Yep, in the trash right along with all our hopes and dreams for how this summer was “supposed” to go.

Ok, so let’s be honest here.  There are times when your life and nothing in it goes as planned.  There are times as an AOT that it’s a struggle to justify how and why you do this.  There are times when you feel like everything you’ve worked so hard for is so far out of reach that there’s not a snowballs chance in hell you’ll ever get there.  This summer has been that.

We officially closed out the summer with one horse show in the books, our smallest to date since the summer we began showing in 2014.  This, after we’d planned to go to many events (conventional and not) aspiring toward a breed ambassador award with the American Saddlebred registry, to say the least was highly disappointing.  I’m no genius, but I’m fairly confident that no awards are to be given for one less than stellar show and nothing else the entire year.

Shoes have been pulled as of last weekend (10-1).  This means that 100%, we’re not going to another show this year.  That’s disappointing to say the least, as we’d really hoped to make good progress this year after finding what we think is the perfect bit combination for his show bridle.  I was looking so much forward to getting in the show ring and trying it out, but alas, no such luck.  Since Fiz pretty much destroyed his ride (our trailer) going to and from our first show (see the fun on that post here), that had taken out the rest of the season for us.  He still has no ride to date, as it’s still getting worked on.  Slowly but surely?  I guess that’s a thing that patient people say to keep faith that what they’re waiting on will one day come.  I wouldn’t really know, I am not a patient person.

Anyway, back to the point.  There are times when you truly might feel like giving up is the best option and you may ask yourself over and over, “Why do I put myself through this?”  You may also say things like “it’s easier not to have to pack for shows” or “maybe we should just trail ride instead” among other things.  But then, THEN… by the grace of God and everything holy you remember yourself.  You remember your horse. You remember why you started this journey, what it meant to you in the beginning, and you remember, YOU deserve better.  You deserve a chance to see what you can do, what your horse can do.  Damn the details, you deserve the satisfaction of “We did it” whatever version of success you see for yourself and your horse.

So, the show book might be going in the trash at the end of THIS show season, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get another year.  That doesn’t mean we don’t get to try again.  That doesn’t mean we can’t redefine and keep redefining our definition of success. That doesn’t mean we can’t still create goals, and take steps toward reaching them, no matter how far in the future they may be from being met.  That doesn’t mean there’s only one path.  We make our own path, and we are allowed to do whatever it takes to carve that path.  We can crawl, walk, jog, or run, or any combination of those things.  Just because we’re crawling right now doesn’t mean we can’t run tomorrow. I’m probably not even making sense anymore, so here’s this piece of advice:

On that note, I guess I’ll stop and just share some photos from the last few months.