How to Excel At Being Average

We all have off days, horses and humans.  The important thing is not to be disheartened, but to learn from it and move on A couple of weeks ago Beau and I performed a dressage to music test at prelim level.  In theory this should have been easy, because we have all the elementary moves at home.  However that particular day Beau was having none of it We are all taught from our first time in the saddle that if something goes wrong it's our fault and not the horse's.  This was true that day as much as any other, there would have been lots of tools in a better rider's kit to overcome his behaviour.  But... never forget you are riding a living, breathing, thinking, sentient being; in Beau's case a being with plenty of his own opinions.  On a good day he is like riding a machine - very sensitive and very easy.  On a bad day he reminds me that at 21 he hasn't just read the book on evasions - he wrote it! We started well in the warm up - it was very very hot so

The day started with a cracking work out, must make horse clean, must make horse clean.  So she had a good brush for 45 minutes resulting in me looking like I’d been dragged through a white hair hedge backwards and slapped in the face a few times. Sardra looked fab and was very happy for the love and attention. Little did she know that we were off to day camp to improve our mindset, and see if we could better our dressage scores. Hard work was coming! On arrival at Moulton College, Alison was there to great us with a goody bag full of items from Equissimo, Equilibrium, Laura Mary Art, Dressage Perspectives and Alison herself.  A really nice touch that put a smile on my face before we even started. Thank you all!  Needless to say I was first on, so while my camp buddies Karen and Kaz put their horses in their stables (thank you both for getting Sardra’s water ready) I tacked up and hopped on. Now the real work started.  Sardra hadn’t been in full work for a couple of weeks, just lig