Honestly, It is all just training… even showing

It can be incredibly frustrating when the world around the arena refuses to be polite.

A four-wheeler goes by. A kid runs past the rail. A tent flaps. Someone drops something. The judge’s stand suddenly looks like it might be a portal to certain death.

Naturally, this always seems to happen when I am sitting on my most reactive horse.

It never fails. I get Peanut out, and my barn manager comes riding by on his kid’s tiny four-wheeler like he has been hired by the universe specifically for exposure therapy.

And honestly, at this point, I laugh.

Not because it is always easy. It is not. But because I have learned to love those moments. They are useful.

When I watch Aachen, the Olympics, the World Cup, or any major atmosphere, I am reminded that the best horses in the world still have to cope with the world around them. The arena is not a bubble. It never has been. If I want to develop horses for big environments, then I have to teach them how to emotionally regulate inside imperfect ones.

That is the work.

And I am grateful to finally be in a place where I have tools for that.

When something unexpected happens, I do not want my horse to feel me panic, brace, punish, or get frustrated. That only confirms to them that whatever just happened was, in fact, a very big deal. So I laugh, put my horse into his “pay attention” exercise, and go back to work.

There is something powerful about laughter.

I think that is where a lot of people’s superpower could be. Not in never getting frustrated, because good luck with that. But in learning to laugh before the frustration takes over.

That is hard at shows. I know it is.

Shows are expensive. You haul, you braid, you prepare, you pay all the fees, and then your horse spooks because someone breathed incorrectly outside the arena. It is very tempting to be mad.

But this is also why we bring them.

This is why I show my young horses at Training Level. I do not care about being Training Level Champion for the sake of the title. I care that they see as many environments as possible and learn how to regulate in each one.

Winning at Training Level tells me my system is working. But the real goal is not the ribbon. The real goal is the horse walking into a new place and saying, “I can handle this.”

That matters more.

I have been playing with the idea of bringing my horses to the U.S. Dressage Finals this year. They are young. They are at a low level. And honestly, that may be exactly why it is the right time.

This is the time to test the systems I have been installing.

Not later, when the pressure is higher and the expectations are bigger. Now. When the mistakes are still educational and the stakes are manageable.

I could never come out of the arena mad at my horse. I can come out with a new plan. That is different.

Peanut spent two shows spooking at the judge’s stand while coming down centerline. At the last show, I started thinking, “Maybe he just does not want to go into something that looks solid.”

So in the warm-up, I rode him directly toward the wall and showed him I was not going to ride him into it.

Worked like a charm.

He has not spooked at the judge’s stand since.

That is the kind of plan I want to come out of the arena with when something goes wrong. Not anger. Not blame. Not “my horse is being bad.” Just curiosity.

What did he think was happening?

What did he need to understand?

How can I explain it better?

I have made a mental rule for myself: frustration becomes curiosity.

That does not mean I never feel frustration. Of course I do. I am a human being, unfortunately (as much as my husband would say differently). But I do not want to hand that feeling to my horse and make it part of his education.

If my horse feels my frustration, I risk giving him a bad experience because of something he did not understand yet. That is not fair training. That is just me leaking emotion all over the place and calling it a lesson.

Peanut has taught me that the hard way.

This past year with him has been extremely challenging. There were plenty of times I thought I was not good enough to ride him. I thought I was not brave enough. I tried to pawn him off on everybody.

I asked two young riders who are brave and sticky to ride him.

He threw both of them.

I have never come off Peanut.

That was interesting information. Also slightly inconvenient, because it meant I was probably the one who had to keep riding him.

I finally got him going well enough, and I was still trying to hand him to someone else. I asked another young rider to ride him, and he rode him beautifully. But he was busy with college and did not have time.

So it was back to the two of us.

Me and Peanut.

The universe shut every door I tried to sneak through and left me standing there holding the reins.

Now I am grateful for it.

Staying with Peanut forced me out of my box. It forced me to learn how to teach a horse to emotionally regulate. And what I learned from him, I have now brought to so many other horses.

I learned that it does not take bravery.

It takes skill.

And skill is something I can learn.

That realization changed a lot for me.

Peanut and I are currently number three in the nation at Training Level. Which is funny, considering how hard I tried to avoid learning the lesson he came to teach me.

I really did try to skip that chapter.

But this is the kind of lesson that matters. This young horse is teaching me the tools I will need someday with a horse in the big ring.  A horse that can walk into atmosphere, noise, pressure, movement, and still cope with ease.

Who knows. Maybe it will even be Peanut.

What has been interesting is that the tools I use for hyper-reactive Peanut are the same tools I use for Teagan, who tends to freeze.

One horse reacts outward. One horse shuts down.

The emotional expression looks different, but the fix is often the same.

Clarity. Relaxation. Repetition. Direction. Confidence. A rider who does not get offended by the horse having feelings.

Horses do not wake up trying to ruin our day. They react. They protect themselves. They guess. They get overwhelmed. They tell us what part of the system is not solid yet.

Our job is not to punish the information, but use it instead. 

One of my talents, or possibly one of my coping mechanisms, is that I tend to look at my life like I am an outsider reading a book. I can step back and see the themes.

And lately, I cannot help but smile at the lessons I have been forced to learn.

The horse I tried to give away became the horse who taught me the skill I needed.

The spooky moments became the training.

The frustration became curiosity.

The chaos around the arena became part of the plan.

So when the four-wheeler goes by, or the tent flaps, or the judge’s stand looks suspiciously like a monster in business casual, I try to remember the bigger picture.

And that is the work for tomorrow: laugh sooner, get curious faster, and keep teaching the horse in front of me.

Peanutbutter Jelly Time. 📸 Avery Fletcher