OK @centaursam,
WHERE do you want to get to?
How will you know when you get there?
I got to go trail riding as a child in Chile and Uruguay over a 5 year period. I had a grand total of 2 lessons right at the start (pull the right rein to turn right, pull the left rein to turn left,pull both reins even harder to stop, and kick hard to go faster.)
For the longest time I thought I had learned NOTHING.
Well as far as good riding goes I did not learn anything, BUT it developed my boldness in the saddle. This has been extremely useful for me as my MS got worse and worse, I felt bold so I adjusted, learned what I could, and went on riding.
I have discussed this with my riding teacher, and she agrees with me. If I had not developed boldness I would never have gotten up on the suitable for an advanced rider Arabian gelding which was the first horse she put me on. I had GREAT rides on this horse, he was even better than my first horse to which I compare all riding horses.
You may have not learned to jump perfectly, but I do bet that you developed your boldness on horseback even when you were super frustrated. Boldness on horseback is different than the boldness one develops by doing challenging sports or past-times because you always have to deal with another being who has its own opinions and often is not afraid to express them clearly to its rider.
One of my weaknesses during most of my riding life came from owning a horse–I just could not afford to ride other people’s horses. I did fine, I retrained, I raised and trained foals from weanling, and I had a few challenging horses. But now I really enjoy riding lesson horses because FINALLY I am filling that gaping hole in my riding, learning to ride several different horses with many different problems and many different gaping holes in their training.
I never got to where I wanted to go (BIG jumps–I stalled out at 3’6".) Right now I don’t care, I have accepted that my case of MS precludes anything like this. I just concentrate on enjoying riding the lesson horses, well I enjoy riding them after I have “fixed” a few of their problems.
Even though I finally realized that I will never be able to jump a horse again. (My riding teacher tells me I might survive over a small jump in an emergency but she agrees with me about quitting that long term goal of mine.)
I really cannot advise you much about dressage. I never wanted to get into dressage because I LOVE riding free striding horses even if it is in a dinky little riding ring. I do read a lot of dressage books, looking for ideas that I can use to improve my riding on free striding horses. Lately I have gotten into Sylvia Loch’s dressage books and have incorporated a few things into my Forward Seat riding, it does help to have a good riding teacher to discuss all of this with nowadays. Sylvia Loch gets deeper into some of the dressage methods than a lot of dressage riders and she has given me a new level of understanding that I will be able to use when I read other people’s dressage books. (I have read at least 50 books on dressage riding and training, my bookshelves groan under the weight of all these heavy tomes.)
The horses are worth every penny I spent on them and every minute I’ve spent around them. During the long years when I could not ride I felt like I was dying inside, life just did not seem worth living.