My Life with Horses - Episode 7: Year 1996/1997 Meet Fetas - My very first own horse

Episode 1-6

Everything I know about show-jumping I learned from this horse. There were others of course but Fetas taught me how to fly and although his navicular syndrome and RAO problems stopped me from reaching my dreams with him he will always have a very special place in my memory.
I first started riding him at my trainer's yard - Boguslawice stud and didn't even plan buying him. He was a show-jumper with an FEI passport which meant he went places I hadn't even dreamt about yet.
We didn't get on very well to start with. I liked horses quick over the jump and he was really slow and careful. I liked fast powerful canter, his was elevated, ground covering and intimidating. I couldn't see a single stride on him to start with.
On our first training we had to jump a long grid with no reins and no stirrups - he carted me through it and proceeded to rear at the end depositing me onto the ground.
Half a year later we were jumping over 1.20m and I knew I had to have him.

Fetas, 16.2hh, 13yrs old Trakehner stallion - the first day at my yard (1996)

My joy was short-lived as Fetas was a horse that didn't stay sound for long. He was 13 yrs old when I bought him so not overly old as per today's standards but he felt his age. It took us a while to figure out how to manage his RAO.
The best life for him would have been one based on living out 24/7 and doing dressage - unfortunately he came to me - a show-jumping mad teenager at a yard with no turn-out...
We did try our best to find him as many grassy patches as possible and he did go out whenever possible. At one of our training camps I even negotiated a little space for him behind tennis courts; it wasn't really designed for horses but he loved walking around and watching everything. The below video shows him on the last day of the camp - you can see he is ever so slightly unlevel in front - his navicular again - he had a month off work following the camp.
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Not long after Fetas was bought, two other girls and I moved yards to be closer to our trainer's base. We ended up at a lovely, small livery yard where we basically had whole infrastructure to our disposition.

The building behind me on the above picture was our indoor school where I learned how to ride the most tight of courses! Grzegorz Kubiak would set an 6-8 fences course in that tiny space but boy did that teach us to ride our turns correctly! There weren't tiny courses either - we jumped up to 1.30m there.

Showing off ;) Yes, we did jump that :)

Fetas's lovely trot

I rode in draw reins a lot in those days, partly because I could not connect Fetas from leg to the hand and partly because that was what my trainer and every show-jumper on the block did. I have since learned that you really don't need them and am keeping mine in the bottom of the deepest cupboards.
To be fair we were never allowed to ride horses too deep and round and as you see on the photo above, Fetas is in a rather long outline and is allowed the freedom to stretch his neck in this 'extended' trot. Oh, how I wish I wasn't so stubborn and tried pure dressage with him...

We continued to ride our trainer's horses too and competed a fair bit. I loved going places and if there is something I really miss in my instructing life it is those away shows. The atmosphere was always great and apart from having loads of fun we also learned so much by watching numerous classes throughout the days.

And here is one of the pages from my teenage diary ;) No laughing please! I used to draw every course we jumped so I could learn on my (frequent!) mistakes. The comments below say that I forgot about keeping good rhythm (I mentioned that a few times in that little text ;).
The write up is from an equestrian magazine called 'Konie i Rumaki' - I was so proud of Fetas to be placed out of 51 horses. I guess you can compare it to being mentioned in Horse & Hound!



Good old days. Shame they didn't last that long...

Above: some pictures from a show - one of many, not really sure what I won there but we were placed (standing & waiting for decoration in between chestnut and a grey).

It must have been around autumn 1997 when I dislocated my knee yet again, this time really badly. Ended up in plaster for 8 weeks, was told I should give up show-jumping and riding in general too and prepare myself for a long and painful rehab.
Well, the day my plaster was taken off I went back to the yard and rode my horse - not something I should have done but I never liked being told what to do...

To be continued...

My Life With Horses...Episode 6

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5

Episode 6 - which tells you a bit about my first serious training and less serious summery pursuits.

In early 1996 two of my friends and I started started training with Grzegorz Kubiak.
I still remember that first ride as it was a dream come true to actually be helped by someone of that calibre. I rode a jack-of-all-trades a horse called Dzwon ('The Bell'). Grey gelding, about 15.2hh who could turn his hoof at anything!
He was quite a character! At our very first meeting Dzwon attacked me in the arena. He was one of the few horses I have met that truly went for you - teeth, hoofs, the lot. I was walking towards him to take him off his previous rider and he just pulled the reins out of that person hands and jumped onto me. He pushed me on the floor and kicked out at me leaving some long-lasting bite marks on my arm. I wasn't impressed. He was a miserable creature in the stable and was rather tricky to deal with but later mellowed with age. I went from being afraid to go into his stable to feed him (as when you were on your way out he was there ready to speed you up!) to befriending him totally :) We all forgave him as his behaviour stem from very bad handling in the past and he simply hated people for a long time.

