Zu’s Ambling Along

I’ve been coughing incessantly for months now, despite visits to the doctor and two rounds of antibiotics. Recently, I went into hospital for a more thorough check-up and, Alhamdullillah, all the tests indicate that my heart, lungs, etc, are all ok. So the specialist there has asked me not to ride or go to the club for at least a week. He thinks that my coughing could be due to the dust there.

My first thought - who will ride Armani? He needs his morning exercise. Well, my good friend Noriah has come to the rescue; she will ride him on my non-lesson days while Peter and Jean will ride him on their respective lesson days.

The specialist may be right about the dust. Rodzi, one of the Kiara instructors, had been on medical leave for quite a while. Apparently, he had a serious viral infection due to dust exposure. But if that is the reason for my coughing (which is really deep and goes on and on), would the specialist later suggest that I stop riding for longer than a week? Oh dear …

The number of people riding in Kiara without a helmet seems to be on the increase these days, despite rules requiring them to wear protective headgear when riding. A friend told me that she saw one young adult, who has been only riding a few months, on a horse in the paddock with her helmet off! Perhaps these people think that they are such great riders that, even if their horse bucks, they’ll come to no harm.

Peter, my instructor who has been riding for ages, told me that he would never get on a horse without a helmet, no matter how sweet or safe the horse is. Anything can happen. Well, something did happen to the rider in this incident - http://www.horse-sense.org/archives/20021109110352.php - who thanked her lucky stars that she had a helmet on and lived to tell the tale.

It’s back to the lunge for me. Jean says that I’m just too tense when cantering, which makes me do things I shouldn’t be doing when ridng Armani, which makes Armani irritated, which then makes him act up. Jean is going to lunge me on Armani until I’m so relaxed that I “can put my arms up over my head in canter”. Hmm…we’ll have to see about that last bit.

So we had our first lungeing lesson last Friday. At first, Jean let me hold the reins but I was unconsciously pulling at them that I was stopping Armani in his tracks - on a lunge! So he put my hands on the ‘monkey strap’ instead (does anyone know why the strap at the pommel is called such?). I gripped the strap on the saddle so tightly that even Jean could see it from the ground. He managed to talk me into relaxing my grip as we went on and I think the lungeing ended with me being a little more at ease.

Veering off to another topic - Armani’s groom, Pian, went back to Indonesia at the beginning of the month on a two-week leave for his sister’s wedding. Now I hear that he’s not coming back to Kiara. For the time being, Hanafi is taking care of Armani and another of Pian’s horses. With six horses to do in total (+ four of his permanent charges), he’s a bit stretched. I suppose there will eventually be a replacement groom and I hope and pray that the new one wil be as diligent and caring as Pian was.

The competition season has started. Cecilia and I took a break from riding this morning to be at the Premier Cup Series 1 at Taman Ekuestrian Putrajaya to support our good friends, Noriah and Eda. I was Noriah’s ‘official’ videographer, faithfully documenting her first jumping effort on Lucky and her dressage outings on Lucky (prelim) and Cempaka (elementary and novice). Unfortunately, the battery on her video camera didn’t make it all the way to her completing her novice class - and there wasn’t a spare!

Eda was out jumping Mash and later her 3Q leased horse, Senorita, and then riding Mash in the same novice class as Noriah.  

There wasn’t a big spectator crowd, it being a Friday. I’m sure it’ll be busier on Saturday and Sunday - wish I can be there over the weekend but family matters have to take a front seat, I’m afraid.

I do get a buzz from seeing friends compete, sharing their anticipation and excitement, empathising with their disappointments and revelling in their victories. How else can you explain missing my daily riding, going all the way to Putrajaya or Kuang, walking around with a video camera in the hot sun?

Some things are so ingrained in me that I do wonder how I can get rid of them - particularly my almost automatic propensity to think about the worst that can happen in a situation and what I should do. I suppose I can blame this on my past corporate life - always planning for worst case scenarios, always having a contingency plan.

It’s not doing me much good in my riding. Even as I’m driving into the equestrian area and the hill yard in the mornings, I’m already looking around for stuff that hadn’t been there the day before. Imagine my trepidation on Tuesday this week suddenly seeing rows of temporary stables and a white tent near the polo stables - just where I have to ride past on Armani to get to the track.

To Armani’s credit, these didn’t bother him much but on Wednesday, there were people putting up banners and hammering away on the scoreboard at the polo field. I rode him a little but felt that I’d rather be on the ground with all the activity going on. So I went back to the stable, untacked him and handwalked him instead. The ‘fun’ started when, after having walked him by the indoor arena, I decided to continue down to the carpark near the main yard, not far from the work going on at the scoreboard up the slope.

Armani’s ears pricked up, he held his head up very high (mind you, he’s 16.2 hands) and he started to snort. And then he started to prance. Tuan Syed Bakar was at his car and said, “He’s frightened by the noise.” The workers were putting up some zinc or aluminium sheets and these were making quite a frightening sound - to Armani. I turned him around while he was still prancing, afraid he might bolt or rear, made reassuring sounds and managed to walk him back to his stable without any incident. I was glad that I was on the ground and not on him! 

