Riding Lessons
by Carol Lee

Starting out riding horses for the first time in mid-life, heady with the notion that I'd moved to hunt country, it became imperative that I learn to ride! At the same time my mind was crowded with the threat of a broken hip and other calamities a calcium-popping post-menopausal woman thinks about.

My first day at Southlands, a young woman named Colleen greeted me at the front desk. Her daughter Maeve slumbered in an infant seat nearby. I moaned something about my hair not looking good and she reminded me, "You're in a barn, Carol..." It took a while to get used to the smell. Inside the barn, people of all ages tended to the horses, hosing them down after a ride, mucking out their stalls, filling their feeding bins, polishing their saddles, and brushing their beautiful bodies. A veritable beauty salon for horses!

I had opted for private lessons hoping they might yield quicker results. At the time, no one else was riding at my level anyway. As it turned out, the horse needed as much, if not more, riding paraphernalia than I did, and preparing to ride took some time. Getting it right is important for your safety, as I quickly discovered when I put the saddle on backwards or the girth too loosely around the horse's middle, or extended the stirrups too long. The results—sliding off the horse—were reminder enough to keep me from ever rushing things again. I learned to get to the barn before my lesson began to saddle up and save the 45 minutes exclusively for riding. I also learned to bring a bag of apples or carrots with me—five pounds at least—to feed all the horses in the barn afterwards. It's debatable who got more joy out of it, the horses or I.

My daughter, who rode horses as a young girl, chided me for wearing "someone else's sweaty hat" during lessons. It wasn't sweaty, just dusty and worn but, eventually, I invested in my own riding gear: hat, riding pants, chaps, shoes and gloves.

My instructor, Peggy, loves horses and all living things. She had infinite patience and never lost faith in my ability. The first time on the horse, riding down the slope from the barn to the outdoor ring with Peggy walking at my side, her hand secured on my horse's bridle, I cried out, "Wait, I'm not wearing a seatbelt!" She laughed, and though I complained bitterly, I calmed down when we hit level ground. "One day, it'll be just you and the horse!" she extolled. But for now, it was just me, the horse and my untenable fear.

My early lessons were in the ring, inside and out, depending upon the weather. Then, after learning the basics, I was allowed to ride out on the trails, open and wooded. Here, the spirit of both horse and rider are set free in a new dynamic. My husband was uncomfortable with me riding, as he considered horses "big, dumb animals." But anyone who has worked with horses will tell you this is not true.

The rider really can learn to communicate with the horse, and the horse is, indeed, smart enough to be taught what each movement means. The horses, in fact, did a bit of their own communicating when I doled out carrots after my lessons. Not wanting to miss out on the treat, they created a clatter throughout the barn, kicking their metal shoes on the sides of their wooden stalls if they had not yet received a carrot.

Southlands took into consideration my incredible fear when learning to ride, and found me a most harmonious horse: Tonto, a beautiful white appaloosa my husband dubbed "the sleeping horse," since he was already quite old and tired. In fact, he was put out to pasture after I stopped riding him. "He'll spend his remaining years roaming freely in the meadows," Peggy told me, patting the horse's face. The truth is, if Southlands could teach me to ride, they can teach anyone. Within a year I was trotting, cantoring and even jumping! Yeehaw! (Or should I say Tally Ho? They teach only English riding style.)

Southlands teaches more than just riding. By imparting the values of horsemanship it strives to engender respect and love for the land and all its animals. Its founder, Deborah Dows, a direct descendant of the Livingstons, inherited the nearly 200 acres of land from the parcel bestowed in 1686 as a king's grant. A world traveler, and refugee from two marriages, Deb decided in the 1930s to combine her understanding of land, animals, and people, with her teaching interest, and opened the riding school. Born of privilege and culture, she stuck a pin in high society's balloon, living as she pleased and doing what she loved. The school has been evolving ever since, but remains unique in its discipline and devotion to its benefactress, who died in 1994. A recent addition is A Horse Connection, a program founded by Nancy King, a Registered Therapist, that provides equine assisted therapy for individuals and groups with physical, emotional and/or developmental challenges. .

Recently I observed instructor Susie Williams teaching a beginning rider in the heated indoor ring. Susie explained, from atop a beautiful bay named Witano, owned and boarded here by Suzanne Battenfeld, that "There is a long circuitry between the thought in the rider's mind that manifests into the action the horse takes. When you ask a horse to cantor, your mind must have this thought... it can get confused if the circuitry is rushed." Susie has been riding most of her life. She first rode at Southlands when she was five years old, having been placed on a goat by Mrs. Dows' friend, Charlie Lang!

Susie counsels the new rider to "encourage the horse to believe he is the most important horse in the ring," for the same reason a student has to feel important in the classroom, she explained. It helps them focus on their goals and gives them purpose. I was seated on the sidelines, watching the lesson, when Suzie asked me to pass the riding crop, ". . . at shoulder height, because we don't want the horse to see the crop." Indeed, it's hard to prevent the horse from seeing anything on his side, because his eyes are on the side of his head, an evolutionary development that helps horses prevent being preyed upon.

This side vision largely accounts for a horse's skittishness, something a rider has to learn to quietly and quickly calm, especially when it's spooked, as mine was once when Peggy and I were riding the wooded trails out in back of Southlands. Spying a deer, my horse bolted in fear. Immediately I took control of Tonto—without even thinking —a testament to the training I received. With that training I was able to gallop along the open trails, the horse's mane flying, my soul soaring. It had finally become just me and the horse.

Even so, I stopped riding after one year. Of course, it's possible I'll start again, like Andrea, a woman I met before her lesson. Andrea rode as a child, but stopped shortly thereafter, not riding again until she was fifty and received as a birthday gift a stay at a dude ranch. "Bibi the quarterhorse at the ranch, inspired me to ride again," she says. Andrea recently moved to Woodstock and has been studying at Southlands. Last year she bought a horse of her own, which she boards here.

Maybe there's hope for me, too.