Lessons from my first horse that still help me now
It’s easy enough to beat up on yourself in the horse world. There’s plenty of other riders to compare yourself to, plenty of opportunities to look at your peers, your friends, the people on social media and see all kinds of celebrations of success. It’s easy to look at their photos, their big smiles, their shiny ribbons… and it’s easy to beat up on yourself by measuring yourself against them on their scales.
I know riders who always ask for the first lesson at club so that no one else will be there to watch them ride. I know riders who feel like they should be doing more with their horse, and that they’re letting him “go to waste”. I know riders who are battling with the idea of selling the horse and giving it all away.
I also know how important it is to find your tribe. To find the people who share the values and training priorities that you do, and how important it is to surround yourself with people who see where you’re coming from and can support you without judgement.
My first horse was a Thoroughbred ex-race horse named Bonnie, who was extremely difficult to do mostly everything with. She was hard to lead, hard to ride, wouldn’t tie up, jig-jogged everywhere, would bolt, was virtually impossible to get in a float… even professional trainers I’d sought help from had given up on her. But she was my horse and I loved her.
Looking back now, with two decades more experience, and all the recent spill-over of behavioural science entering the horse world, I see now that she was in a fairly constant state of flight. She was unable to regulate her nervous system, a had a hair-trigger that tipped her over into full blown panic at the drop of a hat.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, what Bonnie taught me, was how to keep her within her comfort zone. How to be acutely aware of that invisible threshold, while still trying to participate as much as possible. How to instinctively know when to stretch the comfort zone and when to wait. When it was safe to move on to the next exercise, and when we needed to repeat something we already knew. To find satisfaction in the incremental improvements. To be aware of the horse’s perspective in all situations, and manage my own expectations of any specific desired outcome.
This year I’ve had the pleasure of working with Polly, a Paint QH mare, who is green but not young. Polly is in her mid-teens, but has lead a quiet life and hadn’t been to riding club or competitions before coming here to me.
Polly loves having a job to do (I think it’s the Quarter Horse in her) and she’s taken to the 3PE Obstacles like a duck to water, so we entered a 3PE competition that was a few months ahead and starting making preparations. We got Level Assessed, went to some obstacle training days, borrowed Club uniform for me to wear, and debated whether or not to plait for dressage!
My plan was to arrive the afternoon before and have plenty of time to walk around the grounds with Polly and show her the sights, camp over with friends, and not be rushed in the morning. I had no intention of trying to ride competitively, I just wanted to get through the obstacle course from start to finish, to do it calmly, and to feel like we’d worked as a team while doing so. That was the expectation I’d set for myself ahead of time; in nutshell, to stay in our comfort zone!
Why? Because it’s in the comfort zone that confidence is grown. By repeating things we already know, finding opportunities to reward the horse by asking him to do something we know he can do easily. By bringing routine and similarity from our training at home into a new environment. Remaining as close as we can to the comfort zone, and limited the time spent stretching it’s boundaries or stepping outside of it, we can set our horses up to feel confident and capable, and the same for ourselves too.
Yes, Polly was tense in our dressage test, and when she gets tense she braces her ribs and won’t accept my leg aids for bending, so we can’t turn or circle properly. This tension also blocks her hindquarter activity and then she comes behind the vertical and pulls on my hands. Yes, we scored badly in dressage which put us in last place. I still felt like a winner because I’d remembered to stay connected to my breathing all the way around the arena, and remembered my test without needing a caller.
Yes, we walked some parts of the Obstacles with Style phase so that we could have a mental breather in between the times I needed to micro-manage her to negotiation the obstacles with precision. Yes, we lost some points for rookie mistakes because it was our first competition, but I still felt like a winner because she went straight through the Varied Footing which had already eliminated a handful of riders before us.
Yes, we scored badly but I still felt like a winner because the judge commented on how confident my horse was with the obstacles and wrote that on our score sheet. Yes, we were the slowest in the Obstacles at Speed phase because I chose not to add the pressure of being in a hurry. I still felt like a winner because we got in a few strides of canter along the way.
Yes, we came last on the scoreboard but I still felt like a winner because I’d done what I set out to do: stay in our comfort zone. Build some confidence that will be there to serve us next time. Feel like we worked as a team, and that my horse also felt good about how we’d ridden.
Yes, people were watching and probably talking about us. Yes, people made some comments to me afterwards about coming last. But I know how important it is to only care about the opinions of the people in my tribe. The people who train like me, who value calmness and confidence over a number on the scoreboard, the people who are genuinely supporting me in my goals; those are the people in my tribe, and those are the only voices I pay attention to.
Next time you’re beating up on yourself because you’ve compared yourself to someone whose values, goals and training priorities are different to yours, remember; unless they’re measuring success on the same scale your are, they’re not in your tribe. If they’re not in your tribe what they’re doing, saying or thinking doesn’t matter.
Yes, we scored worse than anyone else on the day, but since my tribe measure success by a different scale, you could almost say we came last on purpose.
