I had a lesson this past Wednesday.

DANG.

It was basically a Monday disguised as a Wednesday with a lot of ass kicking involved.

I SO had my ass handed to me… AGAIN!

I haven’t had that bad of a frustrating ride since my coach made me jump a gymnastic line for my first jumping lesson since my fall (I think we can all remember that “Monday” cry fest blog post).

I was beyond mentally and physically exhausted from trying to figure out this mare. We were working on the simplest tasks, but I find the simplest tasks are the ones that require the most brain power.  And that brain power was gone about 30minutes into my lesson.

Abbey is such a strong, powerful horse that it catches me off guard every time. Her stride is ground covering. We cover a lot of ground very quickly that I feel like she is running out of control, when she actually isn’t.

RUN LIKE THE WIND ABBEY. RUN LIKE THE DAMN WIND GIRL!

That is basically what I was thinking to myself as we were cantering around in my lesson. Add in a couple of F bombs and you have my exact sentence.

We were working on circles; trot and canter circles. Simple right? You would think so, except when we were on the right rein we kept missing the circle. We would start it and BAM she would run with the damn wind to the other end of the arena. 100% my fault for letting her do that one to many times, BUT in my self-pity defense, she is a big horse and I straight up forgot how to human at that point in my lesson. Left rein, was awesome. Great circles. We nailed it. No major complaints there.

I do have to say my coach is a freaking trooper. She stuck it out. I’m sure in her head she was telling me off every single time I would drop the F bomb and tell her I was done, that I wasn’t continuing on.

As frustrated and worked up that I got with myself.  I didn’t ONCE get nervous. There was half a second at the beginning of my ride when my coach was making a jump that my stomach said hello to my throat but that was it. I was actually SOMEWHAT excited to pop Abbey over that mean looking cross rail.

At the end of my lesson my coach made some pretty good points. We accomplished our goals that we set out for the lesson, we achieved more than what we actually had planned (cantering into the jump and not just trotting it). And I need to stop being so damn hard on myself. Which, we all know, is so hard to do. We are our own worst critics. We judge ourselves so freaking much.

At the end of the day, I survived another lesson. We ended the lesson on a positive note. It was another ride that showed me how truly special my mare is. Abbey is a perfectionist, a straight up diva. And O.M.G, if it is not perfect, you better watch out. I absolutely love that about Abbey, I love that she wants everything to be perfect because it is going to make me SUCH a better rider.

We have a long way to go. But from the moment when I first rode her, first jumped her, to where we are now, we actually have improved in that short amount of time. Now that I am back on a regular lesson program, we will only grow that much quicker and become the team that I know we can be.

I am beyond excited for the future with Abbey. The future is a scary place 99.9% of the time, but I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us and our future show career.

❤ The Nervous Equestrian