Spilt Milk

“I don’t like looking back.  I’m always constantly looking forward.  I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk.  I’m too busy looking for the next cow.”  - Gordon Ramsay

As soon as I retrieved my horse, I was already thinking about the next event.  I hadn’t even dusted off my breeches or turned off my watch.  I’m a forward thinker.  It gets me in trouble.  Sometimes, we need to slow down our brains and spend a little time in the here and now, maybe even revisit the past.

Last weekend was better than it could have been, but certainly wasn’t what I hoped it would be.  We had a tough week leading up to the Queeny Park Horse Trials.  Nutmeg has been having a horrible time with allergies this spring.  She’s been violently sneezing every few strides when we try to work.  Some days are better than others, but it has been a battle to get much done without torturing the poor girl.  Add to that her sudden desire to kick at my right leg every time I put it on and preparations just weren’t going well.  I couldn’t tell if the kicking was behavioral or a sign of some underlying issue, but when I asked for a little less, she quit doing it.  I assumed it was behavioral and we could tackle the issue after the show.  I began to wonder if the snorting was behavioral too.

When you’ve already paid your entry fee, it’s really hard to decide not to go for issues that might not be issues after a three hour trailer ride.  So we loaded up Friday and headed to Queeny.  Nutmeg really loves to go show and she seemed quite happy to be there after her four hour (wrong directions in the omnibus meant we got lost in St. Louis, again) drive.  I walked the cross country course and was excited.  It seemed to be a straight forward, friendly course with just enough questions to keep things interesting.  I was still really concerned about Nutmeg though.  I wasn’t sure if I’d even get to ride dressage.

Saturday dawned bright and early.  Nutmeg was braided.  I’d laid out everything but my riding clothes the night before.  As I started to get dressed I realized my entire garment bag with all my breeches, shirts, and other items was still hanging in the closet at home where I had loaded it up over a week ago.  Oh shoot!  There was a tack shop on grounds, but they weren’t going to be open in time for my early ride and who really wants to spend their entire show budget for the year on clothes they already have but forgot to bring?  I almost threw in the towel right then.  Clearly this was a sign or was it just a test?  I’ve always been one to forge forward, so it was time to beg, borrow and steal.

After rudely awaking a Pony Club friend of mine who was kind enough to leave her cell number on the braiding board, I discovered that my neighbor down the aisle had forgotten all her clothes at the last show and had started carrying a spare set.  The whole outfit fit!  Hoorah!  Off to dressage land we went.

Nutmeg snorted a bit during warm-up, but they were normal snorts.  She also threw her hind end at me a couple of times, but not badly and otherwise she felt great so we rode our test.  It had some poor moments, like going up centerline more on the quarter line and counter bent, but it also had some decent moments.  She still looks like she’s running around on her forehand, but she is so much softer now.  I did ride her a little long for fear of the snorting and kicking.  We can collect more later.  I rounded all my corners in hopes of staying upright in the slippy grass (yes I had my studs in, but there were still a few slick spots).  The judge was generous and we managed to maintain our below 40 streak, which made me quite happy.

I finally let myself get hopeful for cross country, even though I knew there was a possibility that as the sun came out, the allergies might flair back up.  We made the very long hack out the cross country, entertained by Muslims chanting in the background.  Apparently they were having some sort of gathering nearby.  Warm-up went well for 98% of the time.  The other 2% she spent rodeoing.  It was some serious bucking, but then she’d canter and jump just fine.  I asked a trainer if she could see anything wrong and with reassurance from the ground, headed to the start box.

Apparently I filled up the memory card for my helmet cam at the last event.  When I tested it at the barn it was fine, but when I turned it on at the start box it made unhappy beeps at me.  I shrugged it off, told Nutmeg she needed to make it very clear to me if we needed to pull up, hit start on my watch and off we went.

We took one a little long as usual.  Fence two rode okay.  Three was a little funky, but that’s normal for us.  It usually takes to fence four to really get in a groove.  We had a brief discussion about breaks between three and four and then we locked on to the trekhener.  Trekherners are disconcerting for me, but we’d had such a good school over one this spring, I was feeling confident.  I knew if I just kept my eye up and my leg on we’d be fine.  Well, not so much…

Yes, I threw my shoulders and as a product of that I also looked down, although I still hold that I was looking up until Nutmeg engaged the “E” break.  She’s pulled us out of many similar sticky situations, but this time I truly believe her back hurt enough that stopping was easier.  I’m glad she did.  If we had just had a bad jump, I probably would have kept pushing her forward around the course.  That would have been the wrong decision.  I asked her to tell me if we needed to pull up, and that was the most effective way she had to get the message across.  Sometimes it takes a two-by-four.

That’s all the looking back I’m willing to do.  Life isn’t about what happened yesterday.  It’s about how you react to it and how you live today.  I’m a planner and a dreamer.  I don’t think about the fence I’m jumping now, I’m already thinking about the next.  Sometimes it trips me up or gets me launched over my horse’s shoulder, but it keeps me optimistic and it gives me something to look forward too, when the present kind of sucks.  I could have spent the very long walk home crying over spilt milk.  I’ll admit I did a little crying, but it was disappointment in my decision making and facing the reality that I could have hurt such a lovely horse.  There are lessons to be learned from this, but if I get mired down in it, we’ll never jump another jump.  Fear of past mistakes is no way to live.

