2007 Sherrys Heza Krul

2007 Sherrys Heza Krul, originally uploaded by eleniRX.

This is a picture of Sherry and E. from last summer. Sherry is 17.5 hands tall and has been a schooling horse. She's on her way to becoming a dressage horse. I can't think about dressage without thinking of Foucault's Discipline & Punish. For some trauma, read that book. It was a text in a class I took the first quarter of graduate school and I have never been the same since reading that book.

Today we worked on starting and stopping, starting and stopping. Walk a ways, then have the horse stop. I'm learning to do this all through subtle cues. Squeeze with my legs for go. Deep breath, heels down, elbows back to stop. Turn turn head and shoulders right for turning the horse right. She responds to the change in the distribution in my weight. Work the reins to tell her what's coming up.

Place the bodies in a little world of signals to each of which is attached a single, obligatory response: it is a technique of training, of dressage....The training of school children was to be carried out in the same way: few words, no explanation, a total silence interrupted only by signals--bells, clapping of hands, gestures, a mere glance from the teacher...
--Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish (1995)