Bad riding days

Everyone has them.  At least, I think everyone has them.  Bad riding days.  Not necessarily catastrophic riding days.  Not the sort of days where it's all a tragedy.  No.  Just bad riding days.  When you ride badly for no good reason.

You can feel them descending upon you.  You brush and saddle your horse, all fine.  But something niggles at you.  The world is not quite right.  Then as you put your foot in the stirrup to mount, you feel it.  You feel that you're going to ride badly.  That it's just not going to work.  That you need a different mental attitude.

So stop!  Take that foot out of the stirrup, stand next to your horse, and examine the time space continuum.  Watch the view.  Listen to the birds.  Count the bees.  But of course ... you don't.  If you did, it wouldn't be a bad riding day any more.  Much against your own better judgement, you mount up.  Because that's what you always do.  (Victim of habit).

Then sure enough, things don't all go well.  You're not happy with how your horse is travelling.  It's not responsive enough, it's too flighty, it won't do this and that.  It's hanging on the bit, it doesn't have enough impulsion.  It's falling in.  Or falling out.  Or ending up in the middle of the haying paddock (as happened in my case).

Sometimes ... sometimes you can set it right.  Sometimes ... if you're having a lesson ... the coach can set it right.  (In fact, perfect situation in which to have a lesson).  But most of the time, it's just a bad riding day, with neither you, or your horse enjoying the ride.

I hate those days!

Oh, if I could only go back to that moment where I put my foot in the stirrup.  I would take it out again, rather than mount up.  Just give myself more time to think "why do I feel like this?".  Give my horse time to stand there and just park.  Important skill "park".  Mark Jones, my trainer, and Andrew McLean both agree on this one.  Two fine horsemen can't be wrong.

But, you cannot go back in time.  You can only take with you what you've learnt, and go forwards.  And that's why we have the bad riding days.  If we pay enough attention, they teach us more than 6 months of riding.  More than 6 months of lessons.  Think about it.  Economically speaking, it's worth having a bad riding day.

(Perhaps, if I had paid "enough" attention, I would have taken my foot out of the stirrup, and stood there and still learnt the same lesson, and avoided the bad riding day.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.)