Ladies riding trip to Ocala

We had ridden with Elisa Wallace numerous times in Colorado. We always learned a lot and admired her greatly. She is a multi-talented horse woman who trains mustangs, OTTBs, and high level warm blood eventers (some of her mustangs and OTTBs are high level eventers). As riders who are also familiar with marginalized horses (mustangs, OTTBs, off the track quarter horses, relinquished show arabians) we very much appreciate her breadth of expertise and experience. Elisa has a strong social media presence which allows us to keep up with her exploits and also nag her for lessons (thanks Elisa!!!). I fondly remember taking a cross country clinic with her on my Arabian Tango Rain DD, and her suggesting that I slow down a bit. Remember, she said, this is not King of the Wind. Tango and I often had to trot the last 1/4 of cross country courses in official events to stay within the ideal time ooops.

We went to ride with Elisa on Thursday and Friday afternoon. She was fitting us into her schedule while she was at the same time showing her horses at the Florida Horse Park. We very much appreciated it and really enjoyed being at her beautiful property, hanging out talking “horse stuff” and riding her wonderful lesson horses. Lisa rode “Fledge” a 16 year old mustang for both flat and jumping, and I rode “Tate” for flat and “Hwin” for jumping. Hwin is named after a talking mare in C.S. Lewis’s A Horse and His Boy. To brag a little bit about Elisa and Hwin, and me getting to ride her, Hwin is actually a Breyer horse!

Elisa really emphasized using our bodies to control the horses’ directions and their length of stride.  We practiced changing the size and rate of our posts during posting trot in order to shorten the stride and slow the gait. As awkward as it feels to slow your post when a horse is doing its own feisty tempo, it worked! As did increasing the size of your post to lengthen the horse’s stride. In order to gather the horse at the canter, rather than push the horse forward (“chasing the horse”), Elisa suggested that we pretend to “lift the saddle up with our butt cheeks.” Cracked us up (no pun intended), AND it worked!  She also gave us a physics lesson, discussing a corollary to Newton’s law of universal gravitation, during which she stated that gravity keeps us on the horse so we don’t need to grip so darn hard (pretty sure she was talking to me). We can be assured that even as we rise during the horse’s stride, gravity will keep us on the horse’s back. As I look back on my life with horses, I think there are likely exceptions. Regardless, it is a wonderful to have a law of nature in our favor, in general.

On our jumping day Lisa was on Fledge and I was on Hwin! I was beside myself with joy to ride such a famous mustang!  She is also 16, and apparently does not feel her age (she might rear, so watch out, says Elisa).  OK then!  I guess my baby TB is not the only one that rears.  We did a lovely outdoor jumping course, and Lisa rode several perfect jump courses on the very willing Fledge. She learned to keep her hands down, sit up, and aim for the center of the jump, make your turns between the jumps with the tack. Hwin was delighted to be jumping, throwing a few crow hops and bucks after her jumps, and telling me to get our of her face.  Elisa told me to use bridge reins so she pulled against herself, so I used my racehorse riding experience to great effect. I kept thinking of my “dressage quality” canter necessary for successful jumping, and that really helped. I learned to keep my body quiet and use my voice to ease Hwin. I frequently forgot to use my voice, choosing instead to mutely haul on the reins oops.

The best part of the lesson was getting to do “passage” on Fledge. Apparently he likes it, and it is his “treat” after a jump school. Lisa nailed it, and she passaged her way back and forth along the jumping field. I did not have too much success but it still got it a bit.  Highlight!

After our lesson, Elisa was gracious enough to share her philosophy on horse boots, feeding all types of horses (she also struggles with feeding mustangs versus TBs on the same property, and with horses with ulcers), supplements, and general husbandry. All of her horses have had their fecal microbiomes tested and she feeds accordingly.