On the day of my training we were already well acquainted although probably only due to a very tragic accident...Dzwon was used not only for the club competitions and riding school but also for driving. He and his partner - a lovely grey mare - pulled a wedding carriage alike this one. One night, they were on their way back to the stables when a car hit the carriage killing the mare and injuring Dzwon. It was late at night and the horse would not load so I rode him bareback to the stables. At times I jumped off and led him for a bit telling him to be good to me as thanks to me he would be home for supper - it took us a few hours but since that day he seemed to have come to the conclusion that he would spare me his teeth. Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures of us competing which is sad as he was the first horse to give me the taste of jumping in style & performance sort of classes. We also won some rossetts which still sit in my 'magic box' in my family home :) The photos you see here show Dzwon at one of my riding school's camps. The horses and the staff used to went places for summer, rented some stables and arenas (or rode in a football pitch- great fun!) and hoped to attract as many tourists to riding lessons as possible. We taught in the mornings and had afternoons to play with the horses. Those were the most relaxed, fun days I remember.


Pic. left: Dzwon and I and some of the team at our 'reception table' ;))

Ok, back to the training day! The thing I remember the most was the feeling of having had learnt more in one hour than during all of my previous jumping sessions. I loved every minute of that lesson and we continued with weekly trainings for about half a year.
It was then when we started to realise that our beloved horses we had so much fun with were not really up for a more advanced challenges in the world of show-jumping...They were fine over 1m courses but anything higher than that and they struggled. I jumped Dzwon over higher fences in the lessons but he wasn't good enough to cope with the full set of higher jumps.
That was when Grzegorz Kubiak suggested that we ride the stallions at Boguslawice Stud.
The old Polish studs have amazing aura about them. This particular one is based in an old property of bishop kujawski, which has emerged from royal enforcements in 1215. The stud itself exists since 1921 (some photos from national champs held at the stud in 2007).
It was fantastic to ride those horses. They were so different from our good old riding school plods and the excitement of jumping them is indescribable.
We worked a lot on basics and were made to jump with no stirrups and no reins regardless how feisty a stallion we were on at a time. I learnt loads and I hope some of those skills are sitting somewhere deep in my muscle memory and that I will be able to dig them out when I once again have a horse to show-jump on.
It became more and more difficult to come back to the reality of a riding school and that elusive thought of having an own horse went from a dream to a plan! My parents were pretty much emerged into show-jumping by that time, especially my dad who loved trailing us to the stud for training and to various places for competitions. The mental ground was being prepared and we waited for a suitable equine candidate to emerge.
Meanwhile I did my III Sports Class riding my trainer's stallions (to obtain it you need 3 rounds in style & performance classes at 1m (3'3) where your style mark is below 5 points; the points are given for bad approaches/badly ridden corners, position faults over the jumps, wrong striding in lines and doubles as well as for starting and finishing volte where you are judged on trot to canter and canter to trot transitions; the lower the score the better).
Some of my attempts were rather pathetic and maybe it isn't such a bad thing that I have no proper records from back then ;)

We had lots of fun. We travelled a lot and everything was paid by the stud. In fact, back then, it was a great time for junior riders. The studs had to take their horses out and about which meant there was never any particular shortage of them. The transport was free and we usually either slept in a horsebox or rented cheap holiday accommodation if going to a few days long shows.
Even better, on one of cold wintry day of 1996 I met Fetas - a 16.2hh, dark brown trakehner stallion who was to become my first truly own horse. It was the best day of my riding life. Little did I know how much heartache was to follow...

To be continued...

My Life with Horses - How did I go from a city child to a riding instructor - Episode 5

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

Episode 5 - which sees me in the year 1995 and beginning of 1996: the time when I met my first trainer, went to my first training holiday, had my first success in show jumping competition and first taste of the Real thing...

Although my main interest when it came to horses had been show-jumping I also enjoyed all sorts of other equestrian sports and had special fondness for vaulting. It always seemed incredible to me how amazingly coordinated you have to be to perform all the intricate exercises on a cantering horse. When a few friends and I got together and decided to go for a training holiday we went for one which
offered a comprehensive programme and vaulting was a firm element of it!

