We live in an age of short attention spans, quick answers, shortcuts, and instant gratification. We are constantly looking for the fastest way to get from A to B.
Horses don’t really work that way.
Training and showing horses is a long game, and sooner or later, everyone who spends enough time in this sport will realize that there are going to be plenty of ups and downs along the way. It doesn’t matter how much you paid for your horse, how naturally talented you are, or how good your coaching is. You will have great days. You will have terrible days. You will have days when everything comes together and you feel like you have finally figured something out, and you will have days when you leave the ring wondering what on earth just happened.
There will be days when you know you were incredibly lucky, and days when you wonder if you have forgotten everything you ever knew.
Kent Farrington once said, “Grit is a muscle.” I tend to agree with him. And, if I’m being honest, it’s something I have to remind myself of along the way, too.
You won’t always feel confident. You won’t always feel motivated. You won’t always have the desire to ride. And you certainly won’t always believe that whatever you are trying to accomplish is possible. That doesn’t mean you stop. It means you learn to persevere.
Don’t Ride the Roller Coaster
One of the most important things I have learned with horses is to try not to ride the emotional roller coaster with them.
When things are going well, it is easy to feel like you and your horse are unstoppable. When things go badly, it is equally easy to decide that everything is going wrong and that you have somehow taken ten steps backwards. Usually, neither is true. A bad ride is just a bad ride. A difficult day is just a difficult day. And one great round doesn’t mean you have suddenly solved every problem you and your horse have ever had.
This is especially important when working with young horses. They are learning constantly, and learning is rarely a straight line. Sometimes you can spend an entire ride trying to teach a horse something and feel as though you accomplished absolutely nothing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean nothing happened.
Horses Need Time
There is a term floating around called “soak time” — the idea that information needs time to settle in and be processed. Horses especially need this. Sometimes the learning happens during a walk break. Sometimes it happens when you put them away for the night. Sometimes you come back the next day and something that felt impossible yesterday suddenly feels easy.
That is one of the reasons I have stopped believing that every ride has to end with a perfectly completed task. Of course, we want to finish in a good place whenever we can. But I don’t think every ride needs to end with, “We nailed it!”
Sometimes the more important question is:
Was my horse trying?
Did they stay mentally with me? Did they make an effort to understand what I was asking? Did they try, even if they didn’t quite get the answer? If the answer is yes, I can be pretty happy with the ride.
Because if I leave my horse in a place where they were genuinely trying to figure something out — even if they haven’t completely figured it out yet — I know there is something to build on tomorrow.
And often, they come back stronger than they left.
The Same Is True for Riders
The exact same principle applies to us. You can walk out of the ring feeling defeated or deflated. You can have a couple of rails down. Your horse can spook at something you never imagined would bother them. You can make a mistake you normally wouldn’t make. You can have one of those rides where absolutely nothing seems to go according to plan. It doesn’t have to be tragic. It can just be an off day. The danger is when we take one bad day and turn it into a prediction about tomorrow.
But tomorrow is a completely different day. Your horse will wake up with a different body, a different brain and a little more experience than they had yesterday. And you will too.
That is perseverance.
Not pretending that everything is going well. Not forcing yourself to be confident when you aren’t. Not refusing to acknowledge a bad day. Perseverance is being able to have a bad day without allowing it to define the next one.
Stay in the Process
The longer I work with horses, the more I appreciate that progress is often almost invisible while it is happening. You put in the rides. You repeat the exercises. You make mistakes. You try again. You walk. You rest. You show. You have a good round. You have a bad round. You go home and start again.
And then, somewhere down the road, you realize that the horse who once struggled with something is suddenly doing it without you even thinking about it. That didn’t happen overnight. It happened because you kept showing up.
The same goes for riders. Confidence is not something you either have or don’t have. It changes. It grows. It gets knocked down and has to be rebuilt.
Sometimes perseverance means riding when you feel confident. Sometimes it means riding when you don’t. And sometimes it means knowing when to quit for the day, put your horse away, and come back tomorrow. I think that is an important distinction. Perseverance doesn’t mean endlessly pushing. It means staying committed to the process.
Because horses are not a sport where you can take a shortcut to the finish line. There is no substitute for time, repetition, experience and patience.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a great horse. And neither is a great rider.
So when you have one of those days where nothing seems to make sense, take a breath. Look at the bigger picture.
Ask yourself one simple question:
Did we try?
If you and your horse were mentally together, if you both made an honest effort, and if you learned something — even if that lesson was simply what not to do — you probably accomplished more than you think.
Put your horse away. Let them soak. Let yourself soak. Come back tomorrow and try again.
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