Enter week three, the final week of amazing... amazing frustration.
The series of unfortunate events had started and I didn't even notice. Just little missed annoyances during my rides, and much more fiery jump schools than I'm used to. So off we go to the schooling trial, our first training of the year. Dressage, check. She was good and scored quite well, it was almost easy now. Let's jump some things, YAY! Or not....
So step four happens later that afternoon(under supervision of course), and I conclude I just can't ride sometimes. The mare is still unhappy, but happier and I say it was a bad day.
Step five: fresh mind, repeat step four
Because for some reason I'm sure that the last two weeks have been a fluke and today is going to get my groove back on. It's my problem for not fixing her problem. Well, step five turning out to be the worst best step I took all week. After a long afternoon on the beach and a long night out on the town I go back to step ONE.
Why did I not start at step one?!?! Terrible horse, oh yes because terrible horse is always the step we linger at the least. We right it off as something that happened because of something else and step two takes care of any lame excuse that wasn't covered by step one. We assume that we are smart enough to read all of our horses eyelash bats, grumpy faces, and missteps perfectly. If it's not lame, it must be mental. If it's not metal, it must be lacking training. You can own a horse forever and still not be able to understand it's mind and body. Most of us want to think that is not true because we(including I) spend so many sleepless nights thinking of why one of the horses isn't performing how we believe it should.
My moral of the story this week was never throw up the white flag, just keep changing your battle tactics. Grace and I might have pushed the struggle bus around town all week, but at the end of the week she has a clear understanding of her job and I have a clear respect for mine. Even after jogging her and checking all of her out, I had no clue what was really the problem, but I respected our training and moved on. Even after I had a lesson clearly pointing out what I could have done better, I respected the words, learned what I could and moved on. I just keep changing battle plans in the war of what went wrong this week.
The white flag didn't go up, and despite a blown abscess the morning of the show, a tongue over the bit in dressage warm up, a broken stirrup leather in stadium warm up, a lost jockey on xc, a overwhelming desire to head back to the safety of the barn when you've had a terrible week, we made it!! It's wasn't without flaw, it wasn't very pretty, but it was a triumph over a terrible week. AND for once I don't feel like I need to stop and regroup, I feel as though we are right back to were we need to be. Every day has a different moral, every week has it's own challenges, but every battle can be won.
The series of unfortunate events had started and I didn't even notice. Just little missed annoyances during my rides, and much more fiery jump schools than I'm used to. So off we go to the schooling trial, our first training of the year. Dressage, check. She was good and scored quite well, it was almost easy now. Let's jump some things, YAY! Or not....
- DRAWING BOARD, steps of denial.
- Step one: terrible horse, why are you so naughty today
- Step two: terrible rider, why can't I ride today
- Step three: terrible day, the universe sucks
- Step four: let's school the crap out of our problems
So step four happens later that afternoon(under supervision of course), and I conclude I just can't ride sometimes. The mare is still unhappy, but happier and I say it was a bad day.
Step five: fresh mind, repeat step four
Because for some reason I'm sure that the last two weeks have been a fluke and today is going to get my groove back on. It's my problem for not fixing her problem. Well, step five turning out to be the worst best step I took all week. After a long afternoon on the beach and a long night out on the town I go back to step ONE.
Why did I not start at step one?!?! Terrible horse, oh yes because terrible horse is always the step we linger at the least. We right it off as something that happened because of something else and step two takes care of any lame excuse that wasn't covered by step one. We assume that we are smart enough to read all of our horses eyelash bats, grumpy faces, and missteps perfectly. If it's not lame, it must be mental. If it's not metal, it must be lacking training. You can own a horse forever and still not be able to understand it's mind and body. Most of us want to think that is not true because we(including I) spend so many sleepless nights thinking of why one of the horses isn't performing how we believe it should.
My moral of the story this week was never throw up the white flag, just keep changing your battle tactics. Grace and I might have pushed the struggle bus around town all week, but at the end of the week she has a clear understanding of her job and I have a clear respect for mine. Even after jogging her and checking all of her out, I had no clue what was really the problem, but I respected our training and moved on. Even after I had a lesson clearly pointing out what I could have done better, I respected the words, learned what I could and moved on. I just keep changing battle plans in the war of what went wrong this week.
The white flag didn't go up, and despite a blown abscess the morning of the show, a tongue over the bit in dressage warm up, a broken stirrup leather in stadium warm up, a lost jockey on xc, a overwhelming desire to head back to the safety of the barn when you've had a terrible week, we made it!! It's wasn't without flaw, it wasn't very pretty, but it was a triumph over a terrible week. AND for once I don't feel like I need to stop and regroup, I feel as though we are right back to were we need to be. Every day has a different moral, every week has it's own challenges, but every battle can be won.