What’s your lockdown day look like?
✔ Feed horses
✔ Clean paddocks
✔ Ride young horse
✔ Lunge older horse
✔ Edit clients work
✔ Research 90 AD Celtic Eire
✔ Feed horses
✔ Tidy paddocks
✔ Make veggie fritters, grated squash, carrots and flat parsley or whatever is in garden. Add egg, flour and salt. Mix and cook, eat and enjoy!
I have been pretty quiet for a while now, not writing much – usually when you haven’t got much to say – but working with my horses on a bucket list goal, which was certainly lofty but not totally unachievable.
After spending this dedicated time regularly schooling two horses, one older mare and one young gelding which we broke in and started from scratch, I’d come to a halt. Physically and figuratively.
The concern set in some 12 months ago, a feeling of being lost, not finding the building blocks as intended, frustrated at our lack of advancement. finding my own theories challenged, with nothing satisfying replacing them. I rediscovered some momentum but slowed again about six months ago when I decided the training methods I was trying to use were no longer those I recognised. I thought it was time for some professional help and redirection.
That did not turn out so well! Being shouted at endlessly identifying a problem without any attempt at fixing it made me feel terrible, not only was my riding unacceptable, my riding system was also useless it appeared. My thoughts on how you teach effectively are another subject but the impact of these lessons and the expectation that I should just accept this as the way teaching has evolved, encouraged me to very nearly gave up. At the time, I felt frustrated, depressed, forlorn and my confidence shattered. Perhaps, at last, I was too old to ride.
But I didn’t give up. Turning to an old friend for help, she addressed my riding issue which was fixed in about 5 mins without any shouting, and she also used training methods and theory that I was very familiar with. I was back on track.
Am I still able to achieve my original lofty goal? I have no idea. What the takeaway from all this is I now have a realistic approach to that goal. I acknowledge I have an older mare who will need some physical support to help her progress and a young horse with a recently discovered serious metabolic issue (explains a lot!) which will restrict him from achieving all I was hopeful for, which is both heartbreaking and devastating. (Having lost another young mare with a similar issue not that long ago, I’m wondering why I have acquired two such horses in close succession!)
The end result is that all the best plans; with money spent, time devoted, hard work done and unlimited love and care given, nothing guarantee your success. All it can do is inform the next step of your journey.
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