I bought a shadbelly two weeks after I bought Brav.
I realize that sounds slightly insane when I say it out loud, particularly because at that point I had owned the horse for approximately twelve minutes and had absolutely no idea what the next 30 days, 6 months, or even a year were going to look like. I was still learning how to ride him, still figuring out what he liked, still trying to understand how all of the pieces of this new partnership were going to fit together. And yet, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I found myself standing in the Wellington Equiline store in front of a shimmery shadbelly that I really liked and thinking, Well, we’re going to need one eventually.
I bought it.
Then it sat in my closet.
For five months.
When I bought Brav in February, riding at the FEI level was something I could see way off in the distance. And I mean WAY off. I had big goals for us, certainly, but they were supposed to happen in a sensible order. We would get to know each other. We would show. We would work our way through the levels. I would finish my Bronze Medal, and eventually, when we were ready, we would make our way into the FEI levels and get my Silver Medal as a byproduct. Except that Brav and my trainer apparently did not get the memo about the sensible timeline.
If you read my last post, you know that this entire chapter of my life has moved at a speed I never really anticipated. What started as a decision to give dressage another chance turned into finding Brav, bringing him home from Washington, learning how to become a partnership, and then, somehow, checking goal after goal off the list. By the time we got to this show, I had already accomplished things I hadn’t expected to accomplish for quite a while. Now we were entering my first Prix St. Georges, which meant that the shadbelly hanging in my closet was finally going to get its moment.
There is something particularly strange about doing something for the first time when you’ve spent a long time imagining what it will feel like. The PSG and FEI levels had always been one of those things for me. I had watched enough tests, ridden enough of the movements in pieces, and spent enough time thinking about what it would eventually be like to put the whole thing together that it almost didn’t feel real when the show finally arrived. I was nervous, of course. I would have been lying if I said otherwise. There is a different kind of pressure that comes with walking into the arena to do something new for the first time. It’s not necessarily that the test is dramatically different from everything you’ve been working on at home. It’s that the whole thing feels more official. The letters look the same, the arena is the same size, and the horse underneath you is still your horse, but suddenly you’re riding around with a little FEI logo next to your name and a score sheet waiting for you at the other end.
At the same time, though, I was surprisingly calm about it. I think a lot of that came from Brav. Over the past six months, I’ve slowly stopped feeling like I need every ride to prove something to somebody, or even to myself. I used to be incredibly focused on accomplishing anything that might make me feel like I was good enough. What goal could I cook up in my head that I might actually be able to accomplish? Could it be realistic enough that it wasn’t considered a pipe dream, while still being ambitious enough to fuel me to keep going when everything else was telling me no?
There is nothing wrong with being ambitious, and I am certainly not going to pretend I don’t enjoy having goals. But I think I had gotten to the point where I sometimes forgot that I was supposed to actually enjoy the process of getting there and, more importantly, enjoy spending time with my horses along the way. Brav has changed that for me. Our partnership has moved quickly by anybody’s standards, and after Phim, I felt like a sh*t rider most of the time and wasn’t confident that I would ever be able to become the same rider I felt like I had been before him. So it caught me incredibly off guard when everything with Brav seemed to just click like magic.
Don’t get me wrong, we did not immediately become the perfect pairing. During the first week I had him, I couldn’t consistently get him to canter. But after getting both of our crap together, we figured it out. Since then, there have been rides where something suddenly clicked, where I realized I understood him a little better, or where we came out of the arena after doing something difficult and I thought, That was fun. The longer I’ve ridden him, the more I’ve learned that I don’t need to walk into the ring with something to prove. I just need to ride the horse in front of me.
I also know that there can be a certain stigma around buying a horse like Brav, and I want to be clear that I didn’t train him to the FEI level. He came to me with an incredible education and a solid background, and I bought him specifically because he was capable of helping me reach goals I had spent my entire riding career dreaming about. But buying a horse that knows how to do something and learning how to ride that horse well enough to do it together are two very different things. Brav didn’t magically arrive, carry me through the centerline, and collect a 66% on his own, though I’m sure he would appreciate everyone believing he could. He had the experience, but I still had to learn him, earn his trust, figure out his buttons, and become a rider capable of putting together the test he already knew how to do. I don’t think buying an experienced horse diminishes the accomplishment any more than buying a young one makes someone solely responsible for every bit of its education. Brav’s background gave me the opportunity to chase this dream, but the partnership we’ve built together is what got us down that centerline.
