I never got to show much as a kid.
This isn’t a complaint, or a bitter statement. It’s a statement of fact: I never got to show much as a kid. In the first five years of my riding career (pre-concussion hiatus), I schooled off-property twice, and I went to one show. It was an unrecognized one-day event, and it was my birthday present that year, because I wanted it so badly and it was all we could afford. Showing was so cost-prohibitive that I was otherwise never able to attend, even as my friends and barnmates were away more weekends than I could count, so it was just… something that I wrote off.
It wasn’t something that anyone ever made me feel bad about, back in those days. My friends didn’t care that I wasn’t out competing, and they included me in whatever they were doing any time I was able to tag along for a day to some local hunter/jumper show, even though I wasn’t riding. I bought my first-ever saddle pad (which I still have and use) at one of those shows – well, my dad bought it for me after I begged him because he was the one who drove me to the show on that particular Saturday, but it was the first saddle pad that I ever had for my lease horse that was mine. I never felt left out, or excluded – at least, not enough to have any recollection of it, anyway. Did I admire my friend’s wall in her bedroom that was covered in ribbons? Sure, maybe a little bit, but it wasn’t the most important thing. We were always more concerned about planning our next trail riding adventure (they were absolutely epic and are still some of my favorite barn memories).
My trainer never made me feel bad about not being able to go to shows either. It wasn’t something that she brought up, or at least, it wasn’t something that she brought up until I did, and she was nothing but understanding about the fact that it was something that we really couldn’t afford. There was no judgment. There was no resentment over the fact that she couldn’t make money off of coaching fees where I was concerned. She kept shows quiet and she kept coaching me at home, and every once in a while she’d walk into my lesson with a dressage test in her hands and call it for me to see how well I could ride it with no prior prep whatsoever, but that was it. There were no judge comments. There were no ribbons (except for my third-place from that mini trial, which is still the single most important ribbon that I’ve ever won because multiple people told me that we would be eliminated and we placed instead). There was just… me, and my horse, and my trainer, and the lessons and rides that I looked forward to every week.
My progress was never something that was quantifiable. Back then, I was never made to feel like it had to be. 2’9″ wasn’t something that I held up as anything more than what it was – the height that I was comfortable setting fences to on my own on my jumping days for the courses that I would put together (all the while following my trainer’s unofficial rule: no more than one out of every three rides should be a jump school). Riding the Training level dressage test wasn’t about saying that I’d ridden the Training level dressage test – it was a way for us to figure out what I needed to improve on with my riding (free walk. FREE WALK.) and what I was doing well (transitions, back in those days). Every ride had a different goal, a different purpose, and there was no clear, linear way to define those things. It was just about being… better.
It was about being better. It was about riding one long side of trot with the proper bend, then a long side and a short side, then 3/4 of the arena, then the whole thing. It was about being able to pick up the correct canter lead and hold it for a few strides without breaking so that I could get a proper canter-trot transition, then about cantering a full circle, then making it around the ring. It was adding five minutes onto a ride here and there until we were getting in a full hour of work or going on five-hour trail rides. It was gaining the confidence to trot down the bank into the arena instead of just walking it (to this day, I still hate downhill fences). It was being able to hold a half seat for a little bit longer during our cross country pace lessons out in the back field, or being able to get my horse on the bit for a little bit longer, or riding an exercise just a little bit straighter and softer than I had before, or being good enough at whatever I was doing that my trainer would point at me when she was teaching a lesson and I was schooling by myself and say “See, watch how Anna does it.”
It was never about how many ribbons I won.
I stepped into the hunter/jumper world when I got back into riding after my post-concussion break. It wasn’t by choice so much as necessity that I wound up at a hunter/jumper barn – I wanted to be back with my eventing trainer, but she had struck out on her own and I didn’t own a horse, which was kind of a requirement for riding with her again. In the years that followed, that was my first introduction to the world where showing matters.
