By Patty Wilber
One of the fun things about horse training, in addition to working with horses in training, is teaching the riders ways to best help their mounts.
This past weekend, I got to coach Faith at the NM Paint Show in Stanley, NM. We do regular lessons, but shows are special because there are judges and an audience!
Faith and Romeo competing in halter. Photo by Mandi.
Faith has a wonderful horse, named Romeo, that is beautiful, kind, and has a nice training base. He doesn’t always remember all of his show training.
Over the last year, Faith has gone from concentrating mainly on rail classes and avoiding pattern classes to competing in disciplines that span a large range of skills: Halter, Showmanship at Halter (pattern), Ranch classes (several patterns), Western Horsemanship (pattern), English Equitation (pattern). (Paint rules dictate that if you show in Ranch classes, you cannot show in Western Pleasure or Hunter Under Saddle classes, but you can show in classes where the rider, not the horse, is judged (Eng. Eq, West. Horsemanship). Faith not only has to master the particulars for all these classes for herself, but also learn to help Romeo remember how to perform in them, and teach him some things he never knew.
Ranch Pleasure! You can tell by the sign on the stand in the background. In this class, riders execute a pattern by following the directions on the signs. It is usually a horse-shoe shaped pattern and involves a lot of transitions. Faith and Romeo nailed this one! All the other pattern classes require the rider to memorize the pattern.
There is a lot of material to assimilate and merge and that can be a little stressful, as can the fact, as mentioned, that showing is a performance, there is a judge, and people WATCH!
Getting ready for English Equitation.
I could not be prouder of how Faith is learning to squash the stress and put the pieces together! And how lucky am I to be able to be a part of this process?
Triple bonus: Faith is feeding all our animals while we are in Sweden! I will do a Sweden blog next week!
Breast Cancer Chronicles: The no chemo for eight weeks sure is nice. I can feel the improvement in my stamina, although all the walking around Stockholm is reminding me that my stamina is actually quite lame!
I will be back on chemo Aug. 31 with the “new” drug, which is one I already used, so a new, old drug, that gave me no issues. I will get it every three weeks.
Here is a diagram of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve (pink area on diagram) which was affected by the Kadcyla (the drug I have stopped). I thought the diagram was pretty cool because it corresponds exactly to the area that is numb. The term cutaneous refers to skin, so that explains why my skin is what feels numb! Also interesting to me!
It turns out this numbness malady can occur in people without the help of chemo drugs and is called “meralgia paresthetica”. There are many articles and there are exercises that may help. Gee, I know a physical therapist and could get personalized ideas!
I wrote some of this in the Denver Airport and some in the Munich Airport 8.23.23. I finished up in Stockholm on 8.24.23 at 2:28 PM New Mexico time, which is 10:28 PM in Sweden. Eight hour time change!
Happy Friday!
