PART 9 - MY JOURNEY WITH MJ

The funny thing about horses is that sometimes the days that change everything aren't the days you win. They're not the days you get a rosette or achieve a goal you've been working towards for months.

Sometimes they're the days where something shifts in your thinking.

For me, one of those days happened in 2022.

After everything MJ and I had been through with injuries and rehabilitation, we'd finally managed to get back eventing. We started the season at BE80 and quickly moved back up to BE90. On paper, things were going quite well. We were producing respectable results and enjoying ourselves.

Or at least, most of the time.

The sticking point always seemed to be the dressage on grass. BD, on a surface she was getting great results, put the hard uneven ground of a grass arena wasn’t working for her. I even set up a grass arena in my field to try & get her used to it.

She always felt a little bit like she was stepping more gingerly on grass and occasionally judges would comment that she looked uneven. Looking back now, I can see that I was probably contributing to that tension too. The more disappointing dressage scores we got, the more I worried about getting disappointing dressage scores. By that stage we'd had so many setbacks that I was constantly analysing everything and worrying about every little detail.

The frustrating thing was that I knew what a talented horse she was. I knew how hard she tried. I knew how much she loved her job. Yet time and time again we'd come out of the dressage phase feeling disappointed.

There was one event in particular where I remember looking at our score and thinking, "I can't keep doing this."

I was genuinely considering giving up eventing.

Not horses. Not riding. Just eventing.

I was fed up feeling as though we'd already put ourselves out of contention before we'd even reached the phases we both loved.

Then we went cross country.

Even now, writing this, I can picture it so clearly. And it’s making me tear up and give me goosebumps just writing about it.

From the first fence, MJ was completely in her element. She wasn't just jumping the fences; she was attacking them with enthusiasm and confidence. Every time I told her she was a good girl, I could literally feel her respond underneath me. It's hard to describe unless you've ridden a horse like that, but it felt as though she grew another inch every time she was praised.

As we flew round the course, something started to dawn on me.

The reason I loved eventing had absolutely nothing to do with dressage scores.

It wasn't really about placings either.

It was about this.

The partnership.

The trust.

The feeling that the horse underneath you would try her absolute heart out for you.

Cross country had always been MJ's favourite phase and, if I was honest, it was mine too.

By the time we crossed the finish line, I'd completely changed my mind.

The dressage score was still disappointing.

The result hadn't changed.

But I had.

I realised that somewhere along the line I'd become focused on the wrong things.

I was allowing scores and placings to dictate whether I considered a day successful, when actually the best part of the day had nothing whatsoever to do with the scoreboard.

So I made a conscious decision.

I would stop chasing results.

I would stop obsessing over dressage scores.

I would stop allowing a number on a sheet of paper to determine whether I'd had a good day.

We would continue eventing simply because we loved it.

And because horses have a wonderful sense of humour, I followed this moment of enlightenment by deciding we should move up to BE100.

In my defence, I had complete faith in MJ by this point. I genuinely believed that as long as I rode positively and stayed out of her way, she would jump pretty much anything I pointed her at.

What I didn't fully appreciate at the time was that while our riding partnership was stronger than ever, my own mental health was beginning to unravel.

Within weeks I would be signed off work with acute anxiety, stress, burnout and mild depression.

And somehow, despite all of that, Mum and I still found ourselves entering our first BE100 at Burgie.

That, however, is a story for the next chapter. ❤️