After eight years as an equine vet, Kelleyerin Clabaugh of Aramat Farm decided to put her life on hold to pursue her dream of mucking stalls and learning to ride from an upper level three-day event rider. She is now a working student for eventer Meika Decher of Polestar Farm in Lake Stevens, Wash. EN will be following along as Kelleyerin navigates the ins and outs of being a working student, and has the time of her life along the way. Go Kelleyerin!
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From Kelleyerin’s blog:
Introducing “Phaolan,” the Little Wolf; or “Henry,” as was his name when I bought him; or “Puppy,” as Meika has taken to calling him.
Hopefully he jumps this well!
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True to his new name, the Little Wolf is adorable and affectionate and playful. But, like a wolf, he is intelligent, brave, athletic, easily offended and quick to strike. Phaolan is a coming 4-year-old TB gelding by the same stallion as my mare Phena. I purchased him impulsively right before quitting my job and moving up to Polestar. He had been at Portland Meadows but had not raced. He was then purchased by a gallop girl after he developed a reputation for being a bit of a handful. I was lucky enough to get him next. After seeing him effortlessly free jump a 4-foot oxer from a lumbering lope, I had to have him. Never mind that he looked like a pig-eyed, post-legged yak, and he tried to kick me when I touched him.
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Fortunately, body clipping revealed that he does have angulation to his hind legs and he is not microphthalmic.
One of the things I had hoped to learn at Polestar was how to bring along young OTTBs. Phaolan was broke and had the basics, but steering malfunctions were common and adding leg elicited either nothing or cow kicking. As Meika says, “All the buttons on the dash aren’t there yet”. Since I have been here, I have been riding horses with dashes like a modern luxury car — tons of switches to flip to cue various movements. But at his level of training, Phaolan is a lot like my first car, a 1959 VW bug that I had to push to start. The steering wheel didn’t always turn the tires and the dash only had two nobs: the choke and the windshield wiper. That car almost got me killed, but I giggled every time I drove it.
On other horses, I am learning to refine and quiet my commands. On Phaolan, I am learning to distill them down to the very simplest ingredient and whisper it to him. And if he doesn’t respond to the whisper, yell at him! So far there are two things with regard to training young horses that Meika has said that have surprised me. First, not to treat him like a baby. Second, to hold him accountable for his mistake, even if he didn’t know he was making one. At first, these seemed unfair to me. He IS a baby. He doesn’t know anything, so how can I expect anything of him? How can I discipline him when he didn’t know what the right answer was?
But it turns out that in my attempt to be kind and fair, I was being a nag. When he didn’t move off my leg, I kept squeezing and squeezing and Squeezing and SQUEEZING!!!! And nothing would happen. I was so exhausted that when he finally did move, I almost fell off because my legs were so tired. I was teaching him to tune me out because there was no reason to listen. So, taking Meika’s advice, the next time I wanted him to walk forward, I gently squeezed and when he did not move, I smacked him with a dressage whip. And we MOVED! Fortunately, the puppy is well balanced, comfy and inherently lazy, so the bucking subsided fairly quickly. And next time when I squeezed, he did not wait for me to hit him, he walked forward. Imagine that!
