I am Titanium

Being Bionic would have been cooler

As my life begins to look more normal, I’ve been picking the pieces back up. It seems a hazy memory now but just four months ago my life was upended by a horse terrified by a crinkly water bottle. The result was me on the floor of the arena with back, rib and arm injuries, wondering if everything would be okay ever again. 

Now that my life doesn’t involve watching the clock until the next round of pain killers or strapping on a myriad of braces every time I get up or perfecting my log roll technique for getting out of bed, I’ve been able to bring my newly adopted dog Alya back home from the lovely foster home where she was staying for the last few months. 

We are using this as an opportunity to start her training over again. As a dog who has had some rough treatment in her background, she has some reactive behaviors, based in fear, that we need to address. Back fracture aside, I find myself walking taller and straighter and feeling calmer than I have in some time. Alya does too.  She trusts my confidence as I correct her when she is reacting poorly to another dog or a person.

In any training, the most important thing is clarity. If Alya or Ty or Trudy don’t understand what I want, they can’t be expected to get it right. I have to tell them what I want and to be clear.

Real communication only happens when we are open and transparent. Because that is what allows the real possibility for change. I have come to a point in my life where I’ve learned that beating about the bush gets you nowhere. I have nothing to lose by being honest and direct.

Though it’s not always easy. 

Most women know that the medical community as a whole treats men and women differently.  Having been injured a couple of times now, I have gotten better about advocating for myself.  As I laid in the hospital with a constant parade of doctors filing through daily, there was a glaring obvious absence of the orthopedic specialist.  Given my badly broken arm and problems I was experiencing with how it was splinted, I asked to see them daily. 

Somewhere on my chart was probably a comment about the horse woman in room 412 who is incredibly annoying with her nagging and who got so frustrated she removed the splint in the middle of the night, much to the horror of the night nurse. This is the same night nurse whom I’d already convinced that my room was haunted and is likely now in therapy and probably liked medicating me to shut me up.

But I could see my wrist was living on a different plane than my hand and wasn’t sure what was up with my nonfunctioning elbow, and no one seemed to care much.  While this made for good gross out photos to send to my sister just for fun, it was a problem that needed to be addressed.

So, I raised my voice. Eventually my wrist and elbow were operated on – after I left the hospital – and I’ve continued to advocate for myself. Not just with doctors, but with state disability, physical therapists, my employer, even friends and family.  And it’s been something of a revelation to me how well it works.

I wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet before, but I’d become so focused on avoiding conflict that I had been muted and suppressed somehow. But there’s nothing quite like finding yourself flat out on the floor of the arena and physically vulnerable to convince you that changes need to be made.

I may have been the only one injured in my recent riding accident, but I was not the only one traumatized. My beloved trainer has watched me fall and be injured twice now and it affects her deeply.  I’m not only her student, but I’m also her friend, and I know it hurts her to see me hurt. When she got to the emergency room after the accident, the first thing I said to her was please don’t fire me as a student.

“Never”, she said.  And my grinch heart grew yet another size that day. Not that she doesn’t have plans for me, mind you.  Big plans. Epic plans. Yelling may be involved.

And while I’ve been healing, Ty has been going back to school. As a sensitive horse, he was deeply unsettled by the incident and was spooking and reacting to everything. My trainer works with him in the round pen, taking him through his paces while introducing “scary” elements to help desensitize him.  She crinkles the heck out of that water bottle, even putting it under his saddle flap so he can’t see it, just hear it, until he understands nothing bad will happen and relaxes.

When I return to riding, I too will start from scratch.  Back to basics, rebuilding me physically and mentally, sharpening my skills.  Riding circles and patterns, first slowly, perfecting the details, gaining confidence and strength in the process.

Equestrians who compete by jumping their horses in the arena or cross country call this type of training “flatwork”.  It’s the foundation from which everything else is built.

My personal flatwork will be clarity. Say what you mean and mean what you say, because if you don’t speak for yourself, no one else can.

We are each of us, after all, forever in training.