This past Sunday, Mars and I competed at our second rated
show together. The judging was harsh. This week I’m wondering when and if I’ll
ever have a more independent seat, softer elbows, and a more elastic
connection. The one positive comment was, “Attractive pair.” It’s not nothing.
Last summer, just before I moved out of TriBeCa, I went to visit
Vogel Custom Boots, in SoHo, to be fitted for my first pair of dress riding boots.
I changed riding disciplines in the last few years, moving sideways from the
hunter/jumper world to the other, even more froufrou, dressage. The tiny Vogel store
front sat on a narrow, quiet street in a neighborhood of exquisite historic
cast-iron buildings now bustling with high-end retail stores; it fit in nicely
with its carved wood sign with gilded lettering, and custom shoes in the
window, displaying the full spectrum of English riding boots.
My trainer likes to remind me that the word “dressage” is
from the French, meaning “training.” It’s the flatwork, the not-jumping part of
riding. At the Olympic level, the horses seem to dance, and they perform
freestyle choreography to music. At my
level, you learn a test, in advance, that is written out on paper, with
different gaits and figures performed at the letter-labeled points of the ring.
The test takes 5 or 6 minutes, a long time for an athlete (horse or rider) to
concentrate and really give a peak athletic performance. It looks like plain
old horseback riding, and it’s judged by a person with a scorecard, giving you
marks for the different movements and then a written score at the end. You can
read where the judge thought your horse hollowed or fell in or bulged or
hurried, where you needed more bend or impulsion, and you are welcome to use it
to become a deranged and obsessive perfectionist about your riding and your
horse’s way of going. Or, you can use it to reflect on those things you need to
work on, and get to work improving.
The way a test is written, “3. K-X-M Change rein; 4. Between
C &H Working canter left lead. 5; E Circle left 20m,” is not how it always
rides. At a recent (unrated) schooling show, for example, my 6-year-old horse Mars
whinnied violently at M, beginning at step 3 of the test, and then again, each
time he passed the corner marked M or even got close to it: at step 5 when we
circled at E, between step 8 & 9, at step 11 when we circled at E again, and
then, again after step 13. I think another horse somewhere on the property was
answering him.
A horse can whinny gently and quietly, almost under his
breath. This wasn’t that kind of whinnying. This was like the horse equivalent
of screaming. You can feel it emanating from the bowels of the horse, rumbling
up under the saddle, vibrating through his chest, and then erupting from his
great jaws. What are horses saying when they whinny? Maybe the horse version
of, “WHERE YOU AT?” and the reply, “WHERE YOU AT, BRO!?” Whinnying during a
test does not do much to earn a horse “submission” points, added to the end of
one’s dressage score, for “willing cooperation, harmony, attention and
confidence, acceptance of bit and aids, straightness, lightness of forehand and
ease of movements.” Alas.
Coming from the hunter/jumper world, where flatwork is to
prepare a horse and rider for jumping courses, it was my experience that trainers
had limited patience to teach me flatwork in a way that I understood what I was
doing, or why I was doing it, and how I might do it better. I was vaguely aware
that I was bad at it, that flatwork, with my stiff, arched back and turned-out
toes, my unforgiving arms and hands always at odds with the horse. But I didn’t
have the slightest clue how I was supposed to get better at it until I started
serious dressage lessons. And I’m still working on it, every ride.
Dressage was also a way to use my older, semi-retired horse,
whose old injuries have meant that she will only be sound for trail riding and
light work. Soon, though, I had ordered a new, black custom saddle, made in
France, of course, specifically for dressage. And I had a new, young horse; a
project we named Mars. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.
Of course, I owned tall boots for riding already, but they
are field boots, with laces at the top of the foot, going a short way up the
ankle. The subtle and not-so-subtle distinctions in equestrian disciplines
start with big, expensive things like boots and saddles, but also include
variations in show apparel, and fundamental differences in the rider’s
position. A dressage rider will wear a white stock tie, with a pin, as a
foxhunter would; a showhunter wears a backwards collar called a rat-catcher. A
dressage rider has a long stirrup and an open hip angle; a hunter jumper will
run her stirrups up and crouch in the tack. It will take me years to develop new
riding instincts.
