Our Days Of Wonder

One of the greatest joys of working with horses is discovering our potential together.

We all know horses are great teachers. But they’re also great “discovery partners.” Not just for exploring new places, but for tapping into our mutual potential.

One of my favorite such discovery partners was a 14.2-hand palomino Paint lesson pony named Sissy.

At first blush, Sissy might have seemed an unlikely candidate for potential-building—unless you wanted to discover how high you could bounce at a trot. For one thing, her high rump, flat withers and muscular physique seem to be optimized for trotting speed and little else. For another, she possessed an independent mind and the determination to match. She once walked out of dressage practice by climbing over the dressage arena’s cavaletti border, pausing only when she knocked a pole. Many times, the only discoveries she seemed interested in making were where her best buddy was, or whether you seriously meant to turn at Point A instead of Point B.

Once Megan Bean and lesson pony Sissy connected, “only the firmest laws of nature” limited what they could do together. Here they enjoy a fall trail ride a few years after their leg-yield adventure. (Photo courtesy, Megan Bean)

But once you connected with Sissy, only the firmest laws of nature limited what you could do together. Riding became a dance—a downhill, sometimes bouncy one, but fun and free.

A year or so into our relationship, my instructor began teaching me about Sally Swift’s concept of riding from one’s core, or “center.” Sissy responded noticeably, turning from my seat and moving with the movement of my hips. She still conveyed (and sometimes followed through on) her own opinions and ideas. But our improved communication brought us closer together and opened the door for exploring new skills.

We developed some of those skills directly through my instructor’s coach-ing. But others we picked up on our own while going about our assigned patterns or wandering around the arena during downtimes.

A memorable discovery

One day when I was about 15, while walking the rail during a lull in the lesson, we made one of the most memorable of those discoveries.

We rounded a corner onto the arena’s long side and approached a line of cones. We’d already weaved through them on previous laps, bending around each in turn until we were both relieved to resume the straightaway.

My heart sank a bit at the idea of maneuvering through yet more repeated curves. Maybe, I thought, we could cut time and effort with an extra-shallow serpentine. I decided to see how little turning we could get away with.

Now, to understand the significance of what happened next, you must understand this: At that point in my equestrian career, I’d never performed any lateral movements (a few clumsy turns on the forehand and haunches notwithstanding). I dreamed of doing upper-level dressage but was still perfecting 20-meter circles and straight lines. I possessed only vague, complicated notions of how to execute diagonal movements—but nothing about how they should feel and look from the saddle. And at the moment Sissy and I entered the cone weave, I had no thoughts of trying.