Balance, Pedal, Breathe by Claire Unis

Author:Claire Unis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Warren Publishing
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sometimes I think I can trace everything about myself back to riding horses.… When I use tone of voice to convey reassurance, empathy to figure out how to respond next, touch to demonstrate gratitude or shared triumph, I wonder if I didn’t learn these from riding… People, like horses, are sensitive to your behavior and attitude, especially when confronted with something new.

(APPLICATION TO MEDICAL SCHOOL)

Chapter Eight

TOUCH

THIRD-YEAR SURGERY ROTATION

A memory: in a hard-packed dirt lot behind a small ranch in the foothills of Southern California, I stopped my pony and watched the older riders on their well-trained mounts. Makeshift obstacles had been set up in the brickyard area: a pile of branches, a small ditch with water in it, old wooden poles, and an accordion-like snake of stacked railroad beams. Young women guided their horses over them in graceful succession. At the age of ten, I had jumped almost all of them at some time or another, but today I had my eye on the largest one: a pyramid of cut telephone poles that stood about three and a half feet high. Starr only stood about four feet at the withers, but he was usually game to leap over just about anything. We’d never tried a solid obstacle that big.

I ran through the steps in my mind: take him to a fast-paced canter, point at the middle, don’t waver, count the paces. Then there was the approach—rein and leg to place him in a good takeoff, weight off his back, give him his head and squeeze, sail, pray. …

Starr was a bit wild-eyed and stubborn, with a propensity to speed up to a dead run in the middle of a dressage ring and keep zooming in circles until I let him hop over the foot-high piping that marked the show field. I had spent many an evening riding in the closed practice ring, listening to my instructor call out, “Relax your seat! Calm your hands!”

Once Starr started to take off, getting nervous only made things worse; he could feel the tension in my legs and chokehold on the reins. Then all control was lost—unless I could coax my thighs to lie heavy on his flanks, relaxing my hands to give and take with the working of his neck and crooning, as calmly as I could, “There, boy. Good boy. It’s okay, eeeeeasy. Easy.” When he listened, his pace would lose its frenzied panic, he would slow, gradually, and we would be back in touch, working together again.

With a deep breath, I squeezed his sides and steered him into a wide arc around the brickyard. We cantered around the jump. An older girl’s horse refused.

I lost my nerve.

When another horse finally cleared it, I regained some of my courage. I wanted to jump it when others were around, in case something went wrong. Also, they had to vouch for me when I bragged to my instructor—if I made it.

I took a deep breath and started Starr toward the jump. But he was still trotting when he should have been cantering already, so we circled.

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