When I first met Drummer, he was just a baby in a pasture with a significant hole in his face from an unfortunate run in with probably a sprinkler. I helped stitched up the weanling, not thinking anything of our interaction other than to marvel at his talent – much like my own – for finding trouble.
Flash forward nine years, and I get a call from my instructor asking if I remembered him. There’s not much chance of forgetting a colt who, like myself, had to have stitches in his forehead, so I said of course I did. She then asked me if I wanted a new project to work with. I had always known Drummer was of a sort of pedigree that I wasn’t likely to be around much in my line of work. His father had an Olympic heritage in dressage, and I had heard that Drummer had inherited at least a part of that prestigious distinction when it came to dressage. Honestly, who wouldn’t want to work with such a horse?
In my excitement, I went by the stable the day he arrived, finding a chestnut with a blaze in the round pen. Now my instructor also had a chestnut with a blaze, so I went in to pet this particular one, and sure enough, found the scar from that first meeting all those years ago. This, then, without a doubt, was Drummer. There was nothing in those first few minutes of getting to know each other that spoke to any sort of special relationship. He seemed pretty ambivalent, and my enthusiasm couldn’t quite find it’s footing around his cool demeanor. This was not the colt I remembered, but my job was not to fall in love, my job was to work with him.
Weeks turned into months, and still I struggled with him. I tried saddle after saddle, different bridles, worked on the ground, tried everything I could think of to just connect with him. Nothing really worked. The closest to success I came was realizing he hated his rope halter, and switching it out for a better fitting leather one at least improved a tiny portion of his attitude. (The leather one I often left unlatched at his jaw, for he might not have inherited his dad’s size, but he certainly inherited his massive cheekbones. The rope halter had pinched on his cheeks whenever he was asked to change direction.)
Finally, nearly out of ideas, I decided one day to just get on bareback. I had cut my teeth, as it were, riding horses on my grandfather’s farm without a saddle, and I knew that if it was a saddle fit issue, it wasn’t likely to manifest with no saddle. But if it was something more, it would. Boy was I right, and quite possibly for the very first time in my life, I did a completely voluntary dismount. He had let me get on just fine, as bored with me as usual, and we started to walk in the round pen with no real issue. Then I asked for a figure eight, and as soon as my right seat bone rotated to direct him, he exploded.
I think it’s fair to say that Drummer was 16 hands of tension when he first arrived, and nearly two months later, he was still much the same. What I discovered after I got up from the ground (unharmed, I landed on my bum and had never had such a smooth fall) and watched him continue to buck like a champion bronc around the round pen, was that there was definitely something more hidden under that tension. When he finally calmed down enough to let me catch him, I knew exactly where to look, and sure enough, his own movements had loosened up his body just enough to find a knot twice the size of my fist sitting just behind his right shoulder. We had a winner.
I worked a lot in the next few weeks of not necessarily riding, but just working some of the kinks out of his body. I was also very diligent in saddle fit, making sure there was never going to be a pinch point. It helped, but even now, six years later, he still has his moments where touching him can cause him to flinch.
Last fall, I had a equine chiropractor who specialized in overall body work take a stab at him. We have come a very, very long way in the interim. He now trusts that I won’t hurt him, and that if I ask him to move on, he knows he can work through his own tightness or I’ll stop asking when he can’t. As horse and rider, we’re in a good place, but the chiropractor still marveled at just how tense he could be. When she was done, for a few days his gaits were what they had once been and that I had never fully experienced – they were enormous, showcasing the Olympic pedigree to its full extent. Tension began to creep back in, but I had long since made massage a part of our daily routine, and we’ve been able to work through so much more.
The one point I wanted to conclude with was the surprising ways in which tension can manifest itself. I cracked two vertebrae falling off Mythriel and had another destroyed when Wish ran me over, resulting in two years in and out of physical therapy. I’ve learned that tension in my thigh can be helped by massaging just above my hip bone. The same theory has applied with Drummer, but no one place more so than his aforementioned cheeks. Even when he is relatively relaxed and limber, he’ll still hold tension in those Benedict Cumberbatch cheekbones. After I work over his body, and before I put his bridle on to go for a ride, I massage his cheeks. He often fights for a minute before accepting, and then he can’t stop the yawns as he releases his own tension, licking and yawning over and over until he relaxes.
It’s truly fascinating how the song we knew as children about the thigh bone being connected to the knee bone is so very accurate. Everything is connected, and we have to know where the pressure builds so that we can begin to know where to release the pain that comes with the tension. Of course there is no simple solution. Drummer will always be tense, I will never be fully healed in my spine, but this is yet another lesson learned. If we can learn to release what holds us back – in the physical case – then we can start to move in ways that will help us unlock even more.
Until the next lesson,
L.E.
Haute Ecole* 