomplished, you had to establish within the horse's body. It was the foundation that made up the training scale. Navigating around the arena at a posting trot, I used multiple different aids to help Karma establish a rhythm and work towards a relaxed state. While posting, I subconsciously manipulated her striding with my seat, varying the height of my post and amount of time both in and out of the saddle to encourage her to take a longer, more consistent step.  I worked my hands and legs in tandem with my seat actions to pick her up off of her forehand, attempting to get the sorrel to transfer more weight onto her haunches and reach out more with her front legs.  In between each attempt to do such a feat, I gave the mare a long rein on the off chance that she would want to stretch her head and neck down towards the ground to lengthen her back from under the saddle, which she happily did. I wait until she picked her head back up on her own before going back to lengthening her stride.

After about five minutes of intensive trotting and achieving a state where she was willing taking a somewhat even stride naturally with a relaxed neck and headset, I asked her to break down to the walk. As I reached down to pat her neck with a small, proud smile, a motion by the bleachers caught my attention. Ethan had his phone out, and was either taking a picture or a video, I wasn't sure which, but it didn't matter much to me either way. He was a client now, so if he wanted a video or picture to use as notes for a later date, then all the more power to him.

As I walked Karma to give her little break, I started working on the next step of the training scale; suppleness. Considering that any longitudinal work would require a fast gait, I focused on the lateral work that needed to be done. So, while walking around the arena, I made little circles here and there, going either direction in either a bend or a counter-bend. In each circle that I would bend, I shortened my inside rein to prompt her head to tilt slightly to the inside of the little circle at the poll and use my inside leg up by the cinch to help prop up her inside shoulder. My outside rein would tell Karma how big or little to make each circle, as well as encourage her to move her shoulders in the turn. I supplement the rein aids with my legs. My outside leg helps remind Karma that she does actually have to turn, while my inside works at not letting her dive into the circle, as well as keep her walking (as opposed to trying to stop and pivot over the haunches). Counter-bending wasn't much different, just everything reversed. The mare's head bends to the outside of the circle instead of the inside, the rein in the outside of the bend opens up away from the horse's neck to allow her to move into a circle going the opposite way of the bend, and the leg on the outside of the circle adds pressure to encourage her to take that route. But Karma gave me a slight problem in the counter-bending circles. She would try to dive into that shoulder on the outside of the bend, diving into the circle.

My brow furrowed at the puzzle that Karma presented to me. I allowed her to work straight for a few strides before moving her into the counter-bend circle once more, circling to the right. Going this way, while bending to the left, she tried to dive in on me. As we went around the circle, I closed my right leg on her side, up right behind the cinch, but didn't apply any pressure yet. I first asked her to move over to the right, with her head slightly left, just to see if she'd do what I thought she would do. Sure enough, Karma fell towards the inside of the circle through her left shoulder. In response, I tapped her left side lightly with her spur, right behind the cinch. She threw her head in the air slightly and straightened out, before starting to turn on the circle again. When I tapped her side again, this time she didn't throw her head in the air, but instead stood up a little better through that pesky left shoulder. I let her travel straight out of the circle and gave her neck a pat, praising her for the work she'd done. I repeated the same process going the other way, with even better results. I guess she was better going the other way.

Lynn stopped nearby where I was working. "How long are you gonna do that?"

I spared her a glance and chuckled. "I just finished up with that exercise." I let out a devious chuckle before giving her an equally devious side smirk. The combination of the chuckle and the smirk I just gave would send a frantic shiver down even the most stoic of characters. "You ready to heat things up a bit?"

Lynn rolled her eyes at me. "Please try not to run me over. This horse has enough anxiety about traffic as it is."

"I make no promises. I'm gonna be all over the place, just so you know."

She groaned as I shortened my reins and got ready to signal Karma to lope off. "Are you really doing THAT exercise?"

"You better believe that I am! It's a personal favorite of mine."

I closed my right leg onto Karma side and fluttered my left leg slightly to give her an opening to go through, and kissed to her. She didn't disappoint as the sorrel eagerly leaped into her left lead lope. I looked up directly in front of me, finding myself aimed for the letter K. As we got closer to the wall, Karma started to drift out to the right, as I could feel her leaning into that leg with her ribs. I smirked at what I was about to do. I lifted reins, opened my left leg, dragged both of my hands with the reins in them to the left across her withers, rolled my right spur up her side about two inches, and snapped my head around to the left. As Karma slightly threw her head in the air while sharply turning over her haunches at the lope, my eyes found the letter F, and locked onto the letter as my new target. I pushed her forward across the arena towards the letter, my hands now on either side of her withers and my legs evenly in contact with both sides of her rib cage. This exercise is to teach the horse how to travel on a straight line without being depending on my legs or hands to hold her true to the path I set down for her. We got closer and closer to the target in front of us, until we were almost right in front of it. Since we were coming at it angled fairly sharply from the left side, I whipped my head around to the left again, finding a target in the post marking the quarter line the was behind me. I guided her into a arc that, if measure on a protractor would have an angle of over 180 degrees, and pushed her forward into a more extended version of the lope we had in the turn. This got Karma to push up off of her hind legs, making her legs hold the ground for a longer amount of time before almost rocketing off to the next wall. The power of Karma's hind legs as she loped on this new line with a considerable amount of push, or impulsion, almost pushed me up out of the saddle and made a large grin spread across my lips. This pattern of lines with arcs at the ends or sharp turns when the mare leans either way continued on for another 3 or 4 minutes, switching leads about 2 minutes in, before I decided to do something a little crazy.

In my last arc, I found Ethan with my eyes. I stared him down as I sat deep in the saddle urged Karma to kick it up a gear. We practically galloped as I asked Karma to start her run down aimed at the section fence directly in front of Ethan. Alarm flashed through his eyes as I got to be thirty feet away from the fence and he practically jumped to his feet as he opened his mouth to warn me. He froze when I flashed him a grin and signaled Karma to perform her last task before we started to cool out for the day. I sat even deeper in the saddle (if that was even possible at this point) to prepare myself for the force I was about to experience. Shoving my legs forward with my heels anchored down toward her elbows, I lifted the reins slightly and said whoa just load enough for Karma to hear me. My grin widened as I felt Karma lift her forehand up, tuck her hind-end up underneath herself, and slide the final twenty-five feet to the fence before actually coming to a halt before hitting her lowered head on the fence. We backed up about four or five steps before we actually came to a full stop.

I laughed lightly as I finally tore my gaze away from Ethan to beam at the huffing and puffing sorrel mare beneath me. I fed out the reins to the point where they were significantly draped and squeezed her sides to have her cool out at the walk.

As we approached the fence, I heard Ethan's shell-shook voice speak.

"What was that?!"

We had already walked past him by the time I'd caught my breath and was ready to answer his question. "That, dear Ethan, was a little thing we western riders call a slide. Once we find you an appropriate horse, that is just one of the many things that I will teach you to do. Now, if you excuse me, I need to walk Karma around to cool her out and let her sweat dry off a little bit. Heck, we're both dripping wet with sweat over here!" I ended my statement with a closed eyed grin before proceeding to walk off to cool out my amazing not-so-little mare.

Man am I out of shape.