I’m not going to go into the details – it doesn’t really matter, and it’s not worth rehashing over the internet – but being in a world where people suddenly cared about shows in a way that I had never in my life experienced before was horribly psychologically destructive for me. It made me doubt my skills as a rider, it made me insecure about things that I had never been insecure about before, and it made me feel something that I had never felt in those early years with my eventing trainer, that I had never felt even as my friends were heading out to shows that I couldn’t attend on a regular basis – out of place.
It made me feel like it didn’t matter how good my skills were in the saddle, like it didn’t matter that I could get on anything I was told to and actually have a productive ride no matter how green the horse, like all of it just. didn’t. matter. if I couldn’t afford to go to WEC or Swan Lake and ride in the hunter derbies (which I am actually quite good at, thank you very much – all of those lessons about riding skinnies and rollbacks and weird lines as a kid paid off) or medals or pay $400 for a weekend clinic with a rider or trainer I’d never even heard of.
I’m not saying that anyone tried to make me feel that way on purpose, because I don’t think anyone in that program did. On the one hand, I’m just extremely hyper-aware of those sorts of things – I was a prep school kid, though not on a prep school family budget, so the differences between myself and my classmates when it came to ease of obtaining anything that cost money were things that were hard to ignore and I started seeing them everywhere – and on the other hand, even if I had been completely oblivious, it was just impossible to escape. It was impossible to escape the show schedules and the group texts and the tags on Facebook posts of horses that I literally could not have afforded if my life depended on it when I was a college student (and those were the “cheap” ones that I still can’t afford). It got to the point where it felt like I was being presented with something that I couldn’t do, some status marker that I couldn’t have, everywhere I turned, and that was wreaking absolute havoc on my psychological health, so… I left.
I left, and then I turned around just over a year later and did the exact thing that counteracts every one of those doubts that I had for months on end – I bought a two-year-old.
I bought a two-year-old. I bought a horse who needed an advanced rider no matter how you spun it, because he may largely be a saint but he’s also a giant baby Thoroughbred who gets ideas about things and likes to spook at nothing and remain completely calm about the most ridiculous objects he encounters, and I once again returned to the land of unquantifiable progress, which, as I explained in my birthday post for Cooper, was an absolute godsend.
Buying a two-year-old let me take that pressure off of myself. Every single victory that I have with him now is as sweet as all of those victories that I had with my lease twelve years ago, no matter how small. It’s a victory when we get straightness at the trot on the right rein from the first transition – forget about bend. It’s a victory when he listens to me and adjusts as we come in to a set of trot poles. It’s a victory when we get even two steps of moderately balanced canter. Every single ride has its own victory, even if that victory is just having a ride where nothing is too frustrating, and yet I just… don’t think about it.
I don’t think about it. I don’t think about what we’re doing, or what we could be doing, or what I’m sure some people would think we “should” be doing. I just go out to the barn, and I get my horse, and I ride (or maybe I don’t, and that’s fine too).
I’ve never made much of my skills as an equestrian. Even during the years of non-crippling self doubt, I never felt like a good rider or a good horsewoman. I just was. I existed, and I went to the barn, and I did my thing, and that was that. There was always something else to learn or something to be better at, and I never felt done, so I never felt good. It’s taken the last year and a half, and having my barn owner point at me when she’s teaching lessons and tell the kids “See, one day you’ll be able to train a green horse too if you work really hard!” as I’m trotting Cooper around the arena, and feeling the changes from day to day and week to week and month to month, and taking my horse out to a hunter pace a year to the day that I first got on him and riding him out for the first time in a brand new place and him absolutely trusting me every time we got to something scary and I put my leg on and said “It’s okay, buddy, let’s go,” to realize that maybe I am actually pretty good at this.