Although my ‘better be safe than sorry’ outlook paid off that time, generally, I think it’s holding me back in my riding. This morning, I was practically in pieces when riding Armani and felt frustrated at my utter lack of confidence in myself and lack of trust in my horse. At such times, I do think that I ought to go back to decorative painting but then, I would miss riding too much. How I’d love to be able to get rid of my needless negativity and be more positive!

I read somewhere that one of the most stressful experiences in life is moving house. Well, it’s true. On Sunday 25 May, we moved into our new home and the stress hasn’t stopped. For one thing, I just had to unpack the boxes as soon as I could - just couldn’t bear seeing them all over the place - which led to my old ‘back pain from falling off a horse’ to come back. Well, at least, with my books and other stuff where they should be, the house is beginning to look more like a home. 

It has been a week now and we have only just got streamyx in. The astro people also turned up today - after numerous calls and broken promises to call us back to fix a time. We were already prepared to send a letter off to The Star, call TV3 and lodge a complaint with the Multimedia Commission! 

Last night, the alarm went off - triggered by God knows what. But the good thing was we found out that the security guards could really get to our house fast. They were running through our garden before we even made our way downstairs!

I think it will be another week before we feel really settled in.

At Bukit Kiara, a group of volunteers (riders/non-riders, members/non-members) spend Tuesday and Thursday mornings running riding for the disabled sessions. We are a branch of the Riding for the Disabled Association, Malaysia (RDA), which has its main branch at the Royal Selangor Polo Club. On Tuesdays, we have children and young adults from the Selangor Spastic Centre, while on Thursdays, our riders are from MAGIC and Emmanuel, which run programmes for children with Down’s Syndrome or autism.

Our volunteers are a good mix of local and expatriate ladies (wish we could have some men as well) and they have been marvellous at turning up and helping the core group (Esther, Cecilia, Farina, Janis, Irene and myself) with the riding sessions. Bukit Kiara has also been very supportive of our RDA branch, allowing us to use the school ponies and horses and encouraging the instructors to help out if they don’t have any lessons.

To add a bit of competitive spirit to our sessions, we have been organising an annual gymkhana - Tuesday 13 May was our 4th. The indoor arena was festively decorated and the riders were smartly turned out in our ‘official’ black/red polo-neck t-shirts. After all the fun, there were prizes to give out - every rider received a present while the winners proudly showed off their ribbons (thanks to Michael of Pacific Horseland). In true Malaysian style, there must be food, with each school contributing a few dishes.

There’s really nothing more heartwarming than seeing the happiness and excitement on the faces of our special riders when they ride.

My good friend Datin Noriah has reason to be happy. Her Australian tb mare, Cempaka Sari, is now 7 years old and doing nicely in competitions - she has been winning quite a number of ribbons and had a good showing at the dressage competition in Bukit Kiara last weekend and at Putrajaya this past weekend. Cempaka is quite a prima donna and tries hard to get one over Noriah but once Cempaka knows who’s in charge, she gets on with business. I think Cempaka enjoys showing off in competitions because she certainly behaves when she’s in the show arena.

Noriah has a jumper in European warmblood gelding Lucky Bamboo. She competes him in dressage but has come to terms with the fact that Lucky would rather jump fences than strut about in an arena. So Noriah has started taking jumping lessons. But because Lucky is capable of a lot more, she has given permission to Eda Wong to jump him in the coming Sukma Games. We’re anxiously waiting to see how they will both do. Rather belatedly, Noriah and I are trying to get a hotel room in Kuala Terengganu for the Games but all the hotels are full! So looks like we’ll have to depend on 2nd-hand news.

If Noriah wants to have a nice, carefree ride, she gets on Lucero, a stocky little stallion with a long flowing mane, that’s on loan to her (practically permanently, I think). Lucero obliges her and she can ride throughout on a loose rein without worrying if he will take off.  

Noriah is really a keen and competitive equestrianne. Since I don’t compete, I’m living the competition world vicariously through her.

In my second lesson with Jean this morning, he got me cantering again - well, just a little, but it’s a start. That has certainly helped boost my confidence a bit. Jean has been very patient in getting me back to basics and teaching me to be light with my hands. I really need to take these baby steps again.

Friends have been very encouraging but the best words of advice were from Birgitte (owner of Pocahontas) who said, “Zu, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You’re riding for yourself and, of course, for Armani. Enjoy.”

I got back in the saddle again two days ago, on Wednesday. Entin had been an angel while I took the break from riding - riding and lungeing Armani for me. I took it easy, just a nice walk on the track with Esther, who has also started riding again after one month, riding her Preddy. As her fingers are still healing, her doctor has advised her not to do too much.

This morning, I had a lesson with Jean (taking the place of Yasmin who is currently in Germany). He was very good at building up my confidence again, which I have to admit it is a bit in shatters at the moment. I had never thought that Armani would buck with me riding him, so I do have this niggling fear of it happening again. I see lots of work in the days ahead to get rid of this negativity.