Baby Steps

I lost a lot of confidence when a horse charged at me last year, and while I’ve worked hard to get that confidence back, I still have a long road ahead of me. I had a bad ride a couple days ago on Cain, following a previous bad ride, and I was feeling ready to throw in the towel. I’ve been feeling inadequate. He deserves a confident rider to reach his full potential. I’ve cried a lot. And with two bad knees that ache on the best days, I’ve wasted so many nice days just looking out the window.

But today I got off my ass and took a baby step. We can’t all move in leaps and bounds, right? Cain has been disrespectful on the lunge, which I’ve put off fixing, so today I tackled it head on. Put on my big girl pants and my most confident face and said, “Go run in circles! And don’t stop until I say so!” And guess what? We did it. And we did some other ground exercises, and he was very respectful.

So maybe I need to accept that it’s okay if I’m not the rider I used to be. I might be some day, or I might not. But I owe it to myself and to Cain to try my best. Even if we’re not climbing mountains, galloping through fields, or running the fastest barrel times, we can still grow together and have fun. I’m not giving up.

Next step: Back to riding lessons.