My bubble still has holes - and a birthday gift to myself

What better way to spend part of the birthday (or any other day) at the barn? OK, that’s a rhetorical question for those of us infected with the horse virus.

After spending a lovely morning lounging around enjoying calls from friends and family in Europe I eagerly went for my lesson with Remy in the afternoon. Somehow I expected it to be fairly quiet, but alas, it turned out that not only did I have to share the arena with another lesson being taught by a different instructor; but in addition also with an additional rider and my least favorite horse (to share the arena with). Oh, great.

It meant I had to face my nemesis head on: crowded and busy arenas. The warmup at Lamplight was Remy’s and my undoing this summer, in hindsight now I know that I didn’t give the kid the support he needed. It was really unreasonable to expect an –albeit very cool- five year old to figure it out for both of us. Chuck that one under “experience”.

Back to the task at hand, I kept it together for most of the lesson, heeding Judy’s advice of “Stay in your bubble, pick your line and stick to it!” Kind of difficult if you have a fire-breathing ‘dragon’ cutting through your path in an earth-shattering canter. It was OK, until I lost my concentration, that is. Listening to the other lesson, and at the same time trying to stay out of the path of the ‘dragon’ got me flustered: “Where the heck should I go??” Voila, we were stuck. Remy was sucking back. In an effort to get Remy in front of my leg again I poked him a bit and he clearly showed me what he thought about it: “That is SO NOT COOL at all!”. No big deal, we got our act together again and finished well. Time to breathe again.

And where’s the gift in all that, you may ask? Well, it’s the realization that even though my bubble has still holes, they are getting smaller, and we have much better tools to fix the few remaining ones. Hand the industrial strength duct tape, please!