The camp was fantastic - we lived, breathed and dreamt horses 24/7. We were allowed to do basically anything. I remember one night we went to sleep in a straw/hay barn next to the stables. It was pitch dark as the barn had no electricity in and we spent the night telling scary stories to each other and freaking ourselves to the point when we just run out of the barn, into the night and back into our chalets screaming our heads off ;) I don't think the horses appreciated that but I still remember some of those stories!

The camp lasted three weeks and we rode three times a day on weekdays and twice at the weekends (as then we went for several hours long trail rides). Trainings run early morning, afternoon and evening. One of the lessons was always jumping, one hacking out and one flatwork or various other things including introductory vaulting sessions :)
The latter was great fun. I have had since tried to acquire vaulting belt/leather blanket alike one on the pictures below and use it for teaching but the cost is prohibitive.
































On the picture above where I am hanging from the horse you had to dismount via a somersault. You held the special handles, lowered yourself so your legs were above your head and then you just flipped yourself over as if doing a somersault. Of course you had to let go of the handles in the right moment :)

In the end of each week we had an in-house show: something which incorporated everything we learnt during the week. One of the classes for instance required you to design and make your own costumes, dress up, create your own little flatwork show and then jump a course of fences (nothing more than 3ft3). You got points for making your show more difficult so we incorporated riding facing the rear and "round the world" in trot with no one holding the horse...I actually do have a picture of me doing this but I thought it might be a bit too much for today's health & safety ;) However, if I don't get too much horrified feedback I will add it up on here.

My riding improved incredibly over this holiday and I am since a big fan of intensive training weeks. I especially enjoyed jumping a different horse every day. They all actually loved it so it was a very nice change after Iskra!
However, on the last day of the camp something happened that actually secretly started to significantly change my life with horses and who I was to grow into...
The last day was to be a treat to us all and we were going for a several hours ride over a very varied countryside and the nature of those rides can be compared to hunting in the UK. It was fast with lots of various obstacles, gates, dunes, woodland and fields on the way.

On the morning of the ride I was grooming my mount for the day, a grey mare called Pretoria. She was very stubborn and didn't want to give me her front leg so I could pick her foot out. It started to take way too long and as we all needed to be ready 9.00 pronto I was getting really worried. Finally I figured that I could slap her stronger just under her knee on the inside which would trigger the reflex alike in a human and she would quickly lift her leg giving me a chance to grab it. I also figuered that I could stick the hoof pick under her foot to get her to react - what a fool!
Leaving it dirty wasn't an option as I wouldn't be allowed to join the ride.
I started with a gentle pat below her knee and a jab with a hoof pick, nothing. A bit stronger, and wow! She did indeed bend her leg but did it in such a way that she kicked me straight into my own knee sending me flying across the barn - literally a few good meters away.
That was pretty painful. If you ever broke something and you know the feeling of a sort of pain that leaves you blind and feeling sick then you will know what I mean. I could not breathe and could not move for some time. I have no idea how long it lasted but slowly the pain decreased and I stayed sitting on the ground with my knee hard pressed in between my hands as if I wanted to hold everything together.
The next thing I remember was my instructor coming to check on me and enquire why was I taking so long and to tell me everybody was waiting for me. I told him what happened and he asked me whether I could bend and unbend my knee. I stood up to test it and yes, I could do that.
He asked me whether I could walk and I tried. Surprisingly the pain kept decreasing to the point it was bearable. I could walk but...my knee felt very, very weird. Very loose and sort of wobbly as if I had a bag of pudding inside it.
I told him I was fine.

Pretoria stood like a lamb as if nothing what happened had anything to do with her. She didn't even flick an ear when I climbed on (thankfully my injured knee was the right one so I could still get on). I couldn't do rising trot as my knee didn't seem to be able to take any weight so I spent entire trot moments in sitting trot. We cantered a lot anyway and Pretoria had the most armchair sort of canter that I didn't complain.
After 4 or so hours we returned and I wondered whether I would be able to get off. Throughout the ride I was telling myself that everything was all right and I would just get off and be fine. I wasn't.
I did get off, untack the mare and went to pack my bags. By the evening where all the parents arrived to pick us up my knee was three times the size, filled with fluid and I had a fever.

We arrived home late at night and my father, who had a couple of knee operations, put loads of ice on it and bandaged it for the night.
First thing in the morning we set off to the hospital and left with my leg in plaster for 2 weeks with suspected ligament strain. I also experienced one of the scariest moment when my orthopedist stuck a needle long enough to go through your leg and come out the other way into my knee to remove the fluid. That wasn't very nice to say the least.
Throughout this whole ordeal I had only one thing in mind: when will I be able to ride again!!
They said I would be ok in a couple of weeks. If only...