Money didn’t buy me that. Getting on every horse that was put in front of me did. Sticking around at the barn as a kid to help feed and turn out and do whatever needed doing such that my then-barn owner let me keep riding Nugget outside of my lessons for a very reduced fee when the ’08 financial crisis hit gave me that (up until we had our accident, anyway). Being willing to show up and work hard and take every comment that my trainer made and work on it gave me that (Tuesdays were always my “homework” days when I was half-leasing – Sundays were for adventures). Having a hunger to always be better gave me that.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that money isn’t nice, or that I don’t find showing fun. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I didn’t work incredibly hard in high school and college to position myself such that I would get a job that would allow me to afford to buy a nice horse (on the cheap, but he’s still one of the nicest animals I’ve ever sat on) and take lessons (they will be consistent one day) and haul him out to hunter paces or shows or clinics or whatever my heart desires, because that would be a lie. I like having money. I like not having to worry about how I’m going to afford my board bill in any given month. I like being able to impulse-buy a freaking saddle because I know my budget well enough to know that I can do that (and I also know that I’m not allowed to impulse-buy another one until I finish paying the first one off) (but let me be clear: I still can’t drop several thousand dollars on a week of showing. A set amount of money from every paycheck goes into my show/clinic/lesson fund, so I still have to choose wisely about where I go. Maybe there’s a horse budgeting post in my future, since I do work in financial services and my budget spreadsheet is both my bible and a constant work in progress).
I also know, after years of being unable to slap a price tag on everything I learned, of having to find ways to make it work, of telling myself to hold on and wait it out over and over again during those times when it didn’t work, that I wouldn’t enjoy all of those things that I can now afford as much as I do if it weren’t for all of the years where they weren’t something that I even thought about. Being in this sport without money is what taught me to love the process. My life horse-wise hasn’t changed much in these pandemic times (aside from my month and a half long break from riding and barn time) because I was never in it for the shows and ribbons in the first place, because I was taught in a way where it wasn’t about that (which is perhaps the greatest gift that my trainer has ever given me, which is saying something because she’s given me a lot). Cooper and I are still on our own path, on our own trajectory, and sure, we’ve missed out on some chances to win some ribbons in the last few months, but that doesn’t invalidate all of the progress that we’ve made and will continue to make.
Like I said at the beginning, I never resented the fact that I couldn’t show as a kid, and I never really resented the people who could. I also don’t really resent them now. I can’t even mourn the fact that I didn’t get to do Young Riders or whatever else when I was younger, because it wasn’t something that even crossed my mind at the time and I’m honestly pretty happy with where I ended up, so I don’t really have any desire to change it (well, I have things I want to change about my current situation, but they have nothing to do with that). I just… don’t want to sit here and pretend that I’ve always had this fancy stuff, that I’ve always been able to afford the things that I can now, because it’s just not the truth. I have been so lucky in so many ways (many of them not horse-related – the luck I’ve had in my educational opportunities and the doors that were opened for me as a result is responsible for so much of this) and I’m not discounting that, but it doesn’t change the fact that for the vast majority of my riding career, I was the barn rat with no money (and honestly, these days I’m just a barn rat with some money).
It’s so easy to feel knocked down and discouraged when so many people make it look like the showing and the ribbons and the expensive tack are what define your worth and your skill as an equestrian, but they don’t. They never will. Four days ago, I had an absolutely miserable day, so I went to the barn and I got on my horse (yes, I know I’m fortunate to even have that ability at the moment) and I didn’t really do anything with him other than putz around for a little while because I just wanted to ride. I just wanted to feel better and not have to think about all the things that were bothering me, and just getting in the saddle gave me that. Was that ride progress in the traditional sense? No, but it was me riding my four-year-old on a loose rein around the field outside where he was throwing a temper tantrum six months ago, and that’s progress in and of itself.
That’s what I choose to value my rides in. That’s what I choose to use to value my worth as an equestrian. That is something that belongs to me, and it’s not defined by whether I’ve been out to shows or by how much my horse is or will be worth. It’s defined by years of hard work and slicing up my palms from helping to stack hay for hours without gloves on just because I was there (0/10 would not recommend. Stacking hay was actually pretty fun, the cut-up palms were not) and afternoons hanging out on the table in the back pasture while my horse grazed and getting back on after a concussion and the Great Recession took riding away from me for three and a half years and a whole lot of crying in the car (lols at the time I had a panic attack during a home show setup and had to leave and drive home because I had this overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t be there and I couldn’t shake it) and trying my damnedest to do right by my horse and feeling not good enough until I finally remembered that I was.
We all are.
Spymaster Equestrian 