It's hard to believe it, but nearly a year and a half has passed since I first started my horse-riding experiment and that I've been either leasing or taking lessons at Sage Meadows for 15 months! As is to be expected with my health in general and the trials--foot/back injury, stomach woes--of the last year in particular, I was only able to be with the horses about half of the time, but the horses have proved to be powerful medicine even on a part-time basis.
I was at the park where I took my first lessons the other day and spied Lacey, the horse who gave me my first lessons, on the far right. Drifter is both much larger and a much better teacher, but she did help me figure out that riding and being with horses was something that I wanted to do.
My guy.
The benefits of hanging around equines in general and Drifter in particular have been numerous. One of the most valuable has been that my weekly horse fix has given me something to look forward to. Weeks or sometimes even months will go by when I do not leave the house except for medical appointments--or to be with the horses. When I'm at the stable, I cease to feel like I have any kind of disability. I get to exist in the moment, whether it is brushing Drifter in a meditative state on a winter afternoon or trying to perfect my posture while riding him around the arena on a sunny spring day. I love the act of grooming itself, so the winter months when I was leasing and not riding were no hardship. I love the solidity of Drifter's massive warm bulk and the pleasure he gets from a thorough grooming. One of my favorite things is when he stands in the cross-ties, nose against my chest, and descends into a drowsy, trancelike state of pleasure as I brush and caress his face. I know that Drifter has taught hundreds of students during his 20-odd years as a school horse and that there are several other students currently riding him, but Drifter feels like MY horse. I like to think that I am the very best groomer of all the students and that therefore he likes me best!
The tree-lined arena is a beautiful place to be on a sunny day.
Bear, one of the other school horses, looks up to see who is interrupting his grazing session.
Drifter's grooming tools.
This is rather silly, but I was delighted to learn that Drifter and I have something unusual in common: we both turned 32 in June! Yes, good ol' Drifter really is OLD. The average lifespan for a horse is 25-30 years, but Drifter is still plugging away and I think the good care he receives and the fact that he's still working (part-time) at a job he loves helps keep him young. He's been switched, much to his pleasure, to a pure alfalfa diet to help him keep weight on his old bones. I intend to keep learning from him and giving him excellent grooming session for as long as he's around.
So when I looked like this...
....Drifter must have looked like this!
(These are not actual pictures of Drifter as a baby, but I searched for images of a sorrel quarter
horse foal with a white face, so they are probably pretty close to how he looked in June of 1981!)
The two of us looking good together at 32.
Halters hung on pasture
fenceposts.
Other benefits from my association with the horses include building up my strength and a sense of mastery. As someone who can no longer do many activities that I once excelled at and whose life is such that even the ability to do chores or run errands is a luxury, it's nice to get a sense of accomplishment from something! It turns out that I'm good at riding a horse. Missing lessons due to not feeling well and fatigue often limiting what I can do when I can show up has slowed my progress, but even so, I have something of a feel for it. By the end of each lesson, I always feel that I'm a little bit more skilled than when I began. The progress may be small, but I have so little progress elsewhere in my life that it makes a big difference. I also like the sense of mastery I get from making a large animal ten times my weight do as I say. Drifter, of course, is as obliging as they come, but he is a little bit fussy about having his feet picked sometimes and, like with dogs, it's important with horses that the animal listens to you. That means if I say we are going to clean hooves, I can't give up until all the hooves are cleaned. The last thing you need is a giant animal who thinks he can walk all over you--especially when there's the possibility that he could do so literally as well as figuratively! So having the gumption and stubbornness not to give up on those days when Drifter is feeling lazy during lessons or fussy about his feet is very rewarding for me, especially given the size of the payoff. I also like that working with Drifter helps me build up my physical strength. My spindly arms now have muscles in them from all that intensive grooming and my legs have been regaining the strength they lost during those months when I was on crutches and then going through physical therapy to get my back stabilized. I also love that riding well requires using exactly the same core muscles that I was working on strengthening in physical therapy. It also demands a certain looseness that is beneficial to my hips and my shoulders when I'm out of the saddle, too. Riding has turned out to be a natural extension of what I was striving to accomplish in physical therapy and now that I've been discharged from PT, I'm pleased that I'll continue building on what I learned there, resulting, as I continue to ride, in a strong, stable, but flexible core that provides equally strong signals to both of my legs. Talk about a bonus!
