The Mothership messaged me the other day saying “We haven’t done a lot of winning recently but we are certainly learning a lot.” We have been putting some serious work in; both on and off the horse. I think that the time off the horse can be underestimated sometimes; the time to think, discuss ideas, talk about different tactics and thoughts of how to make things better. As Poirot would say time for the “little grey cells” to work.

I have moments with Jack when I think maybe he is too big for me, maybe considering my confidence issues and worries we would have been better off with an older schoolmaster, maybe he deserves someone better …. (see previous blogs about overthinking and not being good enough!) but I am really happy to have him and thoroughly enjoying exercising my “little grey cells”, and those of all my family and friends too.

To share one major learning point though I must feature a bit of musical theatre (it tends to creep in to my thoughts all over the place.) A song from Avenue Q called “There’s a fine, fine line.” You should all have a listen (in fact all go see the musical, it’s hilarious.)

“There’s a fine, fine line between together and not. There’s a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.”

Sometimes, when schooling, there is a fine, fine line between what we want and what we get and our communication has to be really clear. At our last show jumping outing to Cherwell Competition Centre, Jack was remarkably, and quite wonderfully, settled, but this meant we needed to find a little bit extra in order to jump round a rather meaty, Newcomers class. We needed to hustle. The Mother suggested I increase my breathing, up my energy, do a few extensions along the long side to get Jack motoring and a few transitions to get him coming off my leg and this worked, we found the hustle.

However, when we got in the ring, the hustle very quickly went into hassle. I guess the nerves and desire to succeed just edged this over. And where the hustle was working, the hassle just put Jack out of his stride and we didn’t have the flowing round we had hoped for and could have performed.

I learnt that I need to be clearer in what I want and disciplined in asking for it clearly.

So guys, where are your fine, fine lines? (That sounds wrong!) What are you trying to achieve and how clear are you being?