Too Much Too Little Too Fast Too Slow
Sometimes when you’re seasoning a horse things fall apart. And sometimes, you gotta just ride through it. Now that’s a hard thing to do. When you care about a good foundation and longevity, it can be really tough to let go and watch it fall apart. Being as that may, sometimes you have to. It takes a long time to season and finish a horse. In Alberta it can be hard to ride through the seasons and make a lot of runs. Dakota has made roughly 30 runs this year. Considering his conditioning and training started in January, that’s not a whole lot. Our first two runs were in April, then the end of May, June and early July. It’s going on the middle of August and since July 1st we’ve made 11 runs. 11 runs in 7 different arenas. That’s a lot of varying conditions.
Every new arena you run in, has a new set of conditions and challenges. Different ground can be a huge challenge for a horse that is still learning how to handle itself. Deeper ground requires them to drive harder and rate later. Harder ground makes them stand up and get collected sooner. Now when you factor in pattern size and you’ve got anywhere from two strides to first or ten strides to first. How you can set up for your run varies from a center alley to a side gate. What about crowd size? Does your horse get distracted by crowds, music and amount of other horses? How about indoor versus outdoor?
That’s a lot of variations and challenges for any horse, especially a green horse. In addition, that’s a lot of challenges for you. As a rider its our job to set our mounts up for success and help them face these challenges. That being said, we’re still human. We still make mistakes. So we are bound to make a few not so great runs. We are bound to have some no times and some slow times. Guess what I’m learning? That’s okay!!
One of my biggest flaws and assets is that I strive for excellence. I’m not always going to be excellent. Neither is my horse. I want so badly to set my horse up for success that sometimes I do too much. Sometimes I do too little. Sometimes we go too fast to be pretty and correct. Sometimes we go too slow to be in the money. Sometimes we get everything right! My fear of failure or making a bad run kept me from asking Dakota for more. So I did. And it was wild! We ran by almost everything and still clocked to win the 3D at both jackpots.
With Finals this week I made a decision, time to let it all hang out and pick up the pieces later. At the end of the day it’s a speed event. It doesn’t have to be pretty to be fast. And you have to go fast and fall apart to figure out how to go fast at all. I’m going into Finals with an i-don’t-care-attitude. As long as we run, I’m happy. Because playing it safe, hasn’t been getting us anywhere anyway.
Ponoka is a big pattern, finals will have a lot of entries and a 6/10 split. That means that a 5D time is 3 seconds slower than a 1D. Time to go big or stay home. One fast time will set the pace and determine the placing for the remaining 780 girls. All you can do is your best, go out and ride the best race that you can for that day!
My nerves have played a big part in my struggles with Dakota over the last few months and I decided that I wouldn’t allow them to be a factor Wednesday! And it worked. It wasn’t our fastest time at Ponoka but it was definitely one of our best runs and I feel like I rode Dakota the best that I have there so far. Our time was a 19.0 and I was extremely happy with that. It was important for me to remember that he is still learning.
Finals can be very overwhelming for a lot of horses and riders! Bigger crowds, music, camera flashes, timers and tractors in places they aren’t normally, all of those things together make it intimidating! Dakota didn’t even bat an eye at any of it and went exactly where I put him. Times like this I have to remember to celebrate the small victories. A lot of horses struggled and for only 30 some runs, he handled it like an old pro.
I’m excited to run again on Saturday and see what we can do! Though, I must admit that being in the first 50 at 7 am is not my idea of a good time, I’m going to make the best of it and rest up! It’ll be an early night for me on Friday. I learned the hard way (the way I always seem to learn lol) that I need to get a good nights sleep for me to compete at my best! Good luck to the rest of the contestants running in round two today! Keep your butt in the tack and your eyes on the prize!
Follow the link below to view the video from finals and fast forward to 1:56:25 to watch my run!
