The local venue where Henry and I sometimes go for winter combined tests is offering a whole new type of event this winter.

Yep, a very very low key, super chill dressage freestyle show. You can make your own test, pick your own music, do it solo or with a partner or as a team, and even wear a costume (I’m pretty sure that’s Timon and Pumbaa in the picture). If you’re trying to make me way more interested in dressage, you’re doing a good job. They even said that equipment rules will not apply, so I’m welcome to do my test bareback and bitless. Which is kind of my dream. Henry is much easier to ride bitless in general, and I’ve always felt like it would be fun to play around with a test that way. I do bareback and bitless “dressage” rides with him at home pretty regularly. Yeah I know, I can feel all the DQ’s screaming internally at the idea and/or principles of bitless dressage. Take the whole dressage part of this to be a very loose description of what’s really happening and do some deep breathing, it’ll be ok.

I’m a little less into the musical aspect of things. That seems like a lot of work. I honestly just want to do my test to Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” and have fun with it, even though the music does not at all work in the real dressage freestyle format. Unless my horse was trotting a few thousand miles per hour. Which technically he probably IS capable of, but pretty sure no one wants to experience that, especially his bare back and my pelvic region. Raise Your Glass is my favorite song on my horse show play list, though, very fitting for us, and if I can’t make that work then I don’t know if I’m interested. Unless a Missy Elliot song is also possible. Then maybe. Omg, what if I could weave together Raise Your Glass with Get Ur Freak On or Work It???

But anyway, I’m torn. I think the show sounds super fun until you get to the dressage freestyle aspect of it and then it feels suspiciously like hard work. I feel like I have to get into tempo and beats per minute and make all the music line up right and have a test that makes sense and flows and BLAH BLAH BLAH. I don’t know if I’m into all that, and honestly the dressage freestyle boringness has never been very interesting to me. I just wanna go be dumb and incorrect and do a bareback and bitless dressage test to a fun song like an oblivious idiot because why the hell not. I have enough real work to do right now related to our attempted move-up (my brain is at max capacity), so I just want something silly and fun that feels like the opposite of real work. Which I guess I could totally do if I just ignore all the rules of dressage freestyles and how they’re supposed to work. That’s definitely an option.

But then we circle back around to the effort required to figure out a test and music and I start questioning my commitment again. I don’t even have a dressage arena at home, how would I figure out and practice the timing? That seems complicated. Then again… where else will I ever get a chance to make up my own bareback and bitless dressage test?

What to do, what to do. Is anyone out there good at this kind of thing? How do I make this work, with a minimal amount of time/brainpower invested and no arena in which to practice?

I suppose the good thing about showing more often is that you don’t really have a lot of time after one show to think about the next. It feels like we just got back from Holly Hill, but here I am doing laundry (I decided I hate everything white) and getting ready to leave on Friday for Texas Rose. This is our 2/3 move up, doing Prelim stadium and dressage and Training XC, so I really wanted one more stadium lesson before we go. The only time we could really fit it in was on Tuesday afternoon, but considering I have so much leftover PTO that I’ll never be able to use it all, it worked out great. Hillary and I loaded up the horses and drove 2 hours down to Trainer so we could both have a lesson.

Hillary jumped Annie around some Novice size courses (not that Annie ever clears anything by less than 2′, pretty sure she’s jumping Advanced most of the time regardless of jump height) and then Trainer put them up to Prelim for me. Which… it just shows how much she’s been messing with me all along with jump height when I was like “Are you sure these are Prelim? They look small.”. So she jacked one of the oxers up bigger and I shut up.

It was a really freaking hot and humid day (come back, fall, I miss you) so we didn’t do much, just a couple courses, but it was exactly what we needed. We had a couple of mistakes which I got to fix, heard those ever-constant and ever-necessary reminders to sit up and rebalance and get the inside hind under him (has anyone ever actually counted the number of times that your trainer has had to repeat the same instructions over and over throughout the years? It has to be a massive number by now for me…), and it felt productive. I know that we’re capable of this, I just have to believe it when I step in the ring. I’m feeling better about it though.

