Blog hop: change

Hellomylivia had a blog hop yesterday off of Oh Gingersnap!’s original blog hop, and since I’ve never done a blog hop before, I thought it’d be fun to try my hand at this. Plus, I thought the question was a good one.

Question: Have you at some point moved on to a different horse, trainer, stable, etc with the purpose of advancing your progress? What made you realize the time was right for a change? Or did you opt to adjust your goals in order to stay with what you know is working? How did either choice work out in the long run?

Most of the time, my moves to different horses, trainers and stables have revolved around the fact that after 3 years our family was moving to relocate somewhere else. But there are a few times when I was fully aware that I wanted something different.

Of course when I was younger I graduated ponies – from Lacey to Tina and finally Tony, who I loved. I got to ride Cochise, an old paint lesson horse that I liked, too as I grew with my abilities. It was easy back then, because I just wasn’t very old and wanted to ride all the ponies, of course. I wasn’t necessarily paying attention to goals, just that I’d work to be a better rider to ride the other horses, too.

When I trained horses in Texas, my goal and dream was to be a trainer. And I suppose I should have known that shows came along pretty often, but I’m not really a show person. But to get your name out there, you need to go to shows. And shows are always nerve-wracking for me, but with the stakes at these shows pretty high, I was pretty sure I’d fall off the horse at some point – example of the human losing their brain instead of the horse.

But it was a long road of realization for me. It was little things – that I’d dread riding the super talented but pretty quirky and can-buck-you-off-in-a-second-of-inattention horses. I’d dread riding the ones that had baggage from someone else, but I always wanted to try to help them trust again. I loved the simpler horses, the ones that had expectations of me as I did of them but were also forgiving. I was riding all sorts of horses. Then one day around sunrise, on one of my favorite 2 yr olds, I felt that if I stayed this path, I’d be stuck in a rut and never able to do anything else.

So my goals changed. Those many horses taught me that I didn’t want to be a trainer – at least not making a job of it. They opened the door to the realization that my goals had changed, and I left Texas with Amber in tow back to Vegas. The change was extremely daunting at the time because I changed a lot of my life at that point, but now I’m so glad I did. Because of that I’ve decided to jump into a new discipline, and I am beyond excited to try eventing. I want to take lessons again and grow in something different.

However, even now that I am getting my feet wet with eventing, Amber might not be up to it for too long, and I am okay with that. I know that I will formulate my goals to match her because there’s no way she’s leaving me. But that is why I chose to name this blog the Everything Pony. Because she does do a bit of everything. And if we can’t event for a long time, then great – let’s go learn something new. Probably with cows because we haven’t done cows yet.

But it’s not the end of the world. If I don’t want to quit eventing and she can’t do it anymore, I’ll look for a secondary partner that can. Probably one that is young and that I can bring up and train since I’m having a lot of fun going through all of this with Amber. As of yet though, I am so glad those horses taught me what I liked to ride, and helped me with my change. It’s been great and I can’t wait for it to continue!