- Ignore excruciating and ongoing pain and stiffness blaming lack of fitness / getting old / an old injury but call the physio, vet and backman at the first sign of mild discomfort in the horse
- Keep horses teeth maintained twice yearly but avoid our own dentist unless the dental pain is so bad that it can’t be cured by whiskey and / or difene
- Put on the brave pants, jump a bit higher than usual and leave the fences at that height in the arena for the day as a badge of honour, a symbol of success to other riders and reminder of trying and not dying.
- Waste time looking at the rain willing it to feck off so that we can ride while knowing they are going to ride anyway and end up like a drowned rat
- Turn up to a show in Winter with the horses travel rug, waterproof over sheet, cooler rug and an extra rug in case it gets cold but realise the one jacket we brought from ourselves isn’t really waterproof
- Fantasise about doing grand prix dressage to music in their head while listening to instrumental tunes on spotify
- Buy ‘fancy’ equestrian casual clothes reserved for special occasions and often not worn outside the house or near the yard for fear of the dirt / hay / slobber / shavings that will get on it and ruin it only for it to be relegated to normal yard clothes
- Talk to our horse forgetting other people can hear the one sided conversation
- Maintain two equestrian shopping wish lists – 1) things that are affordable if we eat noodles for a month and have no social life and which we may end up buying when drunk 2) things we can never afford but will buy within minutes if a lotto win comes along.
- Play armchair experts when watching horse and country. “Hmm that piaffe lacked a bit of cadence” “Dunno about that approach to the water Ollie” “oh you shouldn’t have knocked that now”. It doesn’t matter than we might die attempting a BE90 we can still give some feedback to the lads going around badminton or competing at WEG.
- Get home from a show (with the horse looked after and tucked up in bed) feeling absolutely wrecked tired beyond belief and sit in silence in the car in the dark pondering our life choices while dreading the thoughts of dragging ourselves and the now filthy competition gear back inside.
- Watch someone else riding the dressage test before going in just to be sure we haven’t learned the wrong one.
- Forget something obvious when going to a show or training session usually a girth, hat or whip
- Buy lots of pairs of gloves and sunglasses but can never find either on demand when needed.
- Change our saddle pads more often than our bedclothes and on hot days more often than our underwear
- Head to the shop and wonder why people are giving us ‘the look’ and then realising we look like were dragged through a hedge backwards and sprinkled in hay and mud.
- Wonder what ‘that smell’ is in Tesco and then realise its haylage and its us
- Become known as ‘horse person’ in work and in family circles.
- Lunge sometimes because we just can’t arsed to ride that day while convincing ourselves it’s for the horses benefit
- Having a ridiculously organised equestrian event calendar for the year ahead but no idea when family and friends events are actually on. Also upon hearing of an impending wedding secretly really hoping the date doesn’t clash with an important equestrian fixture.
- Drooling over non horsey friends holiday photos on Insta, booking a holiday and then dreading being separated from your horse
- Surfing horse sales websites even though we havent even half the funds to buy two legs of most of the ones we want
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Equestrian Reality 