Adventures in Saddle Seat
Enjoyed the ride
Show today.
I am not there.
[2013 photo, Report]
Gasp.
Sob.
Sniffle.
[2014 photo, Report]
I have unfailingly attended the Mid-South Spring Premiere Horse Show every year since 2013. Usually with Sam [Progression, 2016, 2017, 2018]. Last year with Milton [Two Sides].
Have I wupped my last trot? [Why Wup?]
[2015 photo, Report]
I chose not to compete as my life has been bereft of Saddlebreds since March. [Center of Gravity]
Have I asked for my last outside rein/outside leg canter transition?
[2015]
Even before the virus upended our world, I was drifting away from the saddle seat arena. Last year I competed in only a small handful of ASB shows, two with guest Thoroughbreds. [Looking Back, Horses of 2019]
Have I finished my last pass?
[2016]
At the awards banquet for last year, I was deep in the pastels for divisions I usually win. [Changing Of The Guard]
Have I pulled into my last line up?
[2016]
I skipped Winter Tournament to work with our horses [Sitting Out]. Weekends will continue to be valuable. Schedule conflicts will ever be road blocks in the path to dual-career stardom. [This Is Why You Can’t Do It All]
Have I won my last huge, gorgeous, fluffy ASB ribbon? [An Attempt To Freeze Time]
[2017]
Academy is for education. It’s where you learn to show before moving up to the big leagues. It is unsporting of me to hang around the division for mumble years like a party guest who refuses to leave.
Have I cross-diagonalled my last victory pass?
[2017]
Maybe in the far distant future of next week or next month, I could resume appropriately socially-distant saddle seat lessons, even if I’m not showing.
Maybe in the impossibly, relativistically distant future of a few years from now – when Rodney has retired from his late-blooming yet stellar show career – I could find an amenable Saddlebred who would like to be my horse for the season and finally show suit.
Alas, such thoughts are soap bubbles that disappear as I examine them.
Today, I am imprisoned in the tyranny of the now.
Thinking of what was.
[2018]
Meanwhile.
The show must go on.
Without me.
[2018]
Spotlight fades to black.
Melodramatic soliloquy ends.
Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott
Virtual Brush Box 
Everything is inside out now….a lot of us are feeling that way, but I believe it will get better- maybe not the same but better.
Being a bit of a type-A personality (ya think?) I’ve ridden pretty much non-stop over the last 11 years. Nine of those years were with my mare, and the last two were mostly with the “new” (now gone) gelding. Some of those rides were done with an (imaginary) gun held to my head. OK, truth be told, many rides. Not the horse’s fault, but often due to less than stellar weather. Humid, hot, buggy heat or a bitter cold snap are not what make riding much fun. But I rode, because I had a plan and I’m a stickler for details. Now that the mare is no longer a juvenile and the gelding is long gone, there’s no real pressure to ride. So here I sit during the first muggy, miserable heat spike and part of me thinks, “Great! I don’t have to ride.” But deep down there’s this little voice that nags me, asking if I’m not really just being a slacker? 😉
“Everything is inside out now …” I’m losing track of what is chronic angst & what is acute angst. Angst overload.
“I don’t have to ride.” I feel horrible guilt – quel surprise – if I take a day off from riding. You Never Know What Tomorrow Brings. You’ll Regret It When You Can’t. And on. And on. Makes me want to pile up all those motivation posters & light ’em up.
You get the motivational posters, I’ll get the matches.