Humbly Beautiful

          Last weekend, my daughter and I showed at the Eastern Slope reining in Castle Rock.  The judging was very conservative, and my daughter expressed frustration in her ride and her scores.  A teammate, who has been showing for about a year, scored better than she did.  Although she loves her friend dearly, it was with a tearful voice that she asked me, "Why does she score better than I do?"  
          Oh, I was full of answers and platitudes, and when I ran out of those, I gave her all I had left, which was simply a hug.  She echoed the feelings I had been struggling with, for me and for her.  The more I tried, and the more I learned, the less I was rewarded.

The Responsible One

There is a story about the Prodigal Son.  The story goes that there was a family with two sons.  The younger one, the prodigal son, cashed in his inheritance to see the world.  This son had gone out in true grasshopper form, spent all the money, attended all the parties, and was returning home, broke and contrite.  Upon his return home, his father threw a party.
          In the meantime, the older son stayed home.  The older son worked to improve his father's wealth, completing the tasks before him responsibly, timely, and efficiently.  When the father was tired, the older son worked more and sent the father in to drink some lemonade (taking a few liberties with the story here).    The older son learned the business, and worked harder than anyone to keep it going.  
          When the father rejoiced upon the return of the prodigal son, the older son stood in the yard, fists clenched in fury, betrayal, and hurt.  The father eventually came out into the yard and approached the son.  The older son shared his hurt and anger.  "Why do you celebrate the return of the one who discarded us and our love?  Why haven't you thrown a party to celebrate the love I have shown for you?"
          The father's reply was telling.  "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours."
          The older son imposed responsibility upon himself, and created rules for his relationship with his father.  He thought that his good deeds and hard work would earn his father's love.  He completely missed that what he sought so desperately, he already had.

Humility

When I show Sergio, I feel like the older son.  I have prepared for the ride, I have worked hard to earn my place in the pen.  When I am done, I think that my ride is at least as good as another, but I do not get the score to match.  
          I keep thinking that my good works are going to lead to reward.  When they do not, I am bitter and exhausted.  The amount of effort that I have put into being there, riding a technically correct ride, and controlling everything, are the things that cause the ride to lose its shine.
          The problem with showing the horse and being the responsible one is that the result is not pleasing.  Although the ride may be technically correct, it is not beautiful.  We can see that the horse is guided through the pattern, and that the horse can perform the maneuvers.  The rigidity in the rider, the defensiveness of the posture, the tightness of the rein cause us to hesitate.  Where we may have rewarded the maneuver, we detract instead.
          The real sticker to the story is humility.  The older son, in his pride for his good works refused the gift his father had for him every day.  The father said, "What's mine is yours."  The love that the older son sought to earn was already his.
          When we show our horses with humility and a desire to honor the love we have for our horse, the ride becomes not about what we do, but about who we are.  We can say to the world, "I do not deserve this horse, I have not earned this ride, but he is a gift for me.  I am going to enjoy him, and boldly ride him, and know in my heart that I will never, ever earn him, because he is already mine."

Beautiful Gift

Ultimately, that is what the ride is being judged upon.  Although I, as the responsible one, want the ride to be about what we do - a perfect spin, evenly balanced circles - a technically correct ride is not beautiful.

          A beautiful ride showcases the partnership between a rider and a horse.  With confidence, the team sets out to perform each maneuver to the best of their ability.  If a plus half spin is all that team has, but they perform it joyfully, well then, that's a plus half spin all day long.

          I am very intimidated by riding the ride that judges me and not what I do.  I am kidding myself if I believe that the ride is about anything else.  To humbly and exuberantly (can you be both?) step into the pen and perform the maneuvers with Sergio is a fine thing indeed.

          The performance as a team is important, but I can't earn Sergio because he is already mine. 

Saying Goodbye

          I will never forget the look on his face, peering through the stall bars at the National Western Stock Show grounds.  He was always eager to see me, always ready to say “hello” and ready for that day’s adventure.  Today, however, my heart was heavy.  I had just finished giving him a final hug (his forehead pressed against my heart, my arms wrapped around his head).  I turned away, this image of my Squishy burned in my mind.  His ears were perked, his eyes bright and curious.  From his posture, I could tell he was leaning forward, pressed against the stall door.  Perhaps he knew that something was different about this parting.  This time was our forever good-bye.