Now, I had been to Vogel before this visit, when I had my
trusty old field boots serviced the previous year, getting new soles and heels
and having a ripped boot loop replaced. But it’s such a small shop with only a
few chairs for customers that it can be quite awkward to walk in. The Vogel
showroom was a few steps above the street, and smelled intensely of leather and
leather dyes. I stood there in the small showroom, my messy, dirty hair going
in strange directions, my wrinkled shirt untucked, and asked the first person
in the back who noticed me if I could be fitted for some dressage boots,
please.
“Do you have your riding pants?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She took me through the crowded work area to a small
changing room in the back, where I put on my riding pants. When I returned to
the front room, there
were two customers being measured for custom shoes. Both
were sizable men, with shiny, combed back, black hair. One wore a suit and tie.
They were peppering the salesman with questions. “Why would it take so long? Why didn’t they
make a mold of your feet? Why are the soles leather? Which pair is the most
comfortable?”
Somehow, in New York City, there are still people who aspire
to dress and talk and comport themselves publicly like mobsters. They purposely
ask dumb questions, demand to know why everything is so expensive, excessively
quote mob movies, and constantly assess whether others are with them or against
them. For the purposes of this story, I am going to call these guys in the
custom boot shop mobsters.
The younger mobster of the two asked, “How long do these
shoes last?”
And the salesman said, “Well, it depends how much walking
you do.”
The older mobster pointed to his fat stomach and said, “If I
did a lot of walking would I look like this?”
I was introduced to Jack, the guy who fits the equestrian
boots. He asked me if I’ve had boots made by them before, and I said I have. We
reminisced about Olson’s, near Seattle, where I bought my boots a number of
years ago, and Mike, who he’s known since he was a young employee there, long
before he was manager or owner. I go back that far with Mike, too. Jack went to look up my earlier order, and
came back out with a clipboard, pencil and tape measure. I was still standing.
Jack sat in a chair next to the coatrack; one of the
mobsters had left his coat draped over the seats, instead of hanging it up. Jack
took down my address and email, perched on the edge of the seat so as not to
crush the coat.
The mobster grandly offered to move the coat, and now that
Jack had their attention he was able to find me a place to sit. Jack took a lot
of measurements, all with me sitting, tracing my foot onto a piece of paper. We
talked about my bunions, and the scary surgeries suggested by the two
podiatrists I’ve seen. He told me no one he knows is happy with their bunion
surgery. I concurred. He made me pull up the leg of my breeches, over my knee.
Underneath my legs were really hairy, of course.
The mobsters were still discussing leathers and soles. They
were not coming to a decision. They said they’d call with their final
decisions, but it seemed they’d be making no purchase that day. Though they’d said
nothing to me, as they left the younger mobster called, “Good luck with your
horse.”
He didn’t even say it like he believed I have a horse. He
said it like he thought I made up the horse, the way that a kid in elementary
school who didn’t believe your uncle was an NFL kicker would say, “Yeah right,
sure.” Also, tucked under the “Good luck with your horse,” was, of course, that
scene in the Godfather movie, where revenge came in the form of a horse head in
a guy’s bed.
I learned my left calf is bigger than my right, and I’d have
to have an elastic gusset if I didn’t want a zipper. I chose a squared toe, and
a spur rest. I didn’t want mine as stiff as the sample he brought me, though I liked the stiff souls
and the ribbed bottoms. As I paid (a sobering $1366 with tax), I asked how long
it would take. I was told 10 to 12 weeks. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t even
live in the neighborhood anymore in 10 to 12 weeks because I couldn’t face that
at all. Moving in New York City is another tale of mobsters; with complicated
rules of daily tipping and separate insurance and the always suspicious
requirement that the whole thing be transacted in cash. I promised to lend Jack
my orthotics for a few days without a word about my move.
Only six weeks later, I got a call that my boots were finished, and was told Vogel
was two days away from packing up the place and closing. They were moving to
Brooklyn. Someone made them an offer for their location; it was an offer they
couldn’t refuse.
