Faking it

Good morning from West Berkshire, where the snowdrops are just beginning to bloom, and the daffodils and jonquil are pushing up through the now unfrozen ground. January is the heaviest month; the heady realization that the days are getting longer buoys one, but it's still cold and muddy. My horse is still sharp. She is, like me, a summer princess. I've persuaded the lovely girls who make up her bed to give her extra shavings and to bank up the edges even more. Her bed is so cozy that I'd even lay down in it; with its round apron at the front, it's fit for a Queen. I was nervous today. I can say that now but for a long time I couldn't because I had a reputation for being brave. Balls out, they called me. BOB. But when the sharpness comes it feels like sitting on a tightly coiled spring ready to explode, and you have to do something with that thoroughbred energy. "I'm a bit scary-fied" I said to my trainer. "Last Friday is still in my head." I didn't think of it yesterday when we were out in the woods, but today, back in the school, I'm thinking of it. Last Friday she scooted across the school as if she'd been bitten on the arse by a tiger, and leapt in the air in an enormous buck. I sat to it, of course, but it was scary nonetheless. Today, she's sharp and tense, and looks at everything. Even prior to coming into the school she was irritable, flickering, anxious, cold. I try to breathe to balance it out. I know I have to find a way to fake it and to channel the energy correctly. "Let's just keep her busy so she can't think about it," Lizzie says, and so we go from collected to working to medium trot, we do shoulder in and travers, moving the base of the neck back and forth, pushing into a more extended trot across the diagonal. I know that when we are in our special box together, when she is on the end of my hand and soft, when I'm in the middle of her, riding the energy, all will be well. "Breathe" says Lizzie, and I do. "When your heart beats faster she will know," she says. And so I do my deep ocean breath and try to quieten my body. And slowly the thought dissipates. `Very slowly, focusing on her, and on us together, and trying to keep my seat deep and my shoulder blades together and my hands soft, and making sure I'm using enough outside rein, and keeping my legs by the girth and thinking hard to myself "channel Charlotte Dujardin" we begin to glimpse it. Suddenly the thought has gone, the adrenaline has gone, the spring is loosening, and the energy is going into these big bouncy steps, rocked back a little on her haunches. There is cadence. And we have created it together. "I love you Lizzie" I say at the end, and my voice begins to warble a bit. Getting through the fear at the beginning of the day makes you feel as if you've climbed a mountain.