Some Days You Win, Some Days You Just Stay On

It's no secret that green and green makes black and blue. As an adult amateur rider, it may not have been the best advised choice to purchase a freshly 5 yo OTTB with just a couple months restarted under saddle. But, Ghost is my 3rd OTTB on top of many, many more that I rode consistently, including some I broke myself. And, knowing I would be working with a trainer I figured my radar for a solid-brained TB was decent enough. Honestly, I really did hit the lottery with Ghost. He isn't easily phased or distracted, and genuinely tries to always do what I ask, even when it's wrong. Most of our rides are enjoyable and coming off of a horse that I was beginning to be afraid to ride, Ghost was the breath of fresh air I needed to get my vibe back.

Of course, there are still days that don't go to plan. Sometimes I think, I want to work on flying changes and maybe Ghost gets flustered after a missed change so we go back to working on simple changes until he relaxes and I call it a day. Then there are some days I plan to do a whole jumping course and raise the jumps a bit but I get nervous, as amateurs do, and end up trotting poles instead. Or Ghost feels just a bit frisky so I stick to walking and trotting, you know, as an act of self-preservation. Knowing he is young, and knowing I am not a pro, I try to never ask too much of him or myself and to always end on a good note even if that means a shorter ride than usual or a different riding plan than initially intended. Once in a blue moon though, and I can count these days on one hand, things really don't go as planned. Today is the best example.

I normally ride on my lunch break this time of year because I don't have lights in my riding area. Today I got off work half an hour early and I wasn't planning on riding, but with the extra 30 minutes of daylight I now had I figured it would be a wasted opportunity not to ride before dinner. It was windy, seemed like it was about to storm, and of course the sun was setting quickly. Ghost warmed up so nice and soft at the walk and trot, despite the usual suspects of neighbors shooting guns, barking dogs, squirrels dropping acorns, and the resident ravens landing in their trees for the evening. We hadn't ridden much this week because of my work schedule so it was a great way to end a Friday. But of course, things veered off course from there.

I decided I would canter a set of three cavalettis that I have set up as bounces which have been there for several weeks. I had started with them as poles and gradually raised one at a time until Ghost got comfortable, and we had been practicing them at that height for a couple weeks. It had been going pretty seamlessly. I had even started doing some bigger gymnastics with him and he was feeling confident and smooth. Today, though, I picked up the left lead, which is Ghost's weaker lead, and he cross cantered. This usually flusters him a bit so I calmly came back to the walk and tried again. This time we got a nice canter and I made a nice big circle to balance him. Then one of my dogs decided to start barking at us. Ghost, genuinely unphased by dogs including my neighbor's lovely beast who jumps and barks against our privacy fence every time I ride, for some reason today felt particularly bothered by this. I was just a couple strides out from the cavaletti at this point and while trying to straighten Ghost and redirect his attention, I saw an abnormally long spot to which I was uncertain if Ghost also saw. He did not. He pretty much crashed into the first cavaletti, then side stepped and half-jumped the second, and evaded the third. OK, I thought. We will try that again. And I did. And my dog barked again. And we evaded the third cavaletti. At this point I decided maybe trotting it would help. It did not. Now, it was rapidly getting dark which as I have learned this year is not a fun time to be riding. Ghost definitely gets nervous when I try to ride at dusk so I decided to just try and trot the cavaletti from the right (his stronger direction) and be done. He was pretty tense now so I did my best to calm him, widened my hands and softly went up to the bounce from the right. He was not at all in agreement with this plan. He side stepped and broke the end of the first cavaletti.

I panicked. I cried. I thought, I am ruining this beautifully talented and athletic horse because I decided to ride close to dusk and jump cavalettis when I could have just flatted today and he is going to start stopping now and he was so confident up until now and I have ruined him and oh my god did he hurt his leg I have to check please tell me there weren't any splinters why did I not put his boots on today why am I riding I wasn't planning on riding how dumb am I he is never going to jump again why is my dog even barking right now. Yeah, catastrophizing is for sure my strong suit. This of course made me nervous which made Ghost nervous and in the time it took for me to jump down and lower the cavalettis so we could try to just pop over them as poles, I had really riled both of us up. It took another good 10 to 15 minutes, now in the dark, to get Ghost to trot over a pole calmly. At one point he slammed on the breaks so hard (at the darkest colored cavaletti) that I nearly flew off. And I don't blame him, he couldn't see it.

Honestly, writing this all out makes it all sound quite silly. I probably should have gone to get lights or just walked over the cavalettis to end on a good note but instead today I crumbled. I felt defeated and I felt like I had failed Ghost, who tries so hard for me all the time. I know he was flustered because of the lighting and because he had lost confidence in doing the bounce. He was stressed because he knew he wasn't getting it right and didn't know how, to and I couldn't get him there either in my headspace. Of course, I know we still ended in a better spot, calm and simple, and we will try again (in the daylight...) another day. But I just felt really awful. It felt like a massive step backward and it was 100% my fault.

At the end of the day, we jump four-legged creatures over sticks and it is supposed to be fun. Ghost is not an investment or a fancy warmblood I plan to resell. I am doing my best as an amateur to support his training and turning to my own trainer as often as I can to make sure he continues to develop into a confident, well-rounded horse. But, the pressure to always be perfect and to never mess up because he is a green horse is very real. Ghost is a sweet, kind horse, and we have had a bad day before. We will have a bad day again. What matters is that more often than not, we figure it out and more often than not, our rides feel like progress and partnership.

When I turned Ghost out after his (very late) dinner tonight, he came back to his gate and poked his nose through at me. He is a funny horse, that's for sure. But normally once he is in his field he'd rather not socialize with people until next meal time. So, for my sanity, I like to think it was him letting me know, "hey, mom, you kinda sucked today. But that's alright, I still like you enough to try again tomorrow." And that's all I needed to hear (in my head) to smile and let today go, as yet another learning lesson, and not the end of the world.