For the time being though, I was indeed fine. The plaster went off and I was riding the next day. My knee didn't feel quite right but I was in denial and pretended all was just great. It sort of was, at least for some next two years.

In autumn 1995 I finally got to ride Pika. Her foal was weaned and she was slowly put back into work. The October show came and we got placed in a 1m class. I still have a rosette from that day somewhere:) We came third or fourth, don't remember and couldn't care less about the placing. I was just elated to be able to ride a full course without embarrassing elimination!


I got her on a month loan after that show and it was my first taste of real horse ownership.


Some time later that year the owner of the stables arranged for a meeting with me and my friend and our parents. She announced that her daughter would be starting a professional jumping training with one of the best riders/trainers in the country and whether we would like to join...Sure we did. It involved not only training at the stables but also weekly lessons at the trainer's then base: The Boguslawice Stud.
When I heard who was going to train us I almost fell off the chair. To give you an idea who he was in Poland: imagine you are 16 years old, you love show-jumping and want to be a professional rider. Someone calls you and tells you that you have just been offered training with John and Michael Whitaker, they will come to your yard to teach you as well as you will be invited to their yards to ride their horses and learn to jump higher, more difficult tracks.
Well, I hope you are with me here.
I was to train with Grzegorz Kubiak - the best show-jumper in Poland, both then and now (currently based with Sobieski Jumping Team).

To be continued...

My Life with Horses - How did I go from a city child to a riding instructor - Episode 4

Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3

Episode 4 - in which hard beginnings are rewarded by the beauty of constant learning

In autumn of 1994 the stables got a few new liveries which started my adventure with "riding for owners"! I was assigned my first ever "own" horse which means I was the only person to jump it, train it and care for it for its owner who paid for full livery.
The horse was called Iskra [read: eeskra and which translated into English means 'a spark']. It was a she, an about 15.2hh chestnut mare who, should she was a human being, would probably be a drama queen and worked in a theatre!
She had masses amounts of quirks, she liked to nip you when you groomed her and wouldn't hesitate to give you a little kick should she so wished and decided you were staying for too long in HER stable. I adored her and whatever she did she was always in my good books.
It was Iskra who partnered me in my first show-jumping competition. In the run up to it the stables organised jumping training once a week which we didn't have to pay for but had to work for that bit harder. Usually it meant aggravating my mum who rightly claimed that I should had been home doing my homework rather than playing horses all the time. I was pretty lucky as my school records were always good and I didn't seem to have much problems. This meant that even if I wasn't mega ready for some lessons the teachers didn't ask me as they assumed I knew anyway ;))
I spent ages turning my house upside down looking for the picture of Iskra that I knew I had somewhere but I couldn't find it. I will add it here as I know I have it, it just the matter of figuring out where did I put it!
Our trainings didn't go very well because Iskra didn't share my enthusiasm for jumping (to say the least). She had a very dirty stop and liked to practise it at almost every fence. On a good note she taught me a very secure seat as after a few landings over her head I didn't dare to go in front of the movement as well as how to grip with my legs (not too good!).
After a few months I did get some sort of knack of her and we would sometimes managed a course with two refusals, sometimes less. However, that was before the fillers and decorations were added...She hated them with vengeance and would not jump them until she had a very good look at them. This involved about 15-20 refusals underneath the penultimate fence ;) I still adored her! What was I thinking??? ;)
Picture left: one of the livery ponies
On the day of the competition my parents told me they would be coming and bringing friends along. Well, I was not too pleased. I was pretty sure I would have a refusal and didn't fancy this being watched by lots of people I knew.
The show was a pretty big one as our stables usually held regional competitions with classes going up to 'N' (1.20m). I was entered in 'LL' (80cm - 2ft6) and 'L' (1m - 3ft3). The idea being that Iskra would have a good look at the fences in 'LL' class and most likely be eliminated and maybe jump a course in the 'L' class.
Well, we were pretty correct. She got herself eliminated half-way in the first class. In the second we only got to the third fence - an oxer with a filler - and she proceeded to perform top class stops with the third one being on top of the fence!
That was that as far as the beginning to my dream show-jumping career was concerned ;)

I still worked on Iskra and had jumping training on her but I don't remember any breakthroughs. Sometimes she would jump well and on other days she would chuck me on the floor. There were days when I would make her evening food and would make my speech to her before I let her eat it. The speech was more like a prayer mixed with pleads asking her to please, please, please jump those fences for me. Anthropomorphism didn't seem to help much as Iskra
continued to refuse to jump. I guess she was probably telling me I wasn't a good enough rider to jump her and what was I thinking anyway to expect a queen to do what she was told.

