Directions

I'm struggling right now with what to do riding-wise this summer.  As far as medical goals go I'm pretty set, I'm working full time in a great research lab with lots of opportunities for publications.  My PI is a little eccentric but aren't they all?  At least he's passionate. 

I'll be teaching therapeutic riding lessons again this summer and have been out at the farm quite a bit this week, working with some of the new horses we have making sure they're ready for classes.  Actually, today I went out to evaluate a potential new horse.  He was such a sweetheart, this cute little palomino quarter horse who was absolutely bomb-proof, but he has laminitis in both fronts.  Apparently his soundness comes and goes, unfortunately we really can't take anyone on that isn't 100% and ready to go.  As a non-profit with limited resources that's just the way it is.  It was a bummer though, his owner is a young girl about to go off to college in a neighboring state, and her parents won't care for her horse in her absence.  It's obvious these two love each other and the horse just follows her like a puppy.  On the other hand, it makes me a little upset - I feel like horses are life-long commitments and I have no idea how she's going to find a loving home for this horse of hers with obvious lameness problems.

My personal struggle has been in trying to figure out where/how to allocate my financial resources towards riding.  A wedding coming this August certainly has been stretching my already tiny med-student budget even more thin!  I want to make progress and become a better rider and I'm not sure what the best way to do that is. As much as I'd like to lease or half-lease a dressage-y horse this summer, I think it's probably best for me to designate all my spare funds for lessons.  I can at least be on a horse whenever I'd like at the therapeutic riding farm, but there my role as a rider is to gently reinforce cues, give the horses mental stimulation through trail rides and new exercises, and help keep them in shape.  We don't do much if any work on contact and I use the same cues we teach our students, which are not usually like the invisible refined cues of dressage.  It's not fair to our horses for me to try to sensitize them to tiny requests, and then ask them to ignore similar movements from students who are just leaning over to pick up a toy or asking for a Walk not trot!

Who knows, maybe my future horses is out there right now, maybe a little foal enjoying his first spring or a mare preparing for her first show.  I keep trying to think of this horse-less time in my life as preparing for my future horse wherever he/she is.  I want to be the best rider I can when that time (will it ever come??) comes.