It’s… a lot, to me, to think about how much time has passed since Cooper came home, but it’s been a year. It was actually a year ago on Monday of last week, but today’s his fourth birthday, so I waited a little while to write this up so we could get a two-for-one here.
I’ve said to my parents before that the last… oh, six years or so? have all blurred together for me. I graduated from college two years ago, and in a month it’ll be six years since I graduated from high school, but the intervening years aren’t distinct anymore. My life isn’t delineated cleanly anymore. In some ways, I feel younger than I am because I don’t feel like I really have any big markers for important life stages at this point. Almost-twenty-four-year-old me doesn’t really feel all that different from nineteen-year-old me. Sure, I know some things now that I didn’t know before, and I learned a couple of hard lessons in the last few years, and I have more money now than I did when I was in college, but I don’t feel all that different.
When I told my parents this, they just told me that my life would be marked by other things – less formalized things, things like “before this job” and “after this job,” like “before Cooper” and “after Cooper.” Those things aren’t culturally significant markers, but they’re significant to me, so here we are: one year (and a few days) “after Cooper.”
There’s a lot about this year that hasn’t quite gone how I would’ve hoped – the shoe-throwing saga and stifle issues that marked my first five months with him, nearly a month of treating rain rot, a $550 one-inch-long infected cut just as I was thinking that I’d be able to spend my whole two weeks off over Christmas at the barn and having lessons, my job severely limiting my ride time through the winter, and then… well, you know, the entire state of the world for the last couple of months – but I don’t really feel like going into detail about those things. They’re frustrating, and a little disappointing, but in the grand scheme of things, they don’t really matter. He literally just turned four. We have all the time in the world and this is hardly a setback for us (and really, having a month and a half off has been good for him, given that he seems to be hell-bent on growing enough to make me look small. Here I was thinking that he wouldn’t be sound anymore after this much time without legitimate work, but his stifle has looked just fine the couple of times that I’ve lunged him, so… maybe growth is doing us some favors?).
What I do want to talk about is the gifts that I’ve been given and what I’ve learned in the last year – the things that he’s taught me and the things that he’s made me remember. I might be training him, but the education has gone both ways.
For one thing, I’m just grateful. I’m grateful that of all the people who were interested in him after he was listed on CANTER (because apparently there were a lot, according to the assistant trainer who was my main point of contact during the purchase process), I’m the one that got to bring him home. I’m grateful that, for all the horse scene in the States (and North America in general) can leave a lot to be desired, I live somewhere where you can go and pick up a horse – a Thoroughbred – like him for $1,500. I’m grateful that, even with our setbacks, the horse I got is above and beyond the horse that I was hoping would step off that trailer. He’s getting a little more full of himself as he gets a little older, and he’s definitely got a bit of an attitude and a lot of opinions (Storm Cat baby, anyone?), but he’s got a good brain, he tries hard, he can take a joke, and he really is a pocket pony (even if he still doesn’t really understand the whole treat thing), and I really can’t ask for more than that. He’s made me appreciate all of this so much more, and that matters to me, for a whole host of reasons.
Coming back to riding after my accident was really difficult. In the beginning, I was just elated to be back in the saddle, but as time wore on, the cracks started to spread more and more. I’d spent my high school years telling myself that I’d feel better once I could ride again, that my PTSD wouldn’t bother me anymore, that horses would just… fix everything, but (in a truly shocking turn of events) that’s not how mental health works. There was no convenient bandage for the things I was struggling with, because they weren’t simple in any way whatsoever, and that meant that as the days and weeks and months passed, it became harder and harder to say that I just missed my horse and my trainer and that I’d be fine once I got over it. Something was wrong, and riding as a whole wasn’t fun anymore even if certain days were, and I pushed myself through it because I’ve always been the horse girl and I made myself all of these promises during the years when I couldn’t ride, and it was really hard to let that stuff go. I felt like I had to keep riding, like I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.