Trainer also gave us the green light to enter the full Prelim HT at the Pine Hill show in December. It’s the best possible scenario, since it’s a schooling show (low key) but they use the same course as their recognized, plus I have enough credits from volunteering to more than cover all the fees. Free horse show = less pressure. If the weather is crap or something goes awry, we can always change to a CT instead.

It felt especially momentous that after I dropped the entry in the mail, I was looking at my facebook memories and saw that 4 years ago today I entered Henry’s first event (and what was, at that time, my first event in over a decade) at Beginner Novice. I never in a million years would have imagined that the journey would take us here. It still feels hard to believe. I will never know how I lucked into finding such a cool horse, he’s expanded the limits of what I ever thought was possible.

But for now, we focus on Texas Rose this weekend and getting the job done!

I’ve been talking a lot lately about how I’m trying to focus on fixing my brain. What I mean by that is addressing the mental aspects of riding and showing (in my case, mostly showing) that are having a negative impact on my life and my riding. It’s been a goal of mine for the past couple years, ever since I started to become aware of the issue, but this year certain things have slowly made themselves more obvious, and I’ve buckled down on trying to address what’s going on in my head.

The first part of this, of course, was becoming aware of it. I’ve been showing since I was a kid, and looking back I realized that I’ve always struggled mentally to some degree. It’s only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older, had to pay for my own habit on a tight budget, and stepped into harder competitions and higher levels. The pressure has taken it’s toll, and it snuck up on me without me really even noticing.

The first eye-opening moment for me was at the N3D at Coconino in 2016. There’s a lot of hoopla leading up to an event like that… qualifying for it, conditioning for it, saving the money to make the trip to Arizona, taking 2 weeks off work to go horse show, etc. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well, considering how much time and money I had invested in the event. And, naturally, I kinda bombed. The pressure I put on myself got the better of me in dressage and stadium, resulting in silly mistakes, and we finished just out of the ribbons. My first reaction was to be really upset. Not with anyone else, but with myself. I screwed it up, this thing that we’d been working toward for months, and I was really frustrated and angry about it. The things that I said to myself in my head (you don’t belong here, you aren’t good enough, you’ll never be good enough, what made you think you could ever do well at this, you wasted all this money, etc etc) were pretty cruel, and it showed on the outside as a generally sour attitude. My Trainer rightly pointed out that I was acting like a huge brat and needed to get over myself, which rocked me back on my heels at first. I was 33 years old and she was calling me a brat? WTF?

But she was right, and I’m glad she said it. It was the slap in the face I needed. I spent the whole drive home thinking about what she said, and trying to figure out what was going on with me that made me act that way. It was the first time in my entire life that I ever sat back and thought about my mental state as it relates to horse showing.

Of course, once you start to become aware of it, you start to see it more. I could look back and think of other times when my inability to handle pressure (that I put on MYSELF, mind you, no one else ever has) and my lack of self-confidence had bitten me in the butt. I could also think of times that other trainers had noticed it, but their less brutally honest comments just never registered in the same way.

The good news is that you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken. So realizing that I had a problem was the critical first step. Of course, from there you’re kind of left wondering what the heck to do next, how on earth to fix it. At first, I did nothing. I didn’t know what TO do. Mostly I just thought about it and reflected and tried to open up my awareness to how I was feeling and why, trying to figure myself out. I’ve been doing that for a couple years now, and I finally feel ready to do something about it.

Lately I’ve been talking about it more. Bringing it up here on the blog and with some of my friends, trying to talk things through. It’s brought up so many interesting conversations, helping me learn more about others and about myself. It’s helped me pinpoint exactly what my issues are and what they stem from. There have been many lightbulb moments. And, with some encouragement, I purchased 3 different books about the mental side of riding, which I have delved into with more enthusiasm than I ever could have imagined. I’m very much a book learner, and they’ve already helped me open my eyes and start to develop a plan for myself.