I’m struggling with future decisions.  Do I enter the next event at Training or do I drop back down to Novice for an easy go around and a confidence boost?  I don’t feel our confidence has been harmed.  If anything, I feel less apprehensive about trekheners now that the boogey man managed to get me once.  I’ve seen him and now I can beat him, but will my horse have the same opinion?  I’ve never come off her before.  Did that experience shake her confidence?  Time will tell.  For now, I’m focused forward.  

Life Really Is a Fairy Tale

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” – Marcel Proust

I’d like to tell you a story.  It’s a magical story, and like most magical stories, it begins a very long, long time ago…

 

There was a young Princess.  She had a wonderful family and a delightful Kingdom and wanted for nothing, but she dreamed of riding her very own Unicorn.

Her parents wanted to help her, but they knew that Unicorns couldn’t be found let alone ridden, so they got her a pony.  He was the perfect round little pony.  He had just enough ornery to teach her many life lessons, but he was also a dutiful servant who was very protective of his young master.  She loved her pony and they spent many years together, but he wasn’t a Unicorn and one day it was decided he should move to a new Kingdom and help a new Princess learn about life.

The Princess was sad, but her wise parents quickly found her a cart horse, a very pretty cart horse.  This cart horse had been around enough to know the ropes and take the young Princess on many adventures.  The King and Queen saw all the Princess was learning and decided she could use some guidance so they found a Wise Wizard.  The young Princess and her cart horse spent many hours under the tutelage of the Wise Wizard and they learned much.  The Princess and the cart horse surprised many people and achieved great things.  They grew very close and the young Princess began to dream of becoming a centaur instead of riding a unicorn.   Then the cart horse died and the young Princess was very, very sad.

The good Queen and King couldn’t bear to see the young Princess so sad, so with the help of the Wise Wizard they found Pegasus for the Princess.    She was so proud of Pegasus.  They flew all over, all the while the Wise Wizard was coaching them and helping them plan and learn.  The good King and Queen made sure the Princess and Pegasus had all the opportunities they needed and life was wonderful for the Princess, but she still wasn’t riding a Unicorn.

 The time came for the young Princess to take Pegasus out into the greater world, leaving the protection of the Kingdom and the wisdom of the Wise Wizard behind.  For a while, she and Pegasus continued forward, but then Pegasus got sick and the Princess discover that she had to start her journey toward riding a Unicorn from scratch.

It was very hard without the wisdom of the Wise Wizard and without the protection of the Kingdom, but she struggled on.  She found a great Knight to help her, but he secretly didn’t believe in Unicorns, he just wanted to make her happy and he did.  For a while he even managed to distract her from her dream, but then she found the Warhorse.

The Warhorse wasn’t a unicorn.  Everyone knows unicorns are white.  But the Warhorse did have a roman nose and bulgy forehead.  The Princess dreamed that someday the bumpy nose would morph into a magical horn.  The Warhorse didn’t have wings like Pegasus, but she was big and could step over most obstacles.  The Princess dreamed maybe one day she’d learn to fly even without wings.  So the Princess spent hours and hours and days and days with the Warhorse.  She often heard the Wise Wizard’s words in her head, quietly reminding her to, “do it this way,” but the way she’d always done it didn’t always work on the Warhorse.  Outside the Kingdom and away from the Wizard she had to start thinking of fixes on her own.  It was up to the Princess to recognize and solve the problems.  She couldn’t just ride, she had to think.  It was very hard and many times she wanted to give up, but she believed in the big knobby Warhorse, so she kept going.

Then her Knight found her a magical mirror.  It showed her the past whenever she wanted to see it.  She realized just how wonderful it had been when she lived in the Kingdom and how wise the Wizard had been.  But then she saw that she was just a shadow in the mirror.  She was translucent, as if she wasn’t quite whole.  As the years spun by her form in the mirror grew more color, but it was swirly and unstable.  The Wizard tried to put the color where it belonged, but as soon as the Wizard turned away, the color moved and oozed around.  The Princess looked down at her hands holding the mirror.  They looked normal, so what had changed?

 

Every little Princess needs to learn to color themselves.  Kings and Queens can protect them while the pigments are added.  Wise teachers can show them where the pieces fit and what colors go where, but ultimately, each young Prince and Princess has to build themselves.  It doesn’t happen on its own.  While the young Princess struggled to turn her Warhorse into a Unicorn she learned about herself.  She took each little piece she’d been given, digested it and turned it into a piece of her.  All the while she was figuring out which pieces went where and what color things should be, she was teaching her Warhorse, giving her Warhorse an idea of what it could be, just as her parents and the Wise Wizard had done for her.

One morning the not-so-young-anymore Princess went out to her Warhorse.  The Warhorse was standing in the grass gazing at a field of jumps.  Before her eyes, the Princess watched the Warhorse start to shimmer then slowly sprout wings and grow a beautiful horn.  The Warhorse turned to the Princess and for the first time, they were both complete.  Then the Princess hopped up onto the Warhorse and they galloped away into the land of dreams fulfilled.

We aren’t entitled to fulfill our dreams, but we can earn them.   Even with parents who want the world for us, even with the best education, the best role models, and the most privileged upbringing, we must do the work ourselves, otherwise it’s just empty.  

Life is easy.  It happens naturally.  We don’t even have to think about our heart beating, but living, pursing a dream, that takes effort.  Whether you choose to go around the mountain, go over it, dig through it, or train a Unicorn to fly you there, effort is a required input and you are the only one who can get you there.  Life really is a Fairy Tale, but even Fairy Tales require lifting a broom or completing a quest.