The moment when 'It's all worth it'

ljohnsonsj

ljohnsonsj

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Just reading through the 'Reality' Thread on here got me thinking about how much I love the horses, the lifestyle for all the good and the bad I just cannot imagine my life without the hectic chaos of horse ownership.

It got me interested in hearing of your pin point moments. However big or small, when you think 'this is why I do it'

One of my Favorite most magical moments was last year when I jumped 5yos all year on my home produced mare. We jumped our last 5yo At Arena UK in September and qualified the final again. That meant that the AMAZING mare she is had Jumped DC and qualified every single 5yo class we jumped last year. What a horse- totally amazing. It's such a special moment when I read my name among many big studs and professionals and there we are. My little home produced mare who I muck out every morning, go do the boring office job and then work with the horses until late at night after work. The fact I am just a little amateur ultimately doing it for fun, and every spare moment (and penny!) In my life goes into these horses and they give me so much back, I appreciate them so much.

Another moment that stood out for me has just happened in the last week. My (Rising 4 now) Baby has always been super nervous and not took the whole backing process easy, it's taken months to get to this point but to ride him around the school in trot and feel how much his confidence has grown, and seeing in his face he is almost so proud of himself after every ride is just lovely.

So what are your key stand out 'magical' moments? Let me know!
 
ljohnsonsj said:
The fact I am just a little amateur ultimately doing it for fun, and every spare moment (and penny!) In my life goes into these horses and they give me so much back, I appreciate them so much.
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^^ me too :D :o

Dunno about stand out moments, they happen from time to time so tend to remember the most recent. Had a lesson recently on Kira where it felt like everything was coming together, she was totally on message, training rocketing along and a few exciting thoughts for the future. Completely unexpected really, considering that 2 years ago we could barely get round the arena without a meltdown, and there we are joking about PSG - but only half joking :o I can see it being a possibility within another 12 to 18 months if we can keep the wheels on.

With Millie - has to be the time we finally hit top hat & tails level eventing! didn't make a very good job of it on the day overall, but the sense of achievement on a little 15hh rescue horse was immense.

on a less grand scale, these dark winter nights when they are tucked with their haynets, listening to them chomping away contentedly are just lovely, it's my fave 5 mins of the day, dawdling at the yard before heading home and back to the real world.
 
Blasting up our farm fields on the diva every few days when we hack, I always have a huge smile on my face and think that it doesn't really get much better than that. Or in the summer when we had out to some farm rides and I'm galloping alongside my friend and her pony, laughing our heads off.

A competition win is always nice, but for me it's the thrill of a gallop.
 
The peace my lovely horse has brought to me recently and especially over the last week when my relationship broke down. Of course I have friends and family around but there is nothing quite like the therapy of half an hour grooming in the evening when you can just "be", no looks, no questions just quiet, calming companionship. In the last 6 year's she's seen me through an unplanned pregnancy, PND, uni, onset of chronic illness & the subsequent learning to deal with it & now breakdown of family. Best therapy and I would absolutely not be without it.
 
Yaaay I'm glad I inspired this thread :D Lovely stories, welling up with the thought that I'm soon to build memories with my own boy! Would love to see pictures of your lovely 5yo OP, she sounds fantastic!
 
I can remember that moment with my boy. We always had problems jumping (which I know now was because of his bad feet) but there was a short window when his feet can't have been hurting too much and my confidence must have been quite high and we had a good few months of double clears at around 2'9" / 3' although I was still having to work hard to get him round and he'd still get very anxious.

At one riding club competition one of the warm up fences was quite close to the arena fence so there was only room for one horse to go between it and the jump (health and safety nightmare!). As I was cantering up the long side (not long started to warm up so hadn't jumped at this point) and about 2 strides in front of the jump a particularly annoying woman turned across the school and stopped right across the gap, blocking my path. Luckily there was no one heading for the jump so I pulled him right with the intention of circling away. Even though we were so close to the jump and, by the time I turned him, at 45 degrees to it, he just locked onto it and popped it ever so calmly and carried on on his circle. To have him choose to go over a fence himself without any persuasion from me and to do it so calmly that, even though it took me by surprise, it felt wonderful was amazing. Sadly he went lame 2 months later and he's never jumped more than the odd log out hacking ever since.
 
Getting my first eventing double clear ever (having owned said horse for years and never jumped a clean SJ round) (I cried a little), jumping my first big hedge out hunting a year after I was terrified to jump bigger than 80cm (didn't stop smiling for about a week), summers spent galloping around fields with my best friend and her horse laughing about the fact neither of us much control, galloping on the beach and jumping the waves, when people randomly come up to me at shows just to tell me how lovely my horse is or what a nice combination we make, one time I was upset and my very much non-cuddly mare just stood there while I hugged her face and cried...