I think I have a long, hard road ahead. Changing a mindset that I’ve had for my entire life is certainly not going to be quick and easy. It’s a struggle, every single day, to start training my brain to see things in a different way. I want to talk about it here, partly because I have a feeling that I’m not alone in this, but also because I’m hoping you guys will help me hold myself accountable. Part of changing how I think is changing what I say. I have to be more positive about my capabilities, more forgiving of my mistakes, more accepting that failure is a part of growth, and just plain have a little more freaking faith in myself. Especially now, as I’m starting to push outside of my comfort zone and outside of what I ever thought was possible for me. Growth isn’t comfortable, and I want to be more prepared when the struggles come calling.

The books have given me a lot of good ideas on what to do and things to try, so my current status is “In Progress”. Right now I feel like I’m taking baby steps on shaky legs, but they’re steps in the right direction. I want to share the journey here, in all of it’s brutal ugly honesty, as I start trying to make these changes to my mentality. I have no idea how often I’ll write updates on how it’s going or what the heck the subject matter will be about, but this post is a starting point and, hopefully, a way to hold myself more accountable. I feel like good things have always come after I put something out there in the world, so… let’s try it with this too.

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The books I’m reading at the moment are:

Pressure Proof your Riding by Daniel Stewart

Inside Your Ride by Tonya Johnston

Keep Calm and Enjoy the Ride by Annette Paterakis

This time of year always seems so busy, with shows and lessons and barnsitting and volunteering and literally anything I can do outdoors in that little sliver of the year when the weather isn’t scorching. This fall has been no different, with something going on every weekend since mid-September. I was starting to yearn for a day where I didn’t *have* to wake up before the sun (not that I can sleep past 6 even if you give me the chance, but still… I was craving the chance…) and this past weekend was finally a little bit of a break.

I did manage to fill up most of my Saturday with body clipping. The people I barnsit for are headed to their new Florida farm for the winter (luckyyyyy) and were scurrying to get everything ready, so I stepped in with some clippers to help prepare the horses for their trek. My victims were Toni (the stallion) and Tara, who were both impeccably behaved and very patient. A+ for behavior. I might still be digging black hair out of my eyeballs, but they’re both gorgeous and ready to go. Also considering I’ve body clipped Henry twice in the past month, I’m feeling pretty done with it for a while now. I used to clip A LOT to make some extra money (hustlers gotta side hustle) but I kind of remember why it wasn’t my favorite gig. It’s not the worst, but it’s not the best. Super satisfying though… I do kind of live for the moment when you’re finished and they look amazing.

On Sunday we got to go for a hack out in the fields with Hillary, who just moved to my barn. After being there basically solo (only english rider, and the only person who really came out more than once a week) for two years now, it’s kind of nice to have a partner in crime. Pretty sure I’ve already talked her into a schooling HT next month. It doesn’t take much arm-twisting.

Hillary’s mare Annie is living in the stall next to Henry, and while he likes to make ugly faces at her while he’s eating (that’s kind of his thing) I can tell that he secretly enjoys her company. Their turnouts are near each other and I swear he kept an eye on her for quite a while as he was grazing yesterday. That’s about as excited as Henry gets about the existence of another horse.

After we were done riding I pulled Presto out for groomies and decided to take advantage of the puddles in the arena while checking in with his lunging skills and voice commands. We will ignore the fact that I had to throw a rock at him to get him trot the first time (note to self: the “tr-OT” voice command button is a little rusty). I really need to find a lunge whip for this wild little stallion. Once he got going he perked up a bit, and seemed to enjoy splashing through all the puddles I pointed him at. He remains a superstar at “whoa”, screeching to a quiet halt within a few seconds from any gait. Maybe I should have bred more thoroughbred into this thing… 73% and “whoa” is still his favorite?

I even had enough time left over to play around more with some new things we’ve acquired lately. Like Henry’s fancy new Majyk Equipe superhorse monoflap girth. It’s so squishy. Definitely a massive upgrade from the extra-basic, no-frills, cheap synthetic I was using before. I’m excited to use and abuse it a bit more before I review it, and I still need to review the Majyk Equipe impact pad too. We’ll get there.

