Adult Horse Camp, Part 1

[which_chick]

Adult horse camp. Also known as “Spend three hundred bucks to attend and an additional two hundred in shots for the horse and also your fucking truck dies so you have to borrow one to haul your ass there (fail) so that you can feel like a super-beginner rider on a worthless dipshit of a horse in front of people you do not know.” And remember, it’s supposed to be fun! Because Learning Is Fun! (What a fucking crock of shit.)

In dressage stuff, we walk. We trot. We leg-yield. These are the things we did last year but apparently we suck slightly less doing them now. Possibly when the horse is like twenty, he’ll be allowed to canter.

I hate the training pyramid. This is not fun. It’s supposed to be fun. Yay riding, where the more you know, the less fucking fun it is because you spend all your time realizing how much you fucking suck at all the things you thought you maybe knew how to do because really you don’t know how to do anything and you suck at all of it.

In jumping stuff… well, when you want contact (which, yes, important) and you want rider not jumping “for” horse or “ahead” of horse (which, again, important for security in the irons), horse grinds to a halt in front of obstacles because his previous experience has been “rider throws me the slack and picks up off me for the jumpings” and this is all different now and he’s not convinced that forward is the answer. We are failing at crossrails. A lot. It’s horrible. I know I feel all different, buddy, but you have to go the fuck forward, not grind to a halt.

More impulsion, my ass. Also, I will never again give anything approaching a realistic assessment of what my horse does at home. We will not ever, in public, admit to anything beyond “he’s seen ground poles a little…” because I am NOT going to be shamed by saying “He jumps 2′3″ at home” and having him fucking plant and stare at an 18″ cross rail because I am doing what the clinician told me to do (and yes, she is correct and I have been DOING IT WRONG and probably that’s why I’m pissy about all of this) and he’s confused. FUCK THAT SHIT. Now people think I am a liar and bragging about shit to make my horse look better that he is.

I never want to jump anything ever again.

So, I’m having an awesome time of awesomeness with my stupid dipshit horse who doesn’t understand contact and can’t do anything at all despite having a completely useless year of under saddle work and I can’t fucking ride for shit because if I could ride at all, srsly, he’d be better than this. I don’t even know why I try. Also, I got accused again of “not giving him enough credit for trying hard” which just goes miles and miles further towards making me feel like a failure. (Yes, you dumb cunt, so now you know how HE feels…)

What I have here is just enough knowledge to be continually dissatisfied with my riding. I know what good looks like and feels like and rides like… and I can see me out there totally not getting it done. FML.

I used to like riding.