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 Kelleyerein’s blog:
Well that makes sense. So why can’t I realize today he is not the same horse as yesterday and ride accordingly? Why does someone always have to point out the obvious for me? Why do I have to be such an amateur?
I make the same mistakes of judgement on the ground that I do on their backs. I mistakenly assume my horse will react the same way each time, and then I am surprised and frustrated when she doesn’t. Since my mare pulled her suspensory, she has been on stall rest and hand walking. While I know stall rest and Thoroughbreds are not like peanut butter and jelly, I was unprepared for the dramatic change in my horses’s behavior on arrival to Polestar.
She had been handling her rehab quite contently at home, and since she is accustomed to going to new places all the time, I thought she would handle this change without much fanfare. I was wrong. A few tubes of Gastrogard later, she is less of an anorectic tweaker, but she is definitely not the same horse I put in the trailer in Portland.
I wanted this experience at Polestar to prove she was “the” $#!%. Instead she is acting like “a” $#!%. I wanted to unload her at the farm, pull off her blanket to reveal her shiny rippling muscles and have everyone “oohhh” and “ahhh.” I wanted Meika to fall in love with her and tell me how incredible she will be. Instead, stall rest has made her furry, flabby and freaky. I am struggling with being embarrassed, angry and confused with how she is acting. And I know she is not behaving this way on purpose. She is just reacting to her environment and her stomach pH. Why can’t I react and then adapt as quickly?
I am accustomed to her being moody. I empathize with her varying work ethic and attitude that hinges on fluctuating estrogen and glucose levels. It is actually one of the reasons I like mares so much. While they can be difficult and opinionated and sensitive, they give more of themselves than geldings when they trust you. I perceive this connection I have with my mare as friendship.
So when that flock of geese took flight our first day here, I thought my presence and our bond would temper the emotional storm inside her. But while my horse may be MY best friend, I need to learn that I am, in fact, not hers. At best I am another mid-tier member of the herd; not her leader, her ally or her guru. Instead I was merely the anchor she drug back to the barn as she sought solace with the new “best friends” she had just met. And that hurt my feelings. How childish of me.
And I worry this is why I may never be a great rider. Because I take everything too personally and allow my emotions to affect my riding. I need to find that balance of caring passionately about something but maintaining a level of perspective and rationality. I know Meika loves her horses. You can see it clearly in the way she rides and handles them. But she is able to recognize what horse she is riding at each moment and react without taking offense. Or at least it appears that way.