Henry was perhaps more excited to try out these new Flix treats, which are made entirely from flaxseed. No added sugar, no flavoring, nothing but flaxseed in all of it’s omega 3 goodness. I figured there was no way he would like these, considering how much he loves anything super unhealthy and sugar-loaded. Pretty sure Henry’s life philosophy is “when it doubt, cover it with molasses”. I was shocked when he chomped them quickly down and begged for more. Presto and the donkeys liked them too. I dunno what sorcery this is, but if Henry will happily eat some healthy treats, I will happily keep him stocked with a full supply.

On Sunday afternoon I got to catch up on a lot of reading, which lately has been primarily comprised of what I guess you could call self-help books for equestrians. I said I wanted to focus on improving the mental aspects of my riding, and I started that by ordering 3 books. I’m halfway through them and my mind is pretty blown. Some of the content is “duh”, some of it has made me stop and reflect, and some of it has absolutely left me reeling. This whole process is going to be it’s own series of posts, I think.

This week the focus shifts to getting ready for Texas Rose this weekend, the preparation for which will include but not be limited to: a jump lesson, re-learning the Prelim dressage test, shortening Henry’s ranch horse mane, figuring out how to stay warm while I’m camping considering it’s gonna be like 35 degrees (we’re all gonna die in dressage, y’all) and trying to apply some of what I’ve read so far in my books. We’ll see how any of that goes.

OH YEAH – also, I managed to leak Magic Cushion all over Henry’s sleazy… any ideas how the hell to get that out??

You know what’s awkward? Being a 19 month old baby horse.

Poor Presto. He is so sweet, and such a good boy. He’s in a particularly (suspiciously???) quiet and compliant phase right now too. Like to the point where he’s been so still in the crossties that I’ve taken his temperature to make sure he wasn’t dying. He comes to me in the pasture, stands still as a stone while I tie his halter on, follows me docilely into the barn, and stands in the crossties while I groom and fly spray him and sometimes leave him unattended for short periods.

What he is, though, is a weird collection of body parts right now. Some things have grown and developed and are looking more like they belong to a horse. Other parts are scrawny and small and look like they belong to a baby. The overall effect is a little… strange.

His head is… well it’s pretty big. Like, as big as Henry’s. His butt is starting to lengthen and fill out a bit too, and his barrel is taking on a little more depth. The neck and shoulders, though? Scrawny AF. He’s still SO narrow in the shoulders and without much topline. I was kind of thinking (or secretly hoping) that waiting a little longer to geld him would help out his topline a little, but judging by his behavior I don’t think he’s got much testosterone running through him. Still almost no colt-like behavior. Which… thank goodness. Both of his little cojones are easily visible now though, so whenever the weather decides to get cold enough to kill the flies, those little nuggets are coming off.

Grooming him yesterday I took a good hard look at where his withers were in relation to my face (WHY ARE THEY LEVEL WITH MY FOREHEAD?) and went off to the tack room to dig around for my good measuring stick. He definitely isn’t growing at the same crazy rate that he was in the spring, when he grew a hand in 3 months (that was relatively terrifying) but no doubt he’s continued to add a little bit since the last time I sticked him.

Yeah so he’s just a teeny smidge shy of 15.3h now. If he could slow his roll a little, that would be greeaaaaat.

I couldn’t resist throwing my saddle on him either. I haven’t done that yet, but he’s worn a lot of saddle pads and his surcingle so I figured it would be a non-event and I was correct. He stayed asleep. And the saddle doesn’t look all that big on him, either. Granted, I think he would need like a 12″ girth if I actually wanted to attach this thing to him.

I’m guessing that the shoulders and neck will be the next things to grow. I hope? With every day that passes, he looks more and more like a horse and less and less like a baby. We’ll ignore the fact that he’s the same height now that his mother was at 2 1/2. I’m in denial about that.

He also seems really freaking bored, so this weekend we’re going to revisit long lining again now that I’ve got real long lines. Maybe I won’t have to stack every saddle pad I own to make the surcingle fit now? Ok I probably will. #babyhorseproblems