Syd, another Sage Meadows horses, heads off for a lesson with an advanced student.
Bear.
Now that I have some mastery of the basics of riding a horse, my growing skills are being channeled into the discipline of dressage. It makes sense for me to go this direction because a) I'm not going to be riding Western for anything other than pleasure and b) Drifter is the only horse at Sage Meadows trained in Western riding, so switching to the English disciplines in general and dressage in particular creates a framework for perfecting my control even after Drifter passes away or I grow skilled enough to graduate to a more advanced horse. Dressage is best known at its highest level, where the rider guides the horse through a series of dance-like steps, but entry-level dressage is quite different. It involves riding the horse in a variety of formations at different paces. The most important part is for the rider to maintain steady speed at each pace during the maneuvers. The other important skill is riding in perfect circles. Horses naturally slow down while being ridden in a circle, making the task of maintaining a constant speed more of a challenge. I'm pretty good at executing circles, but Drifter and I are still working on the steady pace aspect.
This diagram shows steps involved in an entry-level test. After riding down the center of the arena, stopping at the exact center to salute the judges, the rider then turns to the left, executes a 20 m circle with the center point of the circle being the center point of the arena, continues around the outside of the arena and does another circle starting at the point opposite to the first, crosses the arena at a diagonal and repeats the maneuvers going in the opposite direction, and then rides down the center of the arena to the center point for a final salute to the judges.
The ears of Beacon, Drifter's stable buddy.
Drifter with an English saddle.
Since I was starting to work some dressage skills into my lessons, it was only right that I switch over to an English saddle. It just felt wrong to be saluting an imaginary dressage judge while wearing jeans and riding Western! I made the switch over to the English saddle about a month and a half ago and I love it! Because it is smaller, lighter, and less stiff, I've found that the English saddle gives me a better feel for what Drifter is doing. This has made posting (rising and falling with the rhythm of the trot) much easier! I really believe I'm going to make tons of progress this summer now that I'm in the different saddle.
It's always nice to have the right outfit for whatever your task at hand may be, so once I had switched saddles, I wasted little time in ditching the jeans. I now have full seat breeches, paddock boots, and half chaps! While it may seem slightly silly to have such an official get-up when my ambitions are minimal, the breeches and half chaps (what the rest of the world would call gaiters) do serve practical purposes. The breeches, in addition to being comfortable and flexible for riding, are lined inside the legs and on the seat for better grip on the smooth English saddle. And I quickly learned the benefit of half chaps when I wore breeches inside my Western boots: everything I picked out of Drifter's hooves dropped straight into my boots and pebbles jumped in as well as we did our warm-up walk around the arena. But the whole get-up--boots and breeches--looks so official and there's no harm to getting a psychological boost from your clothes when you're trying to make a thousand pound animal trot when you say so and stop when you say stop!
Decked out in breeches and half chaps, I guide Drifter around the arena on beautiful summer day.
Me and my guy. Look how big his head is in comparison to my torso! And yet, this good-natured horse does my bidding--as long as I ask him in the correct manner. This is why he's a great beginner's horse: he's just particular enough that you've got to get your signals mostly right, but not so particular that he'll refuse to obey unless you perform them perfectly.
There's always more to be done. On days when I'm feeling strong enough, I work on posting, but even on the days when I'm more tired, I'm always working on my form and I'm learning how to tell him what to do simply by changing how I sit in the saddle. Riding requires a subtle balance of looseness and control, so I'm always having to remind myself to keep the elbows bent at a particular angle but not rigid, to have my pelvis rotated just so, to have my heels down and my legs back, to pull my shoulders back but not too far or too stiffly, to be moving my hips with the horse but keep the shoulders still and even, to arch my back just so, to have my fingers closed on the reins, to not unconsciously pull up on the reins, to keep my hands down and forward when posting while keeping the elbows loose, to try to lift from the inner thighs when posting and not from the stirrups (I'm not quite strong enough to do this yet, but am working on it), to keep my eyes up and looking ahead (sometimes I forget to do this because I am admiring the passing scenery), etc., etc., not to mention all the particulars that go along with the tack. Of course, all of the riding works best when you're not thinking TOO hard about it, so until it becomes second nature, you have to figure out how to remind yourself of all the particulars at the same time as not thinking about them at all. I find that it works best if I concentrate 90% of my focus on getting my hands in the right place and letting my body naturally (more or less) follow the information I'm getting from Drifter. I love the challenge of it, though, and it's why even slight progress can feel like a satisfying accomplishment.
