If you ain't havin' fun

you ain't havin' nothin'

An oldie but a good reminder….

Excuse the vernacular, I think I've been hanging out with the Bermuda Babe for too long.

If you ain't having fun, why the hell not?

It's summer, the days are long, the ground is drying out, or setting solid depending on where you live, the horses are in their summer coats, the riding diary is full and everyone has come out of hibernation.

If you ain't having fun, are you having troubles?

Horses can be emotionally and psychologically draining as well as financially. Humans tend to be goal and task orientated, horses however live in the present moment and have no idea what it's all about. They will never get the point. They don't know they are meant to be eventing in summer and doing dressage and show jumping prep in the winter. They just know they have a body that somedays feels good and somedays feels bad. Our job as the rider is to repay them, for the gift of being allowed to share that body's athleticism, by daily attention to good work that will improve and enhance that body's capability, not break it down.

If you ain't having fun, maybe you are taking it all a tad too seriously?

While I have been suffering from frustrated competitive ambition for the last two years due to Cal's various health issues, I have had the luxury of examining exactly what I enjoy about owning horses. Now obviously the answers are deeply personal to me but the exercise has clarified a lot of "stuff".

For example- I love jumping. But if, as seemed likely at one point, the horse I have doesn't love jumping, would I pass on that horse? Or would I find a way to still enjoy owning that horse? I decided I would find a way to still love owning that horse, and would do my best to do right by him. The resulting freedom that decision brought opened up a whole new phase of education, about husbandry, and horse health, and managing my expectations, and working to the horse's timetable, not my own. I concentrated on getting him as healthy as I could, and taking each day as it came, and doing the basic foundation work, from Classical training principles. And guess what? Cal has come back, for now, stronger, and better, and fitter, and is jumping brilliantly. My riding has improved no end, I have learned to listen to his body and mind, and analyse the feedback I am receiving, and work with what I have today, and progress has been rapid and rewarding.

What makes competing fun? For me, it gives me a framework to base my horsey homework around, but I also love seeing my mates, having a beer, and joining in the group activity.

This year I have made it a point to say yes to every horse related learning opportunity that also involved fun.

We went to watch the great Charles de Kunffy teach,..for 4 days. I filled a notebook with notes but the immediate takeaway message was the daily vocabulary of training- bend, straight, lengthen, shorten, sideways, transitions and patterns. There are hundreds more gems in those notes alone, filtering through gradually into our work. Does that sound too serious? What could be more fun than turning your average "peasant pony" into a correct and beautiful riding horse.

I leapt (ha ha ha) at the opportunity to have a jumping lesson with Yogi. Yes it was expensive, but the value obtained was huge. I treated it as a group learning experience, kept asking myself what I was seeing, what I liked, what that horse needed, and tested myself against what he said to see if I was right. The take home from that clinic was discipline, every step, every line, every jump, has to have a plan.

And we got to share a day of fun and frolics with Wocket Woy and the Pwoducer. Cal was brilliant, as were good old Leo and the ex police pony. We laughed and giggled and got abused, and jumped some fences, and even ate some cake.

You can watch the video of the day here

https://www.facebook.com/samantha.thurlow.3/posts/10154570684755841

If you ain't having fun, just eat the cake. Always. Life is too short not to eat cake ;-)

I went to see Yogi Breisner doing a demo about schooling racehorses over fences. As we now have an ex-racehorse this seemed useful. It was a great demo, and reminded me that there is always a degree of forward needed to jump a fence. Obvious...but when we get obsessed with control and perfection and pretty, forward is easy to forget.

Everyone's definition of fun will be different. I have learned to love the journey. And enjoy the training, and the use of the patterns and exercises to create a horse more capable and more beautiful than the one I started with. There will be more setbacks, as sure as horses are horses, but I am now in a much better place to maximise the good times and be phlegmatic about the bad days, because I know that although progress in gradual, change is immediate. I don't need to practise doing something badly, I now have enough kit in my toolbox to think around a problem and find an exercise to change the dilemma. I have great eyes on the ground, fabulous friends, and lovely horses. And I know that horses work better when they are laughing too, and dancing with us.

Or not :-)