30 Day Equestrian Challenge, Day #11

30 Day Equestrian Challenge

Day 11 - Describe your dream horse

For me, a dream horse is one with whom you can share a very deep and special bond. One of those rare friendships that lasts for a lifetime, where your horse steals a part of your soul.

 I love a horse with a sense of humor, it shows they are alive and having fun and haven't been turned into a machine that executes all the high scoring movements with no willpower left. Vallu has such a great character, he knows exactly when to kiss my face, when to mess up my hair and dirty my shirt, especially when he's not meant to. But after he's done this, I look at him and I see the twinkle in his eyes and realize how happy I am with him, and how happy he is.

In order to satisfy my inner dressage diva and competition spirit, my dream horse would float around like a butterfly, with the same cadence as Valegro or Damon Hill. Yet having a horse already so accomplished wouldn't be much fun. Yes, you'd learn to ride all the difficult movements, I'm sure you can't find a better school master for piaffe/passage, one tempi changes and canter pirouettes than these two, but part of your journey as a dressage rider includes learning how to properly ride a horse like that, and to then use this knowledge and be able to teach a younger horse the more difficult stuff.

Learning to sit there looking pretty wouldn't be much for me personally, so my dream horse would have the potential for these movements, but I'd want to learn them with the horse. Maybe it's just me since I like challenges, but I'd love to have a horse with huge potential and learn with him, rather than a schoolmaster and just learn to look good and win all the competitions. 

Even though Vallu can be classed as a schoolmaster, what makes us so great is that whilst he is teaching me all the advanced movements, I am teaching him to trust me, and trust us as a team.

Now that I have Vallu, I've learnt the hard way how important it is to have a safe, sane and secure horse as a partner. Although I love Vallu to bits, all the spooking, freaking out and nervous breakdowns really can take a toll on a person. A dream horse would be brave, and not spook at every possible thing in the world!

"A horse is a projection of people's dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence" Pam Brown