I was across the pond looking at horses.

We do this ridiculous thing where we show up sleep deprived & jet lagged. And then in the most absurd of life choices we throw a leg over completely unknown horses & point them at obstacles that don’t fall down.

Makes total sense right?

So it’s day two, it’s the last horse we’re looking at.

We’ve seen some nice ponies & I have a list of 5, maybe even 6 really nice geldings that I thought were lovely.

Choices.

Choices.

So I get on the last steed of the trip. A spicy mare.

I hop her over a cross rail & she kicks her heels

Over

My

Head

and squeals.

The fearless leader almost immediately said, “this is the one!”

I objected.

Seriously.

What on Earth do I want with another sassy mare?

An explanation about how well I’ve done with my other sassy mares followed.

It went something like, “but you really seem to get along with this type of horse.”

I have excelled with some really crazy mares over the years & my explanation has always been, “it takes one to know one.”

I suppose the speech worked because Miss Too Hot To Trot came home with me.

And let me tell you.

The sass is real.

Photo by Xpress Foto

And so is the talent.

Photo by Xpress Foto

Now if we can just find some mutual ground somewhere we might sort this out.

We’ve swung back & forth on the confidence pendulum since day one.

But this spring we’d finally gotten on the same page

Photo by Xpress Foto

and when the 2* came around we decided to go for it.

First, she nearly dragged me back to the barn at the jog.

Photo by Xpress Foto

That was the beginning……….

Next she had a bit of a spooking meltdown in dressage and I thought, “hmmm”

Finally, we left the start box.

The first 4 jumps were fine. Sort of.

Honestly, she was mostly at a dead run but they didn’t involve any tricky turns & this spicy thing can find her own spots so I just went with it.

Jump 5 involved a U turn in front of the stabling, and that was the beginning of the end.

Honestly, after we zigged & zagged to get over jump 5 I’m surprised we made it over anything after that.

I couldn’t even get her eyes on jump 6 & it went like this…….

At that point I had to decide whether to keep going or not.

It was just a stupid coop….. so I decided to keep going.

The stop at jump 6 was followed by spooking at

pretty much

everything.

We got to awkward distance, after awkward distance.

Now, here’s the thing with horses.

They live in-the-moment. Everything is how they feel right then.

So when we had 5 or 6 “bad jumps” in a row.

That I’m sure felt lousy to BOTH of us……

When she decided to quit me at jump 13.

I shrugged and said, “That’s completely legitimate, this sucked and I would have quit even sooner if I were you!”

When I walked back to the vetbox and just shrugged at the officials and said, “oh well not our day” they looked at me a little surprised that I was so casual about it.

I’ve come a long way.

A few years ago, I would not have understood what happened and would probably have been saying, “Sell it! Sell it right now!”

I might have even tried to give her away….. to anyone that would have put her in their horse trailer.

I really tried that once. After I got dumped at the next to last jump. I offered up a free horse, papers & all to anyone who was interested.

I got NO takers.

But I knew this was just a bad day. Even horses have those. I watched Chilli Morning quit William Fox-Pitt in Kentucky at jump 7.

He said afterwards that he thought he had a bit of an awkward distance at the complex before & that was all it took.

So fast forward 6 weeks with Miss Fancy Pants. Today, was our first outing since that happened. And you know what? She jumped clear.

Horses have bad days too.