Ups and Downs

The thing about bringing along a green horse is that one day you have a super great jump school and you're like "my horse is a GENIUS" after he jumps his first Swedish oxer and canters into his first one-stride that isn't part of a grid.

And then the next day you can't get him on the bit.

Except for the jump school Thursday, Mo has had quite a light week. He just walked Monday. Tuesday he went on a trail ride. Wednesday he walked and did a tiny bit of trotting. Even Thursday's jump school was pretty quick, because no need to prove a huge point to him when he's doing things right the first time. And last week was also relatively chill for him. So, dude should not be tired or sore or out of quarters. He just straight-up didn't want to cooperate on Friday.

Throwback pics today

But that's too bad, because he had to do what he was asked. The problem was that I got no sleep at all the night before because I'm farm sitting at a place with a fox hound who wants to share the couch with me even though he's my size and a cat that has to be touching me at all times and two other dogs and two other cats and also a noisy rooster outside. So I was kind of behind the eight ball to begin with, and then when 30 minutes went by of him doing every single thing imaginable except coming round, even with M in the ring to holler instructions at me... I just kind of melted. I wasn't giving up, but I was allowing those stupid emotions to get involved and beating myself up really hard. It's really hard to focus on the subtleties of feel when I'm in that head space.

So M got on, and that's never happened before, and THAT is what is really bothering me. I mean, she did a great job up there. He threw a huge fit for her too, but she got him where he needed to be. I got back on, rode the horse that she turned him into, and when we'd executed a couple of good serpentines we were done.

For the rest of the day I felt like I had that bad-ride hangover. It was educational for Mo, I guess. And for me. But mostly it left me feeling like I don't know shit about anything. In the barn, M said that my deal is that I've ridden a lot of horses that are greener than Mo and then moved them on before we got to this point, and a lot of horses that are less green than him who already get this, but I've only had three horses right where he is now (him, Lex, and a horse I rode in FL for awhile--and things with Lex ended in tears). She's had at least 50 horses be right where he is now, so she simply has more education in dealing with it. That made me feel the tiniest smidge better (as did whining to Niamh and Aimee).

It's frustrating to work so hard and sacrifice so much and have such a nice horse and feel like I'm totally lacking talent. I'm trying to tell myself how great this will all be when he owns the connection piece, and also that this show season is just about getting out into the world so if it turns out he can't dressage at all, fine.

Also, as I'm always saying, if it was easy to be Beezie Madden, we would all be Beezie Madden. That doesn't mean I'm cool with not being Beezie Madden.