Inadvertent Challenges

"Really? We have to do dressage AGAIN? FML."

Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely do not like to be told that I’m not capable of something, and this only tends to make me work harder. At our most recent event, Tiger and I got a 41 in dressage and I was upset that our score was worse than our previous 36 since I felt that our dressage had improved significantly. I’ve been aiming to improve towards a score in the low 30s, but when I told this to my trainer she said that she thought I would never score better than a 35 with Tiger. Naturally, I took that as a challenge, and, much to Tiger's dismay, he was destined for a dressage boot camp.

The thing about my dressage with Tiger is that although progress has been slow, we have made steady improvements since he came to me. In spite of the fact that several people have mentioned wanting to see me on a ‘more cooperative’ horse, I’m just not ready to give up on him until I stop seeing improvement. On top of that, I’m a big believer in waiting a year to seriously evaluate a rider’s partnership with a new horse because it just takes time to get to know each other. I think this inadvertent challenge may have been just the kick in the pants we needed to make some more rapid progress and improve our partnership in the dressage.

I have to confess that I never wrote down my small goals after my last post, but I did think about them a lot; there are a lot of little things to fix in Tiger’s and my tests. However, as I started thinking about how to fix these things, I realized that there was a fundamental step that we had basically tried to skip over in our approach so far with Tiger’s dressage. We were very focused on trying to lift his back and keep him straight, but had never really made him accept the contact, and so it was an impossible task. Sometimes he was ‘round,’ but he was still very heavy in my hand and generally just slightly above the vertical. If I think about the training triangle that was drilled into me when I was younger, I feel stupid for overlooking this basic concept. But it wasn’t until I took on this challenge and started thinking independently about our dressage that I realized this.

I think that since I’ve started my ‘real job’ and can actually afford some lessons now, I’ve been so excited about taking lessons that I’ve devalued my own experience and knowledge base. In grad school, I rarely had lessons, in part because I didn’t think the expense was worth it if I was still making progress and wasn’t at the edge of my knowledge with a given horse. I’m not advocating not taking any lessons in a situation like my current one. There’s no way I would fix my positional issues without someone reminding me to ‘straighten your left wrist’ and ‘keep your shoulders back’ every few minutes. However, I do think that there’s something to be said for my grad school approach. There is a lot of my knowledge that I haven’t yet taken advantage of with Tiger, and I should use that wonderful resource I have! The occasional lesson can help remind me of past epiphanies and exercises to fix certain problems, but I should also be thinking independently about how to improve my riding and spending a fair bit of time schooling on my own.

We’re about 2 weeks into our dressage boot camp and still have about 6 weeks until our next event. Hopefully we can live up to the inadvertent challenge and break 35! Either way, though, I’ve learned to be grateful for the knowledge I have retained and to use this to my fullest advantage.

Getting Back Into It

After 9 years off of regular competition, I’m getting back into it. In college, I evented through Prelim on the best horse I’ve ever known, but when my parents said they couldn’t pay for him any more I was forced to sell him. After college I moved to California for graduate school, and although I rode some great horses and taught and even worked at a big eventing barn, I didn’t compete seriously or regularly, didn’t have much instruction myself, and then at the end I took a year off of riding and over two years off of jumping. Now, with a ‘real job’ and an event horse (Tiger) that I’ve borrowed from some friends who’ve moved out of the country, I’m trying to compete again. Getting back into it after a break has been frustrating, but there’s just something about riding and eventing that is a life-long commitment and that I just don’t want to give up. 

Getting back into eventing has been frustrating for so many reasons: I’ve lost my Pony Club approved position both on the flat and over fences; I know that I should be doing things like keeping my right hip back through a turn and even WHY I should be doing them but I have to hear it over and over again because I can’t seem to actually do them with my aforementioned loss of correct position; Tiger hates dressage, is very long-backed anyway, and, worse, came to me out of shape and not having really been as through as he is capable of in several years; and finally I’ve had some stupid mistakes at the 3 events we’ve done so far, including missing a fence on XC at Galway and having two stops into the water (with no jump!) at Coconino because I was exhausted and too out of shape for XC at 7,000 feet, and Tiger decided he’d rather run out toward the barn than help me out.

All of that frustration keeps leading me to ask myself why I am spending a good fraction of my ‘real job’ income and PTO putting myself through all of these emotional ups and downs. I volunteered to take Tiger when my friends moved out of the country because I’d had a lot of changes in my life in a very short period and knew that the stability that horses provide would be beneficial. But the emotional ups and downs that come with competing or even just working towards a riding goal sometimes feel like they negate this stability. Part of what I really enjoy about riding, though, is having ‘projects’ and goals to work towards; I don’t think I would be happy just trail riding every day. There are also my bigger picture motivations: even though I have a ‘real job,’ I still really love teaching and training, and would ultimately like it to be a part of my career. Also, I know that even though Tiger hates dressage and we may not do very well, getting my position back and getting back into competing at the lower levels with him will help me prepare for my next horse, who will almost certainly be young.

It’s been hard to keep all of these motivations in mind and to take advantage of the stability that horses can provide, though, through the ups and downs of competing, my frustrations with my own riding, and the all-too-familiar barn drama. I still want to ride, but I’m also not enjoying every day at the barn or every lesson. I understand that to be a good competitor and athlete you need to push on through the hard parts. However, I also think that at this stage, where I am essentially riding just for fun and am sort of temporarily ‘stuck’ at the lower levels and am not even that competitive because of the limitations of my current horse and my current self, I need to find ways to enjoy almost every day at the barn.

To make sure I am enjoying every day, I’m going to try several things. First, I’m going to write down and define much smaller goals and ‘projects’ both for Tiger and for my own position. Second, I’m going to (gasp!) do more things outside of riding. I’ve been seriously neglecting the rest of my life since I started riding again and started my ‘real job’ all at the same time, in part because I’ve taken every opportunity I can to ride extra horses. Although I love this extra riding, I haven’t had much time for the other exercise that I usually do in my free time, which improves my riding in its own way and is fun! Third, I’m going to do fun things with Tiger that aren’t competition oriented, like long trail rides in cool places, riding on the beach, and hopefully foxhunting. Finally, I’m going to try to remember something that a new friend told me recently- that her horse makes her laugh every day. Tiger is a great character and does make me laugh a lot, and I think keeping the funny things he does in mind is important. I hope that if I do these things I will be able to both enjoy every day of my riding and keep working toward my bigger motivations for riding.