Well, important lesson learned there, folks: don’t force yourself into things that don’t make you happy, even when you feel like they should, because it won’t end well for anyone.
Before I came to my current barn, I took a step back from horses for about eight months (and I initially thought it would be a lot longer than that). I finished school, I worked a summer job and took the CPA exam, I started my current position, and I sort of let myself… drift. I didn’t really think about horses much, and I told myself that I was going to take the money I was earning and go off and do all sorts of things – travel, take up some new hobbies, all of those things that you’re “supposed” to do as an early twenty-something with a good job and nothing really tying you down. At least, I didn’t really think about riding until I started getting that urge to go for a canter – just to go for a canter. I didn’t want a lesson, I didn’t want to think about shows, I didn’t want to have goals, I just wanted to get in the saddle and go for a canter.
I wound up at my current barn because of an Instagram DM, because I posted that I missed horses and my barn owner was kind enough to invite me out for a ride. I met a pony (now a horse, he’s grown) who was young but willing, and I got to ride again with absolutely no pressure on me whatsoever, and that made the whole thing easier. I wasn’t feeling like I had to compare myself to anyone, or like my skills weren’t good enough because I didn’t have the money to back them up with a show record. I was just going to the barn and tacking up a pony and going for a ride.
Fast forward to busy season, when I was cramming in rides on the weekends wherever I could and using the few breaks I took from work to click around on CANTER. I wasn’t supposed to be looking (of course I wasn’t, isn’t that how it always happens), but then I saw this one ad, and I just knew. I knew the same way I knew when I got into the saddle of that one out-of-shape palomino quarter horse gelding about a decade earlier. I didn’t know what was causing it, but I had a feeling, and I couldn’t ignore it (even though I tried very hard to), so I just… went with it, and Cooper came home a little over a month later.
Initially it was the most exciting thing in the world, but a few months in, it started getting hard again, and I started feeling guilty. I was tired, and it was hard to drive out to the barn after not getting home from work until after six with the knowledge that just the drive alone – just from my house, forget about from the office or client sites – was an hour and a half and riding would add at least another two hours, and how could I feel that way when I’d waited so long and worked so hard to be able to afford him in the first place? How could I feel like owning a horse was inconvenient?
It went against everything that I thought I should be feeling, and then one weekend in August, after I dragged myself out to the barn again when I thought I wanted nothing more than to stay in my bed and felt immediately better once I walked into the pasture, I realized: I don’t have to do anything with Cooper. He’s a horse. He doesn’t care (if anything, he probably prefers it when he doesn’t have to work). If I’m tired and I don’t feel like riding, then I don’t ride. I go to the barn, and if all I feel up to is grooming him and then letting him hand-graze for ten minutes, then that’s what we do. If I have too much going on to make it out to the barn one week, he’ll be fine. If all I do is ride him bareback for fifteen minutes because I’m too lazy to tack up and too out of shape to do more than that without a saddle, then so be it.
Realizing that was a huge thing for me. It was me giving myself permission to be that kid again, to just do whatever I wanted with my horse even if it didn’t seem to really serve a purpose, because everything that I did when I was leasing did serve a purpose. It just wasn’t always clear-cut. Things that I did as a kid that were just fun were also building up our fitness, or improving my eye, or helping us develop a better relationship (I miss those days sitting on the floor outside of Nugget’s stall eating Cheetos and feeding them to him too because for some reason he really liked artificial cheese flavoring), so why wouldn’t I give myself permission to do those things with Cooper? He was three. He didn’t need to be in a program. We weren’t going anywhere. I wanted to take him off-property, but not to try to win something. I wanted to go for the learning experience and the fun of going somewhere with my barnmates and my horse.
Cooper opened a door to me giving myself permission for riding to be fun again because he’s my horse. I’m not training him for someone, I’m not prepping him for a show (unless I decide I want to go to one), I’m not trying to work him so he can be sold, no one is comparing him to the other horses in the barn – I’m just hanging out with my horse, doing the things that I want to do with him, on my own timeline, and that’s fine. It’s good. It’s what we’re supposed to be doing.
