Cob Jockey

I was - in a word - nervous about driving Disco at The National Drive.

I mean, I'm nervous about driving in general still, and I had never driven him outside of our indoor arena. Nevermind that Maude trail drove him all over the place and also showed him in driving off the property. 

I decided I was only going to drive with an instructor present, and I also decided that I would make my mandatory safety check part of my first lesson.

The pro photographer didn't get any pictures of my drives, but did get this one of us. Fun fact, he had not been groomed in days here, that glow is just his coat. Photo by Mark Jump Photography

No matter if you've been to the Drive zero times or fifty times, the first time you take your horse and cart out, you have to drive over to the mandatory safety check and be inspected. Driving people take safety verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry seriously. 

At the safety check, they make sure you can control your horse in public and that there's nothing unsafe about your setup - they look for straps that look like they might be about to break, cart in need of repair, harness put on incorrectly, that kind of thing. Once you pass, they put a green band on your cart to show that you've passed the safety check, and it stays on your cart the rest of the weekend.

Driving over to safety check with my emotional support instructor. Thanks to Mary for all the rest of the photos and video!

After I passed my safety check, my instructor gave me the choice: indoor arena, or outdoor arena? We drive in the indoor all the time at home, so outdoor sounded scarier, which is why I chose it.

Disco didn't let me down. There was a lot to see and do and feel as we walked across the complex to the outdoor, and my #slugmode pony was distracted, up and forward. By the time we got to the arena, I was struggling to keep him at a walk, which had my nerves maxed out: I was braced hard against the floorboard and pulling hard against him, trying to keep him under control. I'd honestly never gotten a chance to work with him in a mindset like that before, since he's always so chill at home.

This is pretty much what we looked like for 30 straight minutes

For the next half hour, Joanna did a masterful job of talking me through it, alternating between giving me tips and telling funny stories through the headset, I knew, just to distract me from my nerves. All the while Disco was screaming, counterbending and trying to trot.

"This is just baby stallion stuff," she said. "This is a big atmosphere for him, lots to see. He's trying to call to the other horses, there's no sense in disciplining him for any of it, we just need to be patient and give him reasons to focus on us." I mean, to be entirely fair and 100% accurate, he was still not even four years old during this adventure!

Disco got introduced to Mary's show grooming intensity

After what felt like an eternity, I finally felt him come down enough that we could move on in the lesson. We worked on basic steering, with four sets of cones set out on a circle, which I am not at all ashamed to say I ran over multiple times. 

"So right now, he's kind of doing whatever he wants generally in the direction you want him to go, but you're not really steering him. We're going to work on that."

It was here that I got my biggest lesson of Day 1. She told me to turn my shoulders in the direction I wanted to go.

No joke, the tightest turn I have ever made driving so far.

It was revolutionary. He started going exactly where I wanted him to, and we stopped mauling cones. I realized a couple of things: one, that there are a lot of things that my brain goes "If you're not on his back he can't feel this so it doesn't matter," that I'm probably going to keep discovering like this, and two, uhhhhhhhhhhh pretty sure my turning aids in the saddle are also dysfunctional (more on that later).

Brain cell, reinstalled

That was supposed to be my one and only lesson of the drive, but as we walked back to the barn, I knew I couldn't end on that one, not when we had only just started to make real progress in both my nerves and actually learning something right at the end. So I quickly did some mental math on how to cram one more lesson in before I had to leave for my Rolex Land Rover Cosequin Kentucky 5* tailgate prep, and got up bright and early the next day...