Moving the goalposts

Published on by Amanda C

I’ve been giving a lot of thought in the past few weeks to what my long-ish term goals are for Henry. I of course bought him to be a jumper, which he is perfectly fine at. He’ll probably never be fantastic – he’s not a super quick, super athletic horse – but he could do ok in the 1m at the local level, and I was fine with that.

And then we went XC schooling. And then we did an eventing derby. And then we went XC schooling again. He is a horse that has always done whatever job I’ve given him in a very polite yes ma’am kind of way, but he’s never really “lit up” and seemed enthusiastic about anything before. It’s pretty hard to ignore his affinity for XC.

I’m not one of those people who goes tottering around sprouting things like “Schnookums LOVES ____”. It’s a horse. It loves food. But I do think that they can absolutely enjoy some jobs more than others, and Henry’s happy XC ears speak volumes.

My friend Michelle accompanied us on last week’s XC school and she too was super floored by Henry. She’s been there every step of the way since even before I got him, so her opinion means a lot, and she said “He wants to event”. Eventing trainer that took us on our first XC school says “He wants to event”. After a few weeks of stewing on it, well, damn it… let’s give it a go. Not a half-hearted go like I was thinking before, but a real go. Let’s set some goals and lets see what we can accomplish.

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He is admittedly less enthusiastic about dressage

So we’ve come up with a plan. We’re going to try to qualify him for AEC’s next year, just at BN. There’s really no good reason for that goal other than 1) AEC’s are definitely still in Texas next year, and it seems a shame to miss out on them being basically in my own backyard 2) It would just be a fun experience to GO. I don’t even care if we do really well (that’s a lie, but I know it’s pretty unlikely we’d actually be competitive and I’m ok with that). Let’s face it, first and foremost this is supposed to be fun. I want to do things that I will fondly remember for many years to come. Pretty sure this would be one of those things. Or at the very least, more memorable than a year of random local level h/j shows in the 3′ jumpers. So why the hell not? Let’s do this and give it 100% commitment and see where things go from there.

30 thoughts on “Moving the goalposts”

  1. Good luck!! That’s how I started eventing with Dino… he LOVES XC. And there’s no better feeling than being on a horse that loves what he does! We are all here for you with moral support for the dressage. 😛

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    1. We talked about that already too lol. BN is the easiest to qualify for, so we’re gonna go for that since it’s the most realistically attainable goal right now. If we get him qualified and want to move up to Novice, we can do that and still keep our BN qualification for the AEC’s. 🙂

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  10. Awesome! Henry does look super happy over those XC jumps. Dressage isn’t all that bad, and it gives you a great excuse for more tack shopping 🙂

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