As an AOT, sometimes it gets hard.  Really hard.  Sometimes you lose hope, and want to give up.  There will be people who are discouraging and who want to see you fail, as with anything you do in life.  But also as with anything you do in life, you can choose how to handle these types of situations, and you can choose the people in your life that you listen to.  Those should be people who support your choices, who encourage you to keep going, to live, to learn, to take your mistakes with a grain of salt and do better next time.  That’s who you need to have around.  It takes an army, and we are lucky to have the support and encouragement of many wonderful people, as I have stated in this blog before.

That said, you also need to know when you should ask for help.  I am definitely not above asking questions to whoever will listen to me, and whoever is willing to give me advice.  There comes a point in time where you may have run out of answers, and where the challenge(s) you are facing exceed your experience and/or ability.  For the sake of your horse, your sanity, and the well being of everyone involved, you owe it to yourself to seek professional help.  I admit that I struggle with seeing this in a good light, and that I struggle to remind myself that it is not a failure.  That asking for help means you are wise enough to know the limits of your knowledge and experience, and smart enough to reach out to a professional who has the background and experience to help you and your horse succeed.  It is certainly not a failure to get a well qualified individual involved to help you evaluate, to direct you, and help you form a plan for the future.

We have been lucky thus far, nearly 3 years into ownership of our special horse that he has been so versatile, so willing, so tolerant of our mistakes.  But at this point, we owe it to him and to ourselves to see what more he can do.  We owe it to ourselves to put ourselves out there, to learn from someone with more experience, and to apply what they teach us in our AOT adventure.  We owe it to ourselves to grow as horsewomen, and soak up as much knowledge as we can from whoever is willing to teach us, and I for one can’t wait for the next chapter of our story to unfold and see where we end up.

I hope you’re ready for your 30 day professional evaluation Fizzy.  I know you are capable of much, much more and I can’t wait to see how you surprise us next!