Despite our differing opinions as to show-jumping I was still devastated when Iskra's owner moved away and found another livery yard for the mare closer to her new house. I remember turning Iskra out beautifully for the departure and spending whole day with her. I know I have some pictures from that day too, if I find them they will be added here.

Picture left: playing with Alexander and Tonic, the ponies

After Iskra was gone I rode everything I could. Friends and I played with the ponies teaching them various tricks and just basically having fun. The stables dealt in horses so we had a fair amount of them coming and going and there was never a shortage of riding.

I also spent hours watching one of our mares' foal - Lotna. The foal's sire was a show-jumping stallion and the owner had high hopes for it. I loved watching the filly and made it my project later on to teach her manners. It was when I discovered I absolutely loved working with young horses.
The thing Lotna hated, being a very inquisitive youngster, was to be told to stay in her stable when the door was open. She would barge through it and there was no stopping her.
One summer afternoon I had a play with her. Every time she wanted to come out I would bring her back in and gave her a bit of grass inside the stable. I think it took me a couple of days but when she was 6 months old you could leave her stable open for the whole day and she wouldn't go out until you asked her to.
Lotna's mum - Pika [read: peeka, which is a name for a type of sword]- was a pretty special mare. About 16hh, very temperamental (on the verge of being dangerous), she was an apple in the eye of the stables' head groom. Not many people were allowed to ride Pika. She was used for leading hacks and more advanced lessons mostly because she wasn't an easy horse. She would never done well in any dressage contest as her gaits were all over the place - she had a pacey walk, lateral trot and a very strange canter - when she got excited (about 85% of the time) she would canter with her front legs and trot with her hind legs. When she did canter it was almost always four beat pace unless she was out on a hack having a blast ;)
Where Pika excelled was on the show-jumping ground...I was determined to ride her in our October '95 show but had to wait for Lotna to be weaned and for Pika to get fit.

Meanwhile, in winter 1994, I started teaching...and loved it.
The stables organised something alike 'Own a Pony weeks' throughout summer, spring and winter holidays so we always had masses of kids running about. They usually had two lessons a day, on on the lunge and one in the arena.
The lunge lessons were compulsory as the whole teaching was based on developing independence of the reins and the ability to balance on the horse without hanging onto its mouth.
I only took lunge lessons as wasn't really experienced enough to teach groups in the arena. On an average day I would give 7-10 30 minutes lessons. Multiply this by 14 days and you can imagine that however much I enjoyed teaching I was pretty exhausted and bored with those lunge lessons.
If I do get bored with something I try to spice it up. That is how my lunge lessons became pretty creative and varied and how I discovered how many things you can actually learn through them. I still use them as often as I can and try to always convince riders to have at least a couple a month. They help amazingly with the posture, feel for the horse's movement and the build up of the riders' awareness of their own bodies.

The next year brought even more excitement to my horsey world - I went for my first equestrian training camp and learnt that some horses actually loved jumping as much as I did and acquainted myself with the sport of vaulting...

To be continued...

My Life with Horses - How did I go from a city child to a riding instructor - Episode 3

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3 - which tells you about my sporty drive, loosing fear and the start of an exciting equestrian era.

After the jumping off incident I listened to my instructor and stayed on pretty well. I am quite good at listening to my trainers as long as I respect them ;)
However much I wanted to listen though I didn't have control over my parent's financial situation and so after some time (possibly another half a year but I don't really remember) my riding dried up yet again.
At 13 years old I was really into sport. Since once again I couldn't ride I started swimming and running on long distances representing my school. From running on the track I went into hurdles and I really liked it. Somehow I managed to get a place in an Athletic Sports Club in my area (they only took limited amount of pupils a year) and attended trainings three times a week. I loved the feeling of exhaustion you got when you went farther and farther. I would push myself over every possible physical barrier. I would run until my lungs couldn't make it anymore and my legs felt like made of jelly beans. I also learnt how to somersault, how to walk on my hands (this is an AMAZING exercise for balance and I still wonder whether my reasonably good posture and balance when riding haven't stem from those crazy athletic days) and I would still play about with all fours running from time to time :-0.

My speciality was short distance running but I wasn't fast enough on 100m to make it beyond regionals and they put me in the long distances group. Part of the training there were across country runs. If I ever thought I pushed myself before those runs showed me a new dimension to physical effort. There was some sort of addiction in the pain of the training and I absolutely loved it. I remember running to the point of thinking I couldn't do any more step, then I would do another, then another and another and would jump into this very specific state of mind in which I was invincible.
Who knows, maybe I would have made a good runner if not for one of the routine trainings which took part in one specific wood...a wood used for hacking by a local riding school...