As soon as I gave myself that permission – as soon as I let myself accept that there doesn’t have to be a point to any of this beyond enjoying myself, in whatever capacity – I wanted to ride more. I wanted to spend more time with my horse. I wanted to find ways to carve out more time to be there and work with him and build a relationship. I was having fun again in a way that I haven’t in years, and that changed absolutely everything for me.
My brother came out to the barn with me a little over a week ago, when I went out just to see Cooper and give him a groom and a quick lunge (you know, just to make sure he was still sound on that aforementioned weak stifle after a literal month off), and it was nice for a couple of reasons. For one thing, my brother was just never really involved in the whole horse thing when I was a kid – he had his soccer and I had my horses and once I was old enough to not be forced to go to his games, we just did our own thing in our respective sports – so it was nice of him to take a little bit of an interest in what I’ve been doing for the last year, but it was also nice for another reason.
It was nice because I don’t usually have non-horse people around when I’m at the barn. I don’t think about what I’m doing, or how I conduct myself around my horse, or anything like that, because I’ve been riding since I was eight years old and there are things about horses that I just know now that I forget aren’t exactly normal for anyone who isn’t around them a lot. Cooper spooked a couple of times when I was leading him (you know, ’cause a couple of sets of jump standards and a barrel standing in the middle of the parking lot are definitely terrifying horse-eating monsters) and I didn’t think about it. I didn’t do anything other than stop him and give him some neck scratches and quietly encourage him to move forward with one tiny tap of my fingers on his side once he wasn’t looking quite so petrified, and then we investigated the jump standards and all was right with the world. He got a little carried away with playing while we were lunging (since he’s still learning how to do it correctly) and I just slowed him down and sent him back out on the circle until he was walking calmly.
(He also whinnied for me when I walked away to grab a pair of scissors to cut the tag off of something, because apparently he had missed me since at that point I’d only seen him twice in the last month and that’s where we’re at in our relationship now.)
Hearing my brother comment on all of that – all of that and the fact that I don’t think anything of getting down around Cooper’s legs to brush them because I can read subtle body movements that you wouldn’t recognize if you didn’t know horses and so many other things – was a reminder to me that I know how to do this. I know how to ride. I know what I’m doing in the saddle, and I know how to handle a horse on the ground, and none of the myriad of skills that make those things true are things that money can buy you. Money can buy you the training to be taught those things, and it can buy you a fancy horse to pack you around the show ring and win you ribbons, but money can’t make you skip the learning process itself (and in some ways, I feel like it can ruin it, because I wouldn’t be the rider or horsewoman I am if it wasn’t for all of the green horses and projects that I’ve ridden because we could never afford a made horse (or like… any horse) for me). I never used to feel like that before. I mean, I told myself that, but believing it was another story, and for a long time it was hard to not resent the people who got to skip all of those hard learning stages that I’m now so thankful for.
Now I don’t resent it because I know that every little bit of progress that we make, that whatever he becomes, is because of me and what I can do. Now I don’t resent it because I’m just… having fun. I’m having fun with my horse, and making progress toward my goals in the process, and being able to do that on my own terms and at my own pace has finally solidified a couple of things for me.
One of those things is that I’m an eventer. I’ve known that for a long time, but now I know it. I’ll go in the jumper ring or the dressage ring to get extra experience (or just for the lols – I’m pretty good at riding jumper courses fast without really thinking about the clock, as I discovered last year), but I am an eventer. I’m not a hunter rider. I’ll never be a hunter rider. It just isn’t me, and that’s not a knock at anyone who loves the discipline – I just don’t. I love cross-country. I love racing against the clock in show jumping and trying to finish on that dressage score. I love the sandbox (a thousand thank-yous to my first trainer for making me feel that way, too). Outside line-diagonal-outside line just doesn’t cut it for me. I learned some useful things during my time in that discipline, and I’m not discounting those, but nothing excites me like training for an event and then crossing through those finish flags, and while I don’t know how long it’ll be before I get to do that on Cooper, I know that it’s what I want, that’s not negotiable anymore, and I’m done trying to convince myself that I could ever be anything else.
