Dressage

a shortish horsy history of sorts

I used to identify with this light verse by Annie M.G. Schmidt. Without doing it justice, I've attempted a free translation of the beginning and the end:  

"When I was engaged to René

who dearly loved his Hemingway,

I read E. Hemingway all-day 

And felt his writing. A-okay!

But when for René I lost my passion 

Hemingway, too, went out of fashion

[follows a list of lovers and their contagious passions]

Sadly, there are still gaps to mend

In my general development, 

And though one cannot win them all, 

I am still hoping for Pascal

But anyway and anyhow:

The higher the number of one's lovers

The bigger the world that one discovers."

This poem illustrates how I got into dressage driving with a horse and carriage; my wife was the cause of this passion. It is a niche sport, comparable to golf, in that the outsider does not understand why it would be challenging to learn. Three years in, my old aunt Katja asked me rather shrilly and in disbelief when I told her I was going to a dressage class: 'Haven't you learned it yet?'

I had not - still haven't. But it is my wife's hobby, so like the antagonist in Schmidt’s poem, I take it seriously. Rikki, my horse, is a Frisian gelding with a kind and somewhat dreamy nature. Little things - a temporary stack of white planks or an unexpected garden gnome in a garden - can make him jump with all four feet in the air. We decided that it would be a good idea to broaden his horizons. He had to go to all kinds of different places and under various circumstances so he could become a Horse of the World. In other words, enter competitions.

I should have known it would be highly stressful for me; I dislike competitions, and I don’t handle stress well. No matter that I am competing against myself, not others. It doesn’t work. Even though we slowly climbed the competition ladder from B (Beginners) to L ('Light') and M ('Medium'), it got worse. I was so stressed that people hardly dared to talk to me anymore because I looked like I wanted to whack them on the head if they'd wished me as much as a 'good luck' or 'have fun'. Which is indeed what I felt like doing. My wife Inge, meanwhile, competed with a two-horse carriage drawn by Rikki (my horse) and Hayke (hers) and, as a habit, kept raking in first prizes. 

The most frustrating thing was that Rikki and I could have done better. Regardless of how many or how few points I get from the jury, I want to perform as best as possible. Mostly while training, we did well, but never in a contest. This phenomenon makes perfect sense when you realize that I passed my anxiety on through the reigns or the ether – horses pick up on these things in a near-mysterious way. It is an exceptional talent and inconvenient for neurotics like myself. I thought about stopping altogether. This was hell.

When our kick-ass dressage instructor told us he was being coached and very happy about it,  I needed a week to process this puzzling news—the expert decided he needed coaching. Then I asked for his coach's phone number.

During the first session, I told Coach Berber that competing was hell, I was below mediocre, Rikki and I did not reach our potential, and I wanted to quit. She made me climb on a balance beam and do all kinds of things that were too hard to do initially but learnable, nevertheless. It is difficult to explain what exactly happened. One of the good things about Berber is that she does not make me talk much. Instead, I have to do things, and she looks with her keen watchful eyes while I am struggling, sometimes asking a question..

I learned that I quickly become overwhelmed when things get hard or when I receive more information than I can process. I remembered that my goal was not to compete until I had a nervous breakdown but to become a good driver with a confident horse. I realized that this meant breaking down the journey into small steps—not to lower the bar but to increase the number of steps to get there.

Struggling my way through M without ever winning a prize or ribbon, I reached the point where I got bumped up to Z (for 'Zwaar' or Heavy). For the first time in Z, Rikki and I showed what we could do. It wasn't perfect; there was room for improvement, but it was fantastic. It was a reminder, too, that I do not need a high number of lovers to discover the world. I should go and find some new inspirational verse.

Foto: Johanna Faber