What Really Matters

Lately I have been trying not to ride so much because I don't want to ride too much and have Sonny get bored with it. But, I have a freestyle lesson tomorrow and thought that I would ride once Saturday to play with the question box before my lesson. The ride wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was wanting. Our geometry with the question box was awful, our upward transitions were almost nonexistent, and if he didn't want to turn, not only would he sometimes ignore phase 4 with my carrot stick, he would take off in a canter! It made me so upset that we aren't where I would like to be with freestyle and it bummed me out for the rest of the day.

Today I went down with the intensions of having a little fun before I went to work. I didn't have a whole lot of time (about 45 mins), so I was just going to get him out of his stall for a bit. Things ended up going so well! He gave me great faces, transitioned from phase 1, had some great slow hand transitions, the spanish walk went well and I even got another flying lead change! Woo hoo! Throughout our time together we were both happy and having fun. When I was on my way to work I was thinking of how nice it would be if things could go that well everyday. 

They can. I can't except perfection ever, let alone overnight. All I can do is enjoy my journey to being the best me I can be, like I talked about here. I keep going through these phases of losing sight of what really matters: the relationship with my horse and the journey at the present. Even if I would have gotten on Saturday and, voila, he was a super trained level 4+ horse, would that have given me what I was looking for? Of course not. If he was perfect from day 1, what would I do after that? There wouldn't be any learning, any challenges, any getting to know each other, and most importantly we wouldn't have anything to build our relationship off of. 

From now on, I am going to tattoo the saying 'The Journey' on the inside of my eyelids (just below the 4 responsibilities as a horseman), to constantly remind myself to not get caught up in perfect and fancy things, but to enjoy all of the little things that I sometimes overlook.