“I’ve never seen anybody use a double bitted bridle before,” she said. “Well, this is the way horses are started in Spain and Portugal.” I knew I’d lost her. I guess going the next step and pointing out that these horses were used to fight bulls would have been as foreign as Mercury or Venus. The years I’d spent working with Fermin, Francisco and George passed by my mind’s eye. What a different world was the in-hand work with the double bridle. We’d come at it through the flexions of the Peruvian horse and the work around the single pillar. Then we discovered the flexions of Bancher, and the wondrous collected work of the Spanish school. Collection of a degree not even dreamed of in my youth. How was I to even begin to explain forty years of labor and discovery at the hands of Maters from around the world?

“Yeah, it’s a little different way of going at it but I feel better about throwing my pink body into the meat grinder when I have some assurance that I may actually survive intact.”

I still don’t think she got it.