We set of as usual for a two hours run. It was a dark winter afternoon, snow 20cm deep, cold with -5C and it took ages to warm up the muscles. I had pneumonia as a child and cold weather has never been my favourite. The chill had always seemed to make my breathing more laboured. I remember having a low day and finding it hard to keep up with the others.
After an hour I went through my first barrier and that was when I saw them. Three horses, one big grey and two bays, trotting effortlessly up the snowy alley straight towards us. Riders laughing at something. Steam coming up from flared nostrils, sound of metal bits hitting horses' teeth, this amazing power and freedom of movement. And there was I, with my chest burning, shivering in the cold.
Many years later I realised that all my athletic endeavours were not much more but a substitute. That what I really wanted to do was ride horses. That my love for speed when running was just a preface to what I felt when I galloped. That the hurdles were nothing in comparison to the feeling of flying when I jumped 1.30m for the first time.

In winter 1994 I found out that there was a riding school about 20minutes from where I lived. That is how I got back into the saddle and never walked away since!

I helped with everything. Mucking out (that was interesting as all the horses were kept on deep litter so to muck out a single stable you needed a truck parked in the corridor and a few hours
one to one with ever present ammonia), tacking up, grooming, cleaning tack, grinding oats in a massive machine, walking children on ponies, bringing horses in and out from the arena, painting the stables, watering, haying, feeding, swiping the yard etc
Haying was great, especially at the weekends. My friends and I would climb up the ladder to get to the loft above the stables where the hay was kept. If we were lucky there was some loose hay that needed feeding before the baled one. We would then lift the flap in the floor which opened directly onto the stable's corridor. We dropped the hay down the corridor until it almost reached the ceiling and jumped on the top of the pile one by one laughing at the expressions on some of the horses faces. Silly us.

Horses became everything to me. Every day after school I would go down to the stables to help out together with a couple of other friends. In return we were entitled to some free of charge riding lessons. Sometimes we rode once a week, sometimes a few times a day. My favourite time was any bad weather time. This was mainly due to clients not turning up and horses needing exercise.
We had some pretty chilled horses there but they were all fed oats...and that meant that even one day off made rodeo ponies out of them :)
My first encounters with horses were so full of various fears and anxieties that I must have gone over the limit after which I grew completely fearless. The things we did with those horses back then were something today's health & safety would be too panicked to even name them on a Forbidden Activities List.
From what I recall we mostly hacked out or jumped in the arena. We didn't have any excellent instructors but those that were there made sure we rode as correctly as possible from a very early stage. We had to learn many tricks as those riding schools horses were a breed on its own. They were clever, cheeky, talented and could do just about anything we wanted them to do. We also learnt very fast that if you earned horse's respect on the ground he or she would listen to you from the saddle as well.
None of the horses was even close to bombproof as they are required to be nowadays. We had quite a few accidents over the years. One I remember very well was when my friends horse, who was a very genuine chap by the way, jumped a 4ft fence after she attempted to stop him at it. I doubt she has ever tried that again!
We raced with passion. Every longer stretch of any road was good enough. We were fairly imaginative riders - one of the games was to swap horses without dismounting...you had to hold your friends horse while she held yours. You then rode as close to each other as was possible (hoping for no kicking!) and slowly moved from your horse onto the other horse's bum while your friend moved onto your horse's withers/neck. Then just one quick move to get in the new saddle and we would canter off straight away. You never wanted be the one who was still getting sorted so we tried to master the skill the best we could.

Jumping was a must. A hack without a jump was a bad hack. We weren't particularly bothered about what we actually jumped as long as all the four legs of the horse left the ground. The rougher the terrain the better too. Jumping logs on hills (up and down) was a dessert on the menu!
In between searching for objects to jump (from logs, through rubbish left on the ground to roadside benches) we tried to keep ourselves entertained by going underneath various branches. When we got bored with that we started going underneath the washing lines someone left in between the trees. When it got too easy in walk and trot we proceeded into canter. I nearly got strangled once when I didn't lie on horse's back quick enough!

In the summer 1994 I experienced riding on the beach for the first time. Funnily enough, I rode the same breed of a pony that the one on the day of my first canter. I stayed on this time though and it was fantastic. On the back of the picture on the left I scribbled the name of the pony: Palestra. She was tiny but had an incredible stamina and could canter through the water forever!

So many wonderful things happened that year, it seems like an entire decade when thinking about it now. I remember trying my best to learn to jump well. I loved it but wanted to be good enough to be given a horse from the stables I could compete on.
I didn't know it then but just about half a year later my dreams came true and I rode in my first ever show jumping show...

