The Fate Of My Para Dressage Career - Conflicted Over Barns, Trainers, and Horses

[_BrionesRider]

Okay OP, so right now some difficult things are coming up in life.

But remember, you’ll get through stuff.

I’m a junior rider too. I can’t afford to own a horse. I work to pay off lessons, and I ride the horses that are available and try to help them get better, even if they aren’t as “fancy” or “talented” as I would like. The horse I trained for the past five years and gave my heart to got sold and it broke me. So now I’m starting over with another horse until something else comes up, and I sure as hell wish it could be different.

And you know what? I’d love to make Grand Prix some day. But we all have challenges and roadblocks. I don’t have the money, my family supports me the best they can.

It’s not going to be easy. It will be sad and depressing as hell sometimes. Sometimes you’ll need to move on, sometimes you’ll have to realize that your horse isn’t right, your trainer isn’t right for you, and you’ll wish for something that you don’t have.

But you know what? That’s life. It can be cruel and sometimes you’ll feel joy greater than nothing you could have imagined. I ride to get better. You ride to make the para olympics. I’d love to make Grand Prix. We all have things we dream of, but it isn’t going to be easy, and the more we fret, say “what if”, complain, or drag something out, the more we’ll convince ourselves that it isn’t ourselves, but something else that is preventing us from reaching our goal.

So pick your head up. Instead of saying something isn’t good enough, say you just have to get better. And make it happen. It just might.

[inne]

I really agree with the suggestions to get a second rider on this horse. It can help you pay the bills, but it can also really help the horse and your riding if you find the right rider. My own horse gets ridden by my trainer along with a really wonderful young woman who exercises him for me when I can’t make it to the barn and it’s made a world of difference.

[RiderInTheRain]

I’m not going to do it justice and can’t for the life of me find the link to the original blog post/article, but I recently read something that described horse training and riding as an ongoing cycle of making “deposits” (positive experiences) and “withdrawals” (negative experiences) in your horse’s “piggy bank”. The more positive experiences your horse has, the more likely he is to take the negative ones in stride. Although you are a dressage rider, I will use a jumping analogy as it is an easy to understand one - if I am in a confident, balanced and stable position with an appropriate release over the vast majority of fences I jump, but make a mistake one time and get left behind accidentally, don’t release and hold or “bump” my horse’s mouth over the fence he is likely to continue trucking on and come to the following fence with confidence as while he just had a less than stellar ride, the overwhelming majority of his jumping experience has been positive. On the other hand, if I made a habit of catching him in the face over every fence - I would be making far too many “withdrawals” - he would come to expect discomfort over the fences and might become balky or start stopping as a result.

Sounds like from your horse’s perspective there have been too many “withdrawals” made lately. If he is hot and sensitive naturally then dealing with your (very understandable) tension and anxiety may simply be too much for him if you are his only rider. Why not let another rider (preferably a VERY relaxed one) ride him some and make some “deposits” for you?

Right now it sounds like you and your horse are feeding off one another’s tension in a rather unpleasant cycle. Both of you need to learn to relax again, but you may need some time apart, him with a calmer rider and you with a calmer horse before you are ready to work together again.