Try and Fail. Repeat.

It's tempting to cherry pick good screenshots right now and pretend everything is rolling along fine, but it's not. Last week, my somewhat-icky rides progressed to "might as well not bother" levels of ick rides. I knew that Courage was WAY overdue for bodywork, so I just stopped riding until he could get an appointment.

but it is a pretty great screen shot

But that wasn't magic. Courage's body felt better, sure, but he was just.not.cooperating. Like. Forget recognized first level this year. We won't make it around training level at a schooling show right now. It's bad. Doesn't matter if I ride my butt off. Courage is not going to play.

And there's nothing like a series of shitty rides to make me feel like I'm just pouring money into a sewer because I don't like it weighing down my purse. I don't know if I can fix this. I especially don't know if I can fix it in time to make pouring $$$ into a recognized show next month worth it.

I do know that my best attribute with this horse is that I have a really good feel for what he needs in a given moment (not just arrogance--verbatim quote from a respected clinician regarding our partnership). Instead of feeling burned out by what looks like a disappointing failure to reach a goal of over a year, I choose to focus on the horse I have right now.

a magnificent unicorn

who learned how to move his back

by kicking the wall

and leaping off the ground

I'm pursuing some other avenues this week to see if I can find a root cause for the yucks or if Courage has decided just not to play for the present. In the interim, we're trying other stuff.

so cute amiright

You know. Like when it drops 40 degrees Fahrenheit and blows in a storm overnight, so I decide it's a great idea to start riding Courage in a hackmore with zero stopping power. Yes, on the same day I took all the leaping pictures. I'm not just crazy--I knew Courage needed some play time, and once he played, I just kinda knew he was going to be fine.

Which he was.

It was actually very interesting--Courage has been hollowing and inverting and fighting me with the bit. Take that away and after we got past his initial "um wtf lady" response, he was fine. Nose poked out like a hunter, yes, but poll a little below his wither with lots of licking and chewing. I let him worry about him and I focused on re-training myself to ride completely from my body (and turn right).

It wasn't magical either. We didn't even trot. But hey. I'm of the opinion that horse training is less rainbows and pixie dust and more wet saddle pads and putting in the time anyways.

That's where we're at. It's not pretty. It's not very good. It's definitely not linear.

But I'm enjoying having a horse I can hop on and do dumb stuff with on a cold spring day and not feel like I'm going to die. If the rest comes later, great.