But really, it's most times I ride and I can feel me and my horse moving as a team and when I notice some small improvement that wasn't there before, the improvement might not be visible to someone else or might not seem like a big deal, but every time you feel things coming together that bit more than they have been before and you feel more in tune with your horse.

Sometimes I can just be on the ground spending time with my horse and it hits me how lucky I am to have these animals in my life, and how special they are.
 
Going cross-country with my 7yo 2 weeks ago. She's a show-jumping diva and I expected her to be a bit prissy and wonder where the poles are but she flew over mostly everything! It was so exilarating and although we found water and jumps with holes in them hard she tried her little heart out! It was both our first time cross-country and we had such a blast. Even after 5 miles she was still raring to go the minute she saw another obstacle. Building a bond and training over the past three years has finally got her to somewhere I'm happy with. She has so much more potential now and soon we will be moving from the 80cm classes to the 1m.
 
Two magic moments stick out for me.

The first was many, many years ago when I jumped at HOYS in the Foxhunter Final aged 17 on a just over 15hh horse that my parents bought for me when I was 12 to replace my 13.2hh pony. He turned out to be a 3yo not 5yo like we were told and was in such poor condition he looked like a charity case. I produced him myself did lots of different things with him - all PC teams and even team chased but focused on show jumping and he ended up Grade A. It was amazing to ride at Wembley and really was a dream come true.

The second was watching my son go clear round Blair CCI2* on his horse that he'd produced himself. It made all the time, work and money we'd invested (we're definitely not wealthy!) worthwhile. I'd done all the fitness work and kept the horses ticking over while he was at uni and he'd worked hard when he was at home. The pride and elation I felt was amazing and I'll never forget it!
 
Loved reading these!! Saddleupsin I'll attach one tommrow when I am at a computer as can't do it off my phone, I'm sure people will be sick of seeing her I post her on here all the time! Haha
 
I have many moments but generally just getting to the yard and seeing my girl is when it's worth it all. She has looked after me the last 6 years, taught me so much and never made me doubt that buying her was the best thing I ever did. We've done so much that I am grateful every day that I have her. She is now 22 and still going strong, but time feels limited so every day is worth it....always!
 
I've owned my boy for a year and a half now (approx), we haven't competed as of yet though.

But it's mostly the moments where I think of the improvements. Sometimes he can be backwards and a bit nappy and it's frustrating but I take a step back and think 'this time last year' and it puts everything in perspective. When you ride almost everyday it's difficult to see the difference and sometimes I feel i've made no progress, it's normally someone else who points it out to you!

Some moments... a few months after I'd got him when at least 3 or 4 people at the yard commented on how well he was looking and how much more muscled he was. They said 'he seems to have more about him now' :)

Every single hack we have without a tantrum. When he first came he obviously wasn't used to hacking alone, and I couldn't even get him round half the field without planting, reversing and refusing to walk on. Now we happily canter round the fields and do a few of the routes by ourselves. One moment was just after Christmas, I'd been on this hack a few times with other horses and a walker but had never braved it by myself as there's a farm at the bottom of the hill he takes a dislike to and I knew it would result in planting (when we first did it he had to be led past it). I decided to brave it and do it myself, we did have a stop and a couple of attempts to turn around and go home but we managed to get past and enjoy the rest of the hack all by ourselves. The farm is on a road and I hate him messing about on the road so it was a success. We even had a canter on the hack, usually he just trots really fast if he's a bit spooky/unsure but he's getting so much better at letting go and just going for it :)

This time last year he was spooky when things moved around the yard (it's a working farm so trailers, tractors etc) and would always give them a wide berth or not want to go that way. It was an effort to lead him round. I've worked with him on this and have realised I've taught him to investigate all 'scary' objects as now, when he sees something odd he has a look and then pulls me in that direction to have a look. He did this the other morning with a trailer :) It's nice to see him finally relaxing and being curious not spooked
 
SaddleUpSin said:
Yaaay I'm glad I inspired this thread :D Lovely stories, welling up with the thought that I'm soon to build memories with my own boy! Would love to see pictures of your lovely 5yo OP, she sounds fantastic!
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shes here :)
 
OP, your 5yo is beautiful. Mares for the win!
I'm incredibly competitive, and put a huge amount of pressure on myself to get out there and compete. Unfortunately, being in college and only working part time on a yard means that money does not grow on trees! This makes me even more hard on myself when competing doesn't go to plan (see image below!), as I don't have the opportunity to go out every week.
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Recently, though, I've taken some of the pressure off myself. I can now truly enjoy riding my horse. I know that I'm not a failure if I only compete once a month. I've also found a new passion for flatwork, and I think that the 'moment' for me recently was my horse and I nailing a whole long diagonals worth of medium trot and coming back down to working in a totally balanced way. We felt like a team. I fell in love with flatwork during that ride; before it's been a necessity bit you do before the two fun phases.

Who knows, maybe we will become dressage divas :o
 
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