Getting better all the time! Best of all, I don't look or feel like a largely housebound chronic migraineur when I'm proudly mounted on a horse.
I've made lots of progress on my posting in recent weeks.
It's been an amazing journey so far and I hope that Drifter, despite his advanced age, will remain in good health long enough to teach me everything he knows. I will forever be indebted to his calm, patient, and willing demeanor long after I have graduated to more advanced horses and he has departed from this life. I know that with him (and with my great instructor), I am laying a foundation to make me a competent horsewoman that will serve me well no matter where this newfound passion takes me. Dogs, photography, and maintaining a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world all play a role in helping me remain positive despite my significant health challenges, but adding horses to that mix has proved beneficial beyond my wildest dreams.
One of the more debilitating aspects of my daily migraines is that my eyes are constantly sensitive to light. Even if I'm not currently experiencing pain, ordinary levels of light can hurt my eyes and may trigger a migraine. Light triggers can include lit lamps indoors, virtually any kind of store lighting, the reflection of overhead lights on polished floors, the sun coming in at low angles, the sun reflecting off of chrome surfaces (from faucets to car bumpers), the sun reflecting off of shiny surfaces (car windshields, any kind of water, etc.), pretty much sunlight in general, bright overcast skies, streetlights and headlights, any sort of light that blinks, computer and other electronics screens, TV shows or movies with flickering and flashing images or editing, and really just about everything else imaginable except my little 40-watt lamp in my bedroom. I take a variety of precautions to protect myself from light, from filtering blinds on the kitchen and study windows and a black-out blind in my bedroom, always keeping the contrast on my computer monitor turned all the way down, a anti-glare film on the computer monitor, sitting so I face away from lamps and windows whenever possible, avoiding going into stores or out of the house at night, and being selective about what I watch, but really, if I'm ever going to leave my bedroom, I have to be wearing some kind of shades.
When I first got the migraines, I had two pairs of sunglasses: the cheap, oversized fashion frames I'm wearing in the photo on the left and a pair of more expensive polarized lenses that I'm wearing WITH a pair of reading glasses on the right. While the polarized lenses, purchased when I first started having migraines when I was in college, were better sunglasses, they didn't offer the same eyebrows-to-cheekbones coverage as the oversized pair. I found the contrast between the dark lenses and the surrounding bright light very painful, so I almost exclusively wore the larger pair.
In the spring of 2010, I went in for a standard eye exam and told my optometrist all about the onset of the chronic migraines six months earlier. My vision is very good (20/10 for distance, in fact) and my near vision, while no longer perfect, has not eroded to the point where reading glasses are usually prescribed, but the doctor suggested that I get a pair of glasses with a very mild prescription, just enough to give my eyes a break so they wouldn't have to strain at all. There was the tradeoff of not being able to wear my sunglasses while wearing the reading glasses, but for working on the computer and reading, the prescription lenses definitely made a positive difference.
