Tomorrow I will cart Nic yet again to another trainer. Not to move, just for a lesson. I'm tired of dragging the mare from trainer to trainer. I gave up on trainers last December when it became apparent the best advice I'd received since buying her in 2006 was from Walter Zettl. Since then, I've been training by my wits, since my wits otherwise came to an end with professionals. I'm sure if I'd received decent help since the get go that my horse would be further along than she is, but I have yet to come across a program that is anything but counterproductive.
I don't know what it is about America; these united states are the land of opportunity, of dreams, but as far as dressage goes, that mentality has diluted the sport into a gulag of half-baked ideas. Actually, I do know what it is about America. Let me expound upon this.
Oscar Wilde once said "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." Decadence is the unintended result of unprecedented prosperity (remember the Roman Empire?), and whether that old queen is correct or not, one must admit that the level of prosperity in America has driven the average citizen to assume a sense of undoubted self-righteousness, and I'm certainly not excluded. Extreme confidence is as an American virtue as apple pie. The problem with self-righteousness is it leaves little room for self-questioning and analysis, further impeding advancement, and ultimately, prosperity. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it sure as hell was sacked in a day, thanks to a rotten core. The confidence balloon can only grow so big before you either redesign it or it bursts.
In the land where you can be anything you want to be as long as you click your heels together 3 times and whisper "there's no place like home," the barriers to entry into the dressage arena are dismally low. Add into that mixture a general poverty of education about the correct way to train a dressage horse, and you have students like me who can only point to an idea and think "that's not right" but with no light pointing to what IS right. Or, perhaps more importantly, how to create something that is right. We're left, so to speak, understanding that the shadows on the wall are not reality, but with no clue what reality is and where the opening to the damn cave is. And America being America, of course very few trainers will admit to even themselves that they're wrong or misguided, self-righteousness at its essence.
Like Europe during the dark ages, as soon as we try to improve ourselves and raise our standard of education, we get clubbed by the damn barbarians again (in this case, bad training), and are forced to lower our standards to "survival mode," and sort all this crap out ourselves. I would say that moving Nic from a boarding barn to a training barn has raised my training standards to a certain degree; certainly I would not have the same horse today if I had stayed at a boarding barn. But this still isn't enough for me; ignorance is an annoying cross to bear. There is still too much darkness and not enough light.
Ummm....so I guess I'm feeling a little frustrated about having no real helping hand with training my horse. I'm hoping I can come out of this "dark ages" of dressage I've been in. I've started getting some better understanding of contact since starting these schoolmaster lessons, and exactly what it feels like when a horse is through. This understanding has helped to improve Nic with her own throughness. We have a lot more work to do at the canter, but the trot has begun to improve.