To be continued...

My Life with Horses - How did I go from a city child to a riding instructor - Episode 2

Episode 1

Episode 2 - which tells you about my weird childhood game, fascination with wilderness and how I decided to jump off my horse during my first ever canter...

You know when you are in your early teens and your family just loves to ask who would you like to be when you grow up? What did you say?
In my very early teens I was very single-minded as to who I wanted to be. It had nothing to do with horses since they became inaccessible to me. I lived in a centre of a big city and the only horses I saw were on TV. The real ones were miles away in the country. I needed a new focus and found it in cynology.
If someone asked me who I was going to be I replied: a cynologist. Nine people out of ten didn't have a clue what that word even meant but that only added to my fascination of the subject.
I was literally obsessed with dogs. To my family's despair I mastered moving on all fours and would do it constantly! I wasn't a toddler anymore and when I think about it now I am mega embarrassed. My favourite play at the time was to build all sorts of obstacles and jump over them (dog style or horse style - depending who I was playing at the time!). They were pretty big (about 3ft3 - 1m) and it took awhile to actually learn to jump them without collapsing after a few efforts ;) I also did some dressage movements and could probably do an entire GP test if I knew it then. Moving around on all fours was pretty addictive;)

I loved watching animals. Especially dogs, horses, wolves and wild cats. Every movement of the muscle was registered by me so I could then use it and move in the way they did. Crazy, I know. My friends had walls covered with posters of Prince, Gun's and Roses, Whitney Huston, Take That and whoever else was famous at the time; I had images of wolves, dogs and horses doing the wallpaper job.
I do think these obsessive observation has helped me a lot later on when I started playing with natural horsemanship and Join Up, but back then it was quite an issue ;)

As much as I obsessed about observing animals I also passionately read books on them. At 12-13 yrs old I discovered my hunger for reading. One of my earliest memory from childhood is watching my mum reading a book. She was lying on the sofa, there was a lamp above her head and she didn't speak. I asked her how could she read without saying a single word out loud. She told me she was "just reading with her eyes". That was a mystery to me. I must have been 5 years old I think and all I wanted was to be able to read with my eyes ;)
My favourite books were mostly to do with wilderness and nature. I think I read most Jack London's (started with The Call of The Wild and White Fang(click here to read it online) ), James Oliver Curwood ("Baree" and "Kazan" had their pages battered after going through my fingers tens of times).
I read a lot about horses too. As many others before me I cried my eyes out reading about the life of Black Beauty and Silver Brumby - these are the two I remember most vividly.

Sometime around 1992 my parents were in a position to pay for my riding lessons again. We went to the same centre, mostly because that was the only good one we knew about. I got assessed and signed up to an intermediate group - the one that was to learn to canter. I don't remember much of those lessons apart from being extremely anxious and excited all the time. Once again the horses became the centre of my attention. I sit here trying to remember some snippets of what I learnt back then but there is not much that I recall. What comes back to me are the noise the bit makes when you carry the bridle from the tack room, the crinkly sound of the leather when you adjust your stirrups, the smell of manure and sweat and fresh hay. I remember being afraid to pick up back legs and being told to get on with it, the grooming before the ride...Talking about grooming...I remember one day we got stuck in the traffic and I missed my grooming time. I had this massive grey horse to ride, dirty as hell, I was late for my ride and there was no one around to help me with tacking up. I got reprimanded by Koniuszy (a horseman/stable manager) who took care of the grey and told me that it was just unheard of to be late for a ride. He said it was even worse not to groom your horse beforehand. And so I spent most of my riding time washing poo stains of that horse and managing just about 20 minutes or so in the saddle.
It's funny because when children come to the stables nowadays they are given the pony all tacked up and ready, aligned at the mounting block...Tragedy if you ask me! I don't dare to oppose though as it would probably mean the school would be sued.

The day I cantered for the first time I rode a pony. His breed is called : Polish Konik (Konik Polski) and they look like this:

I had never ridden a pony until then and I felt like everything was very easy all of a sudden. The pony was about 13hh and I thought I was ridiculously close to the ground. In fact, I felt so at ease on that pony that when we cantered and it didn't feel quite safe I...jumped off.
Not just like that, oh no. The arena was built in a shape of a big oval with one side being next to a fence and the rest just open onto the surrounding land. I was told to ask for a canter away from the fence. When I did, the pony must have thought it was great fun to finally do something else than trotting forever, he bucked and pulled the reins out of my hands. I remember deciding quickly that I would stay on throughout the whole round until we got to the fence again, then I would thrust myself out of the saddle and grab the top rail. Good plan, hey? I didn't take into equation the fact I needed to steer the pony but he must had been so socialised into going around and around that he followed the track beautifully and I jumped off as planned.
However, I wasn't too good at envisaging that the speed of the cantering pony will make the soft landing a bit difficult. I lent to my right to reach the passing rail, grabbed it as strongly as I could and slid off the saddle. I felt a massive pull as if my arms where going to pop out of sockets and quickly after that I found myself landing flat out on the sandy surface of the arena;)

My instructor was rather amused and slightly shocked when I told him about my plan. I was strongly advised to stay on next time around!

