So here I am post the summer from hell and I still haven't gotten
back on the proverbial and literal horse. There are a lot of reasons I haven't
gotten back in the saddle yet. Some are easy to define, others not so
much.
My motivation to do more than
just groom, pick hooves and feed treats just hasn't been there lately. A
lot of it had to do with coming down from the ultra-high stress bus that I had
been riding for almost four months. I lived with a high level of daily stress
for so long that it took several weeks of little to no stress to bring me back
to a baseline.
Which is about when my desire
to ride again began kicking in. I started reading my Practical Horseman’s
again, perusing the Dover/SmartPak catalogs, touching with longing all my good
tack that is currently living in my bedroom as my tack room is also the guest
bedroom. I started looking at my ponies with an eye towards what we need to
work on, how we're going to get all the muscle we lost back and what we can do
this winter to make riding easier.
Essentially I found my riding
mojo again, I found my riding love again, I found myself.
I still have a month long
training to do that will have me away from home from mid-November to
mid-December. Which sort of sucks because I need to do the annual shaving of
the wooly beast who, while he is definitely a Thoroughbred, is absolutely
convinced that he is an Appaloosa/Welsh Pony cross. So while my other two, the
OTTB mare and the actual Appy are just mildly fuzzy, Fox has nearly a full on
winter coat already.
So here I am laying it down in
black and white. I am recommitting to my riding, reengaging with my passion and
my pony and revitalizing my heart and my dreams. This year we will go
Beginner Novice, we will canter dressage worthy circles, we will do a clinic
with someone great. We will go down to the North Carolina Horse Park and do the
War Horse Eventing Trial. We will be the partners that I know we can be.
I will commit to taking Cowboy
to a horsemanship clinic and find our own partnership so that he can have a job
and feel loved and needed. We will prance down centerline and wow everyone with
how lovely a mover he is. We will do a cross rails jumping class and we will
trail ride and have fun.
I listen to a lot of audio
books. Sometimes I listen to fiction, sometimes memoirs, and sometimes self-help.
There was one self-help book that talked about writing down or saying your
goals out loud. How these simple acts reinforce things in your mind and
makes it easier and believable to achieve your goals.
So here I am, this is the year
we get off our butts and do all those things I've been dreaming of.
Keep it Between the Flags
everyone!