It’s why I bought him. It’s why I went for a Thoroughbred (aside from the price tag). I doubt that I’ll ever ride at the upper levels, but if I did? I’d want it to be on a Thoroughbred. There are so, so many things that I love about eventing (and maybe that’s a post in and of itself) but one of the things that I most appreciate about it is that, for the most part, it doesn’t matter what kind of horse you’re riding as long as it can get the job done. Eventers don’t give a flying fuck about whether your horse has six legs or is the dullest shade of brown in the world if it’ll lay down a clean and correct dressage test and give you two double clear jumping rounds. There’s a level of pretension in all horse sports (I mean, with the cost, how could there not be?), but eventers are some of the chillest and most fun people that I’ve ever had the fortune to hang out with (at least, the ones I know are) and it is such a relief to be back in that world and know that I don’t ever have to leave it again unless I choose to.
The second thing is that when you find that trainer that clicks with you, you don’t want to let that go if you don’t have to. I missed my current coach for years. It sounds stupid, but in those years when riding just wasn’t right, I cried about missing my horse, and I cried about missing her (seriously, if you were to go look you would find old posts on my tumblr where I say exactly that). There’s so much to be said for having a coach who believes in you so wholeheartedly that you trust them no matter what – I had so many lessons with her back in the day where she would crank the fences up and I never once worried about how high they were or whether we could clear them, because if she was putting them up then it obviously meant that she knew we could jump them – and for a while there I thought I was just being dramatic about it, but… I wasn’t.
I had one lesson back with her and I knew I was right to miss her and want to ride with her again for all those years. Something just clicks with her in a way that it hasn’t really clicked with any other trainers. I know I can do this on my own – I know that I’m good enough and skilled enough to figure it out by myself if I have to – but I am so damn glad that I don’t have to, and I’m hoping that as Cooper grows up and we improve (and we get some sort of effective vaccine for this whole global pandemic thing), we’ll get to spend a lot more time with her. I sat on my couch with my mom on speakerphone and I cried while we both watched my trainer lay down her first-ever Rolex dressage test back in 2015. I’m so lucky to know her and I’m lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to train with her for as long as I did as a kid, and I’m even luckier that I have the opportunity to train with her again. She was a brilliant trainer who instilled in me so much skill and confidence in my own abilities even before she became a 5* rider, but it’s pretty damn cool to be able to say that my coach has completed Kentucky, and I know she’ll get back there again one day if she chooses to (and I’ll be damned if I’m not there to watch in person next time).
I don’t know what this next year is going to look like – I can’t, really. I’m not an epidemiologist and I’m not doing the medication or vaccine research that might make it possible for us to go back to highly public places in a relatively safe manner – but I’m hopeful. I haven’t been riding for the last month and a half – today will probably be my first day back in the saddle (and don’t worry, I’m taking the appropriate precautions – this isn’t the time to be stupid on any front) – and in the meantime, I’m stocked up on things to help us work and help him get stronger even on days when I’m not riding, and we’re going to be okay, because at the end of the day, this whole damn thing is supposed to be fun and none of the goals or the deadlines really matter.
He helped me remember that, and he literally is a dream come true, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
(I’m going to do a better job of chronicling it moving forward. I bought a helmet cam and I’m going to talk some people into helping me get at least semi-regular video footage and photos (once we can be within any sort of proximity to each other), because he’s getting to an age where we can really get started and I don’t want to miss out on recording that so I can look back on it later.)
(I also owe him for helping me realize that if I can plan and manipulate my entire life in such a way for two decades as to make this dream a reality, there’s no reason in hell why I can’t make a number of my other dreams come true, so… we’ll be working on those alongside me working with him, and hopefully one day he won’t be the only dream that’s come to fruition.)
Spymaster Equestrian 