So that’s what I tried to do at our first PSG. I wasn’t going into the ring thinking that I had to prove I belonged at the FEI level, and I wasn’t thinking about what percentage I needed or what anyone else would think of my first test. I was thinking about riding Brav as well as I could and letting the rest take care of itself. When we walked out with a score over 66%, I don’t think I fully understood what had just happened, despite how many tears I shed, until the score was announced.
I had spent so much time worrying about whether we were ready for this that I hadn’t really considered what it would feel like if we actually were. Our Friday ride was the perfect preparation for the weekend, and our warm-up was incredible. I had no reason to doubt him or myself. There is a funny little gap between believing you might be capable of something and having an actual number on a piece of paper telling you that, at least on that particular day, you were. It wasn’t a perfect test, of course. He LOVES to do the changes and isn’t always the most patient, so our four-tempis were subpar. I could have pushed more in the extensions for bigger gaits. The list goes on and on because the art of dressage is about striving for a perfection nobody will ever achieve.
But I think that almost made the score more meaningful. We didn’t walk into our first FEI test and magically become finished products. We walked in as ourselves, with all of the good and imperfect pieces that come with that, and we put together a ride that was genuinely something to be proud of.
The second day felt a little different. The first test had been about stepping into the unknown, while the second test was when the numbers started to matter a little more because I knew that I needed another qualifying score for my Silver Medal and Regionals. Nobody else but me was putting the pressure on, but that is the funny thing about goals. You can spend months working toward one thing, and then suddenly you’re standing there with it within reach and realizing that there is another thing right behind it.
I had to remind myself that I couldn’t ride for a number. I could ride for Brav. I could prepare as well as possible, put myself in the best position I could, and give him the ride he needed from me. The judges were going to decide the percentage, and my job was simply to ride the horse to the best of my ability. I knew we were capable of big scores and an accurate test worthy of what was needed, so there was a teensy bit more pressure to perform.
So we went back in, and while the second test wasn’t quite the ride the first one had been, we came out with just over a 61%. It was the second score I needed for my Silver Medal, and it also meant that we had qualified for Regionals at the level. I was incredibly lucky to get to share that accomplishment with so many of the people I grew up around, many of whom have also been some of Brav’s and my biggest cheerleaders.
Six months ago, I was buying the horse. Two weeks later, I bought a shadbelly for a moment that I had no idea when I would actually get to experience. Now I am home, having ridden my first PSG, earned the two scores I needed for my Silver Medal, and qualified for Regionals. I don’t think February-me would have believed you if you had told her all of that. Actually, February-me probably would have laughed at you.
The part that means the most to me, though, isn’t necessarily the scores. Obviously, I am incredibly proud of them. A 66+% in my first PSG is something I will happily brag about, and getting that second score and finishing my Silver Medal requirements is a huge accomplishment for me. Qualifying for Regionals at the level is the kind of thing that would have felt very far away not that long ago. But when I think back on the weekend, what I keep coming back to is how much I enjoyed it. I wasn’t standing at the in-gate wondering whether I deserved to be there, and I wasn’t riding around the warm-up trying to prove that I belonged in an FEI class or obsessing over whether every single movement was good enough to produce the score I wanted. I was nervous, and I cared, and I wanted to do well, but underneath all of that, I was just excited to ride my horse toward the largest goal I had had for myself all my life.
And I think that’s a bigger accomplishment for me than the number on the score sheet.
For a long time, I thought accomplishing something meant finally getting to the point where I could say, I did it. But the more I ride, the more I’m realizing that there isn’t really a point where you get to stop. There is always another level, another movement to improve, another show to go to, and another goal to chase. If I let myself believe that I’ll finally be happy when I reach the next thing, I’m going to spend the rest of my riding career waiting for a finish line that doesn’t exist.
So yes, I wanted the Silver Medal. I wanted to go to Regionals. I want to keep moving up the levels with Brav, and I want to ride a Grand Prix someday. I have no intention of pretending that I don’t have very big goals for this horse and me, but I’m also learning that I can want all of those things without needing them to validate what we’re doing right now.
I don’t know exactly where Brav and I will be six months from now. If the last six are any indication, I should probably stop trying to predict it. But I do know that I’m going to keep enjoying the ride, keep setting “ridiculous” goals, and probably keep buying things slightly before I actually need them, even if my boyfriend calls it hoarding. After all, apparently it works.