          Riding a horse for me is more than recreation, more than sport.  It is forging a team, whose communication is through intimate physical contact.  Signals are sent and received in a constant stream, most of them imperceptible to the observer (really, many of them are imperceptible to me as the rider).  In a contract of trust, the rider provides confidence and direction while the horse becomes an extension of the rider.  It takes time to build the relationship, time for the horse and rider to learn to read each other. 

          I originally purchased Squishy in a partnership, as a business venture.  Our goal was to buy a young horse, who would be trained and shown by a professional, and then sell him as a fine derby horse.  When Shane Brown brought him home from Texas, where we had purchased him sight unseen, I admit I was disappointed.  As I led him out of his stall, all I could see was an ordinary brown horse.  I’d been warned that he wasn’t beautiful.  My reply was “beauty is as beauty does.”  But still.  Did he have to be so plain?  Even the name he came with was common to his bloodlines:  Tejon.

          As Shane worked with him, building up his confidence and teaching him how to learn and use his body, Tejon began to bloom.  He was a talented stopper and pretty mover.  He did have a white star and four white socks.  His coat was a reddish sort of bay, so maybe not plain brown.  I stood on the fence, watching him ride, evaluating his strengths and weaknesses from a distance, strictly reminding myself that this was a business venture.

          One day, Shane let me ride him.  Shane had warned me that the horse was short-necked, but from the ground, Tejon was a nicely-formed, balanced horse.  After I settled in the saddle, however, I realized what Shane meant.  Riding him was like riding a cab-over truck, where it felt like the saddle was perched right behind his head.  During that first ride, Tejon kept checking in, wanting to know what I expected of him.  We were both tentative.  My stern reminders of the business side of this were weakening.

          After a time, we (my partner, Shane, and I) came to realize that Tejon just wasn’t cut out to be an open rider-level horse.  Since we had entered him in the big Futurity in Oklahoma, we decided that I would show him in the Nonpro class.  That fall, I rode Tejon as much as possible, in an effort to build our trust contract before we were under the pressure of a show pen.  I threw the business facade out the window and embraced a new relationship.

          For Tejon, having a Nonpro for a rider meant that there were treats, rub downs, long baths, walks in the grass, and time spent exploring the world together.   During that time, Tejon grew into an expressive, interactive horse with a compact build.  Plain ole Tejon just didn’t seem to fit anymore.  So he became Squishy.

          Squishy and I worked hard on our partnership together.  We showed at the Futurity, where we didn’t place, but we didn’t shame ourselves either.  I continued to show him during the following two show seasons.  We had some good classes, and we had some bad ones (one in particular comes to mind where he jumped sideways at the end of every stop).  In the end, we had a great friendship, but we weren’t a team.  Squishy needed someone with confidence and an ability to dominate the ride.  I needed a horse that would forgive my indecision and heal my broken trust from a prior horse.  Like a bad romance, we were both too needy.

          No matter how much fun we had when I was out of the saddle, it was time for each of us to find a new partner.  Very rarely is there a horse and rider team that can grow together, from Rookie to Intermediate and beyond.  More often, a competitor has to be prepared to bring in and let go of several horses during their show career.  Intellectually, I know this.  Emotionally, I have yet to let go of a horse.

          So it came to that fall day in Denver.  His expression on that day is crystal clear in my mind.  He had this way of getting hugs from me by butting his head against my chest.  The hugs always turned to rubs, where he rewarded my efforts with sighs and a blissful expression.  On that day, with my own sigh, I backed out of the stall, pushed his seeking nose back in, and slid the door shut.  At the end of the alley, I looked back, and there he stood.  Both his expression and body reached out to me.

          He trusted me.  In leaving him there, I was breaking that trust, and breaking our bond.  That still hurts my heart and brings tears to my eyes.  Even so, I know that I made the right decision for Squishy and for me.  Squishy found a new vocation with less precision and pressure.  I found a horse exceeding my competitive abilities, but who could wait patiently for my trust.