DMK, your post deserves a thoughtful answer. Hopefully I will not run on too long. When I bought my mare she was… hmmm, let’s say difficult. Mondo difficult. I-might-die-today difficult.
Not her fault. She came from a farm where she’d been on 24/7 turn-out (her idea of heaven). I promptly changed that–having no choice in the matter–to a schedule that put her out about 10 hours a day. Not enough, in her mind. She’d also, until I bought her, led a rather sheltered existence. Thrown out into the “real world” she found everything worth spooking over: dogs, cats, birds, jumps, trees, mailboxes, mail, cars, flowers, etc. So the very quiet mare that I tried pre-purchase, arrived at my barn and became somewhat of a wild thing. It didn’t help that I bought her in November and faced winter weather right off.
So there I was, a 47 year old ammie, with less than two years back in the saddle after nearly thirty years away faced with a very green, very excitable, three year old TB. Let’s just say we probably weren’t the best match. Ah heck, I was way out of my league. Honestly, the only thing I could think to do was just pray, get on, and ride. Good days, bad days, good weather, bad weather–that first winter was pretty much one long miserable blur of broken bridle parts and crash landings (mine, not hers.)
I didn’t pick my days to ride, because if I had, I probably wouldn’t have picked any of them. If I let myself “off the hook” one day, how the hell was I going to psych myself back into the saddle the next? Or the one after that? It scared me to think that I might find so many excuses that I never got on at all.
So I didn’t make, or take, any excuses. I just rode through the problems and hoped for the best. It was the only way I could see–at the time–to get the job done. That’s why I still ride on the “bad days.” Force of habit, I guess.