improvise adapt overcome

High school was an angsty period in life, right? It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the world, and easy to realize just how little control we had on the environment around us.

Obviously I was not magically immune to this. But I tried to come up with a sort of "rule" or guideline for how I let that angst affect me. It basically boiled down to "don't complain unless there's nothing you can do to fix the situation."

happy pony on a cold, raw early morning

The idea there being... some things really really suck. Like when your horse breaks a useless, vestigial bone that serves no goddamn purpose but can still get infected and abscess and need to be surgically removed. That's just kinda a shitty situation that I can't really control, other than reacting to and resolving it once it's already happened.

Other things also really suck, but could be mitigated by the choices we make, actions we take.

trotting around kinda cute for him lol

Of course, sometimes there's no easy choice. Sometimes we can fully evaluate a shitty situation, all possible options or scenarios, and still conclude that we're on the best path for whatever reasons even if it's a crummy path. And.... that's when we kinda just keep our heads down and keep grinding away.

A.... LOT of horse riding and training can feel like this haha. Especially when we factor in limitations by budget, resources, facilities, or other external factors like jobs, families, weather.... whatever. You know what I mean.

still sassy about that canter tho... always sassy about that canter.

But then there's yet another category of crappiness that can sometimes be easily (or relatively easily, all things considered) improved or resolved altogether. That, by taking a step back, or a fresh look / new perspective / creative attitude / whatever, we can figure out how to make things better.

So every time I find myself feeling a bit down in the doldrums, or feeling at loose ends, or lacking motivation or energy, or feeling bitter about some external circumstance complicating things.... I try to figure out which of the above categories the problem falls into. Bc let's be real... for as satisfying as it can feel to let it all out, vent and complain about all the woes that befall us.... it doesn't really do much to fix the situation.

it's such a nice canter tho, totally worth pushing through those shenanigans!

Over the past months I've complained a LOT about feeling like Charlie and I are constantly playing catch up. That we keep getting sidelined by what ought to be small, inconsequential hiccups. But that it's turned into months and months of us just not quite getting where I want to go. For a lot of reasons that felt completely out of my control.

Now, most of the "real" issues (*knocking furiously on wood*) have been more or less resolved. And I'm free to jump back into the fast lane as I see fit, including taking matters into my own hands when possible.

Except.... it's winter. It's dark. It's cold. Chaotic holiday scheduling. Poor ground conditions. Dimly lit or crowded arenas. A sour horse that doesn't want to circle endlessly in said dimly lit arenas.

call me biased but i just will never get tired of his expressions while jumping

I am so tired of all these excuses. While simultaneously hating that they can zap my motivation. Hating that I could make the ~2hr round trip in rush hour evening traffic basically just to check my horse's blankets, refill his supps, and tell him he's pretty -- Bc I just couldn't bring myself to do a third evening in a row of blah nighttime riding in sub-optimal conditions.

Except, c'mon Emma. Winter has only just begun. All these sub-optimal conditions are gonna get a lot worse before they get better. And I'm already fatigued by them??? That won't do!

So it was time to reevaluate. Consider my options. Take some sort of action rather than being a whiny victim of my environment. As such, I've come up with a new plan.

he thinks he so freakin clever jumping through all those poles lol

My basic needs are: More daylight riding (even if the ground is still so crappy we're still stuck inside). And schooling over fences more often.

And behold, there IS an easy enough solution to this: one day a week, I'll adjust my work hours so I can ride in the mornings instead of the evenings. My supervisor is cool with this, and a midweek schedule means I'll never have to do more than 2 night rides in a row. Boom.

A final layer to my ideal wish list: I felt at my absolute best as a rider when I took two jump lessons a week: one with trainer P, and one with Dan. Logistics have not gotten any easier for scheduling Dan tho, and I've just got to accept that for now, and find an alternative.

So. There's an upper level event rider at the farm who teaches lessons during the day at OF (she taught the xc lesson my friends did while Charlie and I just hung out on the periphery for his first ever xc field trip to Loch Moy last year). Would this trainer be available for midweek early morning lessons? Turns out, YES, she would be.

Thus I'm hoping we're starting a new chapter by adding a fresh perspective to Charlie's training, while simultaneously helping me get the extra reps I need to feel more on track with my goals.

video of the full grid progression here

Our first lesson was this week, and Brita got to participate too since she was off from work. It was very much a "getting to know you" type lesson, where we worked on simple grids in the small indoor bc of below-freezing conditions outside.

Charlie was on point too - we really cannot get enough gymnastics lol, tho I actually don't think he'd ever seen bounces before. He liked them tho! Plus, trainer K was able to quickly get a solid read on what kind of horse Charlie is (a thinking horse, she called him "methodical" haha. yup!) and how I can adjust my riding to set him up better.

Of particular interest, she observed that Charlie doesn't really, uh, pay much attention to the ground and where his feet will be going - he's not really reading stuff farther out in front of him until a little too late. This.... is accurate haha. So we talked a little bit about raising his head through the grid so that he's seeing the jumps from the bottom of his eyes (thus allowing ground farther ahead of him to stay in sight too).

yep, this is the face of a horse who wants more jompies in his life!

Simple as it is to just work through grids inside the small dusty indoor, I still feel really energized from the lesson. I liked a lot of what trainer K had to say about Charlie and what he needs from his rider. It jives with what I know about the horse and myself, but is also given a fresh twist just by nature of being said differently from what I'm used to hearing from other trainers P and C. 

So here's hoping my new plan of adding this second jump lesson to our normal weekly routine will help us feel a little more balanced and excited about riding and working. While also allowing me to get that practice and repetition I crave. And hopefully warding off the blahs of cold dark winter just that little extra bit. 

Have you ever tweaked your schedule to accommodate seasonal blahs? Or shaken up the routine to inject more energy or motivation into things? Or, alternatively, have you faced down a season of continued crappy conditions and just decided that maybe some time off was the best option?