To be continued...

EPISODE 3

My Life with Horses - How did I go from a city child to a riding instructor - Episode 1

During recent visit to my parents I dug old photo albums in hope of finding some pictures of my first horse - a black Trakehner stallion called Fetas. I tried to search for those photographs before but to no avail.
This time, however, I was lucky! I knew that there were barely any photos from that time but I vaguely remembered some being taken. And voila! I found some! Encouraged by my discovery I kept browsing the albums and came across a bunch of pictures I completely forgot existed. They span my whole life with horses leaving gaps here and there but they woke up a lot of memories. I also found my old diaries in which I meticulously recorded my sporting struggles and competition endeavours. I had a good laugh reading through them :)

Having found those little snippets from old times I decided to put together my story with horses up until now...

Episode 1: In which I tell you about my first equine experiences, the fear and the passion.

The very first time I sat on a horse was in the summer 1983; I was 4 years old. It was at the entry to a fun fair/Zoo and I don't really remember much of it apart from the fact that I didn't want to get off ;) I was supposed to just have a quick sit on that pony for a photograph but apparently sat on it for ages.

My family didn't have a horsey background although grand grand parents on my father's side used to own a bit of land and lived from farming. I remember spending summers at my grandparents holiday house and running wild on my uncle's farm. There were cows, chickens, goats, various types of very expensive Homing Pigeons (breeding them was my uncle's great hobby), tens of dogs and cats...but horses were always at other people's stables.
I saw them pulling vegetables or milk carts, waiting in front of a village shop or stopped on the side of the road while the owner chatted to a passer by, and I would always go and stroke their necks, have a word with them or just stand and stare somewhat hypnotised by them.
I was a city child but those summers in the country, raw and wild, were something my brother and I waited for impatiently throughout the year. Since I didn't have a horse I pretended the dogs were just a small version of them. My own dog was a princess and she wouldn't want to hear about my antics. I would therefore ask my brother to help me and we would set off 'hunting' early in the morning; by afternoon we would have a couple of stray dogs to play with. I trained them to pull whatever vehicle my brother managed to built. Once they stayed in order and were more or less obedient we would set off for 'missions'. Various ones - we were 9 or 10 years old then so you can imagine that all the undertakings were mega important. My grandmother, who was our carer during those wonderful summer months, did not always agree and we must have been a source of constant worries when we disappeared in forests for all days.
I am so glad my childhood was spent in the eighties; there was this freedom and confidence then that is no longer present...

I haven't sat on a horse again until I was about 11 or 12yrs old. To my knowledge I have no pictures from that time but it was when I started to learn how to ride properly and not just to sit on a horse.
This equestrian education had an interesting beginning. My father, who is a retired policeman, found out about this man who 'owed him a favour'. It happened that this man was also an instructor at one of the best equestrian centres in our area - Łódzki Klub Jeździecki (photo - stables).

A big Thoroughbred gelding called Wek was assigned to me and my first memory of that day is of fear and excitement so great that it was incomparable to anything I had ever experienced before. The lesson, on the lunge, took place in a round pen in a wood. The trees created a natural fence, I remember everything being green and lush.
The lessons continued for a few months and I grew in confidence. I recall being so excited about the lessons I would sit in a car shaking all the way up to the stables! I learnt how to groom a horse, tack up and put a bridle on. Most of my memories seem to concentrate on everything being big, heavy and strong. I felt powerless and totally dependent on Wek.
I loved the smell of the stables. I would enter the corridor with inquisitive heads popping out to see me and it made my day. The funny thing was I was constantly afraid of horses in those early days yet they were like magnets. I couldn't stop thinking about them and counted days from lesson to lesson.
Those early days of my riding education left me with a massive hunger. I wanted to ride better, I wanted to be able to jump big fences and be the best rider in the world.

The paradise didn't last long. After about half a year of regular training, Wek succumbed to horse flu and died after a long period of illness. My father's friend didn't get another horse which he could use for me and my parents couldn't afford a full price of riding lessons.
I was back to dogs.

To be continued...


Episode 2