My mother, who is always researching more ideas on living with chronic migraines and how to make me more comfortable, read about the possible benefits of red lenses for migraine sufferers in a book that mentioned, almost in passing, that a Japanese study had found them therapeutic. So off I went to the mall to inquire at the various glasses stores to see if they knew where I could find red lenses and was very pleased to discover that at the store where my parents got their glasses, the salesman said, when asked about red lenses, "Oh, like for migraines?" It turns out he had another customer that had been ordering red lenses for years and he knew just the place to get them. So that's how I ended up with myic! berlin "garri k." frames with "currant" colored lenses. They were very expensive (though I did get to apply my insurance's eyeglasses allowance toward them because they were for therapeutic purposes), but amazingly comfortable! The super lightweight frames weigh just 20 grams, oh-so-gently grip the head instead of wrapping around the ears to stay on, and the wraparound lenses cover all areas of my vision with no gaps. Unlike any other frame I've worn, they've never once felt uncomfortable or caused a headache because of the way they fit or their weight on my head. And I loved the red lenses! They were extremely helpful for combating
light sensitivity and I instantly stopped wearing my reading glasses except for by the light of the 40-watt bulb in my bedside lamp because the light-sensitivity reduction trumped the benefits of the prescription. I was finally able to look at the computer screen for more than fifteen minutes at a time and was less likely to get an instant migraine if I accidentally caught the glaring reflection of sunlight off the kitchen faucet. I also liked that they looked cool: I got compliments on them all the time! They didn't look like a therapeutic lens and the tint was light enough that I could wear them indoors. While they did distort colors somewhat, I quickly adapted to the way the world looked, though I would look over them when editing photos to make sure I got the color right!
At the same time that I got my red glasses, I also bought a pair of polarized lenses in an oversized frame for wearing outside. Smoky gray in color with a anti-reflective coating on the back (to eliminate those nasty something-bright-behind-you-reflected-on-the-inside-of-your-lenses surprises), I wore these any time I rode in the car or went outside for more than a few minutes. Between the red lenses and these sunglasses, I was better able to cope with the bright and shiny world. Unfortunately, after last summer's head injury, my light sensitivity increased. My sensitivity to light WITH the glasses became comparable to what my light sensitivity had been like WITHOUT the glasses prior to the concussion. Still, it was much better to have the glasses than not!
In the fall of 2011, I saw a vision therapy specialist my mother has worked with on scientific studies. She uncovered all kinds of interesting information, such as the fact that while my vision is more acute than the average person's, my ability to change the depth of my focus is extremely clunky. (From time to time, especially if my eyes are tired, my eyes will get "stuck" and not be able to refocus or, even more disconcerting, one eye will get stuck and the other will not.) I also have unusually active and acute peripheral vision, a much-smaller-than-average blind spot, and my eyes are constantly roving my environment. It validated my sense that I see more than most people (it's not just that I notice more, I actually SEE more). That means my sharp, roving eyes are having to refocus all the time. No wonder they get tired! She said that eventually she'll give me some therapeutic exercises to help me better ignore what's going on in my peripheral vision and focus more smoothly on what's in front of me, but we decided that the first thing we wanted to tackle was determining that the red lenses were the best tint. I'd been wanting to get a prescription pair of tinted lenses, but when she suggested that I might want to explore other tints, I jumped on board. She loaned me a spotlight and glass discs in various colors to place over the light in order to test them. The colors included red, purple, green, a couple of blues, gray, yellow, and amber. I discovered that purple made me really sick and that blues and green were problematic, too. The best out of the options was amber. I first tested this conclusion with a very orangey-amber pair of swim goggles, but they kept fogging up. Then my mom found a $10 pair of amber-brown aviators and I wore those around for several months. They were indeed better than my red glasses and I found that I could wear them both inside the house and out, but they were quite uncomfortable to wear after a couple of hours, so I used my red glasses when I was on the computer. The amber lenses really distorted colors in a way I didn't like, but seeing life with distorted colors was better than wincing against the light of daily life. When I saw the eye doctor next, I reported my findings, but she had an even better idea: an optometrist up north had a sophisticated new type of lenses, so to get the very best tint, I ought to go see him.
It looks like a fairly standard sunglasses tint, but it's actually carefully formulated.
