Several people commented on my Friday & Saturday show report commending me for my good attitude. Believe me, that attitude is not my natural inclination. I’m a fiercely competitive person. I want to win. I don’t like to step foot in the ring unless I think there is a chance that I will get something in the class. While I don’t feel like I put my competitive desires ahead of my horse’s welfare, the truth of the matter is that I…
I’ve been experiencing a bit of a shift in my perspective as of late. It started intentionally and coming from myself. When I headed into my lesson on Tuesday afternoon to prep for the show, I decided I would not once say “That looks big” or ask for anything to be taken down. I need to jump bigger, but more importantly I need to believe that I can do this. One of my life coping mechanisms is sarcastic humor. That’s all…
So. It seems everyone some are upset with me about the anonymous blog survey posts. I have mixed feelings about that, which I don’t think I’ll go into. Instead, I’ll say that I promised I would post all the responses… and I did regardless of how I felt about some of them. Like almost everything in life, I don’t think that little blogging series was wholly good or bad. This is not a post about that though, even though it was spurred…
Even though I’ve actually shown a lot in my life, since 2008 s I’ve been to a grand total of three shows and all of those were in the past 12 months. Even though I thought I had conquered my show nerves in the past, they have returned with a vengeance. I know this is something a lot of riders struggle with. For me, it’s all about mixing exposure and attitude. Go to a lot of shows. Go to a…
Even though you can’t be a great rider without lots of practice and being in decent shape, I still claim that over 50% of the sport is mental. That being said, I had a good ‘reset’ lesson on Tuesday night to address some of the communication issues with my horse. I won’t bore you with the tiny details of the lesson, because it wasn’t that exciting, but I will share some of my take aways. I do group lessons weekly,…
I was reading Confessions of an AA Event Rider and Convicted Over Thinker the other day, which is a blog I enjoy a lot because she is a very honest writer and she writes freely about her struggles. I’ll give you a (not so much) secret, this horse showing thing isn’t easy and I enjoy blogs that are honest about the trials and tribulations. Anyway, Suzanne recently went to an Andrea Waldo clinic (read her entire post, it’s worth it)…