Taking Up the Reins by Priscilla Endicott

Author:Priscilla Endicott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trafalgar Square Books
Published: 1999-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

Watching the Big Time

Walter Christensen firmly believed that watching others ride was the greatest aid to anyone wishing to learn. Within twenty-four hours of my arrival at Tasdorf, he had already stated his conviction that “You can never watch too much good riding.” Emphasizing his viewpoint with a nod and a raised eyebrow, he looked directly at me and I could imagine the unspoken words behind his eyes, “Pay careful attention to what I have told you.”

From the first day, it was clear to me that Walter was never too busy to notice which of his lehrlingers took time to watch the lessons, the training of horses, and the riding in the ring. He appreciated the seriousness of their intent, especially if the person watching wasn’t also chatting with someone. In Walter’s view, watching while socializing was useless; people could go elsewhere to talk.

And talk we did: at the stable everyone was constantly comparing notes. Overhearing the young people discussing what they had noticed about horses and their riders, I realized that there was much more to watching than I had previously thought. Not only were the apprentices picking up many more details than I could at just a single glance, but each person perceived the same scene differently. I began to understand that the ability to watch constructively was a talent we are not all given equally, and that it was certainly an area in which I could learn or at least improve.

My own perceptions those first weeks in Germany were primarily those of an admirer. I was filled with wide-eyed wonder that all the horses and their riders looked so beautiful—in fact to my eye, they seemed close to perfect. Six weeks later, when my lessons on Inca began, I found that I was concentrating almost entirely on watching riders. Walter had been continuously correcting my position so that I was intensely focused on myself. My observation, therefore, had become quite basic and self-involved, narrowing down to whatever I could relate to my own problems.

When a member of the stable crew asked, “Did you see how Frau so-and-so made her young horse improve his trot today?” I had to say, no, I hadn’t. I had, in fact, been exclusively interested in observing how expertly the woman sat, how she never lost the alignment of her shoulders, hips, and ankles the way I did. Whatever exercise she rode, she remained flexible even in her wrists—keeping her thumbs upright and her fists closed in the way that Walter was teaching me. However, by limiting myself to noticing only the rider’s technique, I was eliminating the other half of the picture; I needed to encompass the horse as well as the rider.

I knew I was catching on to the real business of watching—the kind of watching Walter Christensen had been talking about—when my perception widened. With time and daily practice, I began to see the horse and rider as a pair, a whole. I could pick up small details without losing any of the larger picture.

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