So earlier this summer, I got tested for the best lens tint offered by ChromaGen for my particular brain. ChromaGen lenses are most often used for those suffering from dyslexia. (There is also a different set of ChromaGen tints that correct color blindness.) In basic layman's terms, the tints, very specifically selected to correspond to certain wavelengths, slow down activity in the brain. Each eye is different, too, so some individuals benefit from having a different tinted lens for each eye. We found that one eye was very particular about the tint it preferred and the other eye liked both that tint and another, so I went with the same tint in both lenses. The setting sun came out of the clouds while I was there and so I was able to compare one of the hardest types of light for me to manage through my red glasses, the amber aviators, and then the selected ChromaGen tint. The ChromaGen tint was better than either of those lenses, so we decided to go with it. They were able to put the new lenses in my beloved ic! berlin frames, so I rather nervously surrendered them for the three weeks it would take to put the ChromaGen lenses in the frames. The ChromaGen testing and lenses were very expensive (and while it has been approved by the FDA, it is not yet covered by insurance), but I'm glad to report that my lenses are making a difference.
There was an adjustment period. Like a prescription lens, I had to work up to wearing them full time, especially while riding in the car. Since I've started wearing them full time, though, I think I've been better. They help a lot with bright lights, to the point where I can actually look at my computer monitor without recoiling in pain if the contrast is any higher than zero and the other night, while riding in the car after dark for the first time since I got them, I found I was able to tolerate the sight of the headlights of oncoming cars! This is huge, since in the past I had found being in the car at night was best dealt with by wearing my dark sunglasses, a sweatshirt with a large hood pulled low over my head, and keeping my eyes closed. (Not surprisingly, I avoided going out after dark whenever possible, but my weekly physical therapy appointment lets out after dark in the winter.) I also think I've just been a little bit better overall in a way that's hard to define, other than perhaps to say that my mind has been clearer more of the time. I also feel like it was easier for my eyes to recover after I spent several hours working in Photoshop recently. Also, they don't distort colors. I really like that! I did have to adjust to the fact that they are quite shiny on the back and an anti-reflective coating can't be applied without destroying the benefit of the tint and I still haven't gotten them adjusted to fit my face quite right, but as long as I don't have something really shiny directly behind me, I'm okay. And thanks to the tint, it's easier for me to face windows or lamps than it used to be! I still get migraines and my eyes still get tired and I'm still sensitive to light, but I would say that the glasses are making a difference. The next step will be to get a second pair of ChromaGen lenses with a prescription to use while I'm on the computer. I haven't decided if I should get them in my existing reading glasses frames or get new frames altogether.
The six pairs of lenses that have helped shield me from the light during 34 months of daily migraines.
My perpetual light sensitivity continues to be a daily and debilitating problem, but having good lenses makes many of the small comforts of my life--my digital photography, connecting with friends via the internet, watching shows when it's too difficult for me to read--possible. I highly recommend that sufferers of light sensitivity experiment with various tints (you can compare them easily enough with $10 sunglasses, like I did when I was testing out amber lenses) to see which works best for your eyes and then investing in a lightweight pair of frames with oversized, polarized lenses in the preferred tint. For those who have serious sensitivity issues, access to a trained practitioner, and an extra $1500 lying around, I do recommend the ChromaGen lenses. Oh, and always wear your shades like you're doing it because you're fabulous and it's part of your look, not because they're therapeutic!
And on that note, here's a song that frequently gets stuck in my head in the evenings...
Astute observers of this blog will have noticed that after posting nearly every week about my Thursdays spent with Drifter and the horses of Sage Meadows, there has been a dearth of horse posts as of late. I'm still hanging out with Drifter on a weekly basis, but there has been one major change: since the start of July, I've been riding Drifter instead of grooming him! (Well, I groom him a little bit, but the bulk of my time with him is spent in the saddle.) It's much more fun to write about horses when you have pictures of horses, too, and since I can't take pictures of myself while riding, I haven't had a blogpost's worth of images. I also wanted to have a few lessons under my belt before I delivered an assessment of how things are going.
Syd in one of my previously unposted horse photos.
Well, I've had five lessons with my equine instructor Drifter and human instructor, Kaite, so I have learned enough to talk about what I'm doing, and the past two weeks, horse-loving friends have accompanied me to my lessons. Once you've been bitten by the horse bug, it's hard to let it go, so both friends, who rode when they were younger, leapt at the chance to come hang out with some beautiful horses and smell that wonderful horse aroma. They were welcome to do so as long as they stayed out of the way of the horses' hooves (Katie's stipulation) and took photos of me on Drifter during my lesson (my stipulation).
