Cob Jockey

1. Judges can surprise you.

I need to photoshop a circus ball under his three feet on the ground here 😂

I don't think I actually would have scratched, but I thought about it.  And I'm choosing to ignore the fact that the judge may have listened to the complaints registered by other riders to the TD after Saturday's ride, because that's not helping anything if she did listen, and if she didn't, I totally kicked ass.  But it's a good reminder that even a judge you think you know can surprise you when you get the score sheet.


2. Lean into your imposter syndrome


I am riding passably at rated Second.  The me of two years ago is in awe of that.  The me of today still feels no more competent than I did the day I first took a lesson with my trainer.  I have to keep in perspective that this is a sport where we ASK to be criticized, and we're never going to stop getting criticisms, being worried about moving up, all of that.  So I choose to lean into the imposter syndrome and not let it get me down, because every single level is going to feel this way.  Riding Second IS cool, take that, brain.


3. Talk to people at horse shows!


I made a new friend this weekend in the most kindergarten way possible.  I was unloading Connor and she said "Hey, I like your pony" and I said "I like your pony too!" and we ended up talking off and on the rest of the weekend and by text after she left.  We're both adults riding ponies who work in similar industries and she works for one of my customers, so we had a lot to talk about.  We're going to try to show together again in the future despite the fact that she lives four hours away.


4. Two tests in one day is still not possible right now BUT probably would be with some canter conditioning

Literally dying

Once we hit 1-3, our days of doing two tests in a day were done.  So I could probably fix this one.  As it is, we both come out of the ring just exhausted, and that exhausted feeling starts when we hit the canter work in the test.  Winter priority maybe?

5. Showing on consecutive days is worth the price of rated shows.

Not set back against him in my body here, HOORAY GO TEAM

I haven't shown rated in two years, and I didn't realize how much I missed showing on back to back days.  Being able to take the judge's feedback and the visual feedback from the photos and implement it the very next day was so much more helpful than showing once and leaving.  For example, I noticed in the photos (thank you Karen!) from Day 1 that I was set back against him in my position, and I was able to fix that in Day 2 and it made a huge difference.