Drifter is saddled up and ready to go. In the background,
Bear's tack is removed after his lesson.
Smiling atop Drifter during Lesson #2.
Working on the walk.
I'd say that so far my lessons have been going very well! Drifter is a wonderful lesson horse, miles and miles and miles better than Lacey, and I'm happy to report that I had very few bad habits to unlearn and I can tell I'm going to learn lots and lots of good ones. I'm sure that spending two months grooming Drifter has been so good for our rapport and of course I'm extremely comfortable around him. He'll be a little pokey from time to time, but unlike Lacey, there's no stubborn refusal to move at all! Katie's been teaching me how to ride and communicate with a horse primarily using my legs, so everything, except for the steering aspect, is accomplished by either squeezing with my legs or changing how I sit, though an occasional verbal command is used, too. It's a very intuitive way of riding and it's how I want to relate to a horse. We started working on riding at a trotting pace from the very first lesson and I've been working for several weeks now on learning to post: that is, to rise and fall in the saddle to the rhythm of the trot. You can "sit" the trot, but that makes for a very bouncy (some might even say bone-jarring!) ride, especially before you get a feel for moving with the horse. There are a million and one things related to form that you have to remember while posting, from the way your heels are oriented in the stirrups to how much bend you have in your wrist, so we've spent the last few lessons in the round corral, where Katie can control Drifter's speed and there's much less steering to be done! I'm starting to get the hang of it, at least for short stretches of time, and I realized that sometimes the best way to do it correctly is to not think about it at all. Things will become easier over time as my muscle memory takes over, but that takes a lot of riding.
Drifter with his tail caught mid-swish!
There's usually a grass-eating bunny observing my lessons.
Syd and the other horses like to watch, too.
Posting!
I'm starting to get a much better idea of what the information I'm getting from Drifter means. When I started, his movement beneath me was just a bunch of "noise;" now I'm starting to feel how that movement translates into the cadence of his walk or his trot. Of course, he can read me no problem! It's amazing: we can be in the middle of trotting and the moment my mind wanders to a thought like, "Oh no, my foot is starting to slip out of its position in the stirrup!" or, "Uh oh, my nose is running and any moment now it's going to get beyond where I can sniff it up and is going to start running down my face," he will come to a halt. He can't read my mind, of course, but he can read the slightest changes in my posture that reflect my loss of focus on moving forward, changes I'm not even aware I'm making, and he'll stop. It's a good lesson on focusing on being in the moment and pure in your intentions!
I am now capable of talking and riding at the same time!
Drifter is a great training horse (and a big sweetie, too), but I'd like to give a lot of credit to Katie. I was sure from the very first day that I showed up to groom Drifter that she'd be a good instructor and she has been. She's so good at imparting information and giving corrections in a positive way! She's also been very responsive to my needs, like making sure I had lots of breaks and didn't wear myself out on the day I showed up feeling queasy but decided to try riding anyway. I know I can ask questions and that I will always get an easy-to-understand explanation. It makes my task so much easier to know that I have a great human instructor and a great equine instructor!
Katie making sure everything is properly adjusted before the lesson begins.
Discussing the finer points of communicating with a horse via the legs.
Listening while Katie (not visible) offers an explanation.
I'm pleased to report that in addition to becoming good pals with Drifter, the two months of grooming helped me build up enough strength and stamina that riding has not been too hard. My legs were a bit jelly-like after my second lesson, but so far I've been able to keep up. I also think it's helped me be strong enough to handle the three-week stint looking after Sweetheart.
I tend to be all smiles when around the horses!
There's so much I still have to learn and I need to remember not to lean too far back when sitting in the saddle and to only move my arms at the elbow while posting and to make sure I squeeze my legs hard enough to give Drifter clear signals and not to pull back on the reins to make him stop unless he's ignored all my other directions, but I feel like things have gotten off to a fabulous start!
Drifter always gets a big snack after his lesson!
Another beautiful day at Sage Meadows.
The horses are happy and so am I!
And here's a little video of me riding at the walk, the trot, and then posting during Lesson #4!
