Gut Check

I had a wonderful weekend with my husband and my kids at the barrel race. Well, let me rephrase that. I had a very educational and profound weekend at the barrel race. My kids had a great time. The producer of the run collected five dollars from everyone that lost a hat in the arena. On the last day of the event, they stapled the money to large pieces of play money and scattered it in the arena. The kids lined up and raced for whatever they could collect. My girls did great. Savannah got $10 and Sharlee got $5, which was more money than their mom won this weekend. More importantly, they each had a sticker on their play money (thank you Jesus for letting them both find one) which meant that they had won an additional prize. These were cute watches, albeit a bit grown up for two six year olds.
The most exciting event however, turned out to be the hula hoop contest. After discussing with my children the fact that they don't know how to hula hoop, they both decided to participate in the contest. I think the last thing I said was, "Don't be disappointed if you don't win. You're entering a contest based on something you don't know how to do." Now I have to say that they looked super cute. And one of them did manage to get in a few revolutions before her hula hoop hit the ground, but predictably, they were both eliminated in the first round.
As they were leaving the arena, one of them looked up at me tearfully and said, "Well the reason I lost is because you spent all our time teaching me how to RIDE instead of how to HULA HOOP!" To which I replied, "That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. I think I'll call Child Protective Services. No wait, I think I'll just mandate an hour of hula hoop practice every day from now on!"
And so it begins. I really was under the illusion that everything didn't become my fault until they got to be about 12 years old. Aren't we starting a little early on this one? I mean, really. Someone told me yesterday that it was time to get back out the parenting manual and read the chapter entitled "Everything is Your Fault, Mom." To which I say, "There's a freaking manual? Why haven't my friends who are parents told me about this? You all suck!" But I'm pretty sure she was just kidding.
The major thing that happened this weekend was a gut check for me. When I was in high school, I once had a bull rider ask me how I was sitting in the year end standings. "Not very well. I haven't been making very good runs here lately. Hitting a lot of barrels." "Oh," he replied. "Well, you just don't want it bad enough." "Excuse me?" Picture me as a teenager full of righteous indignation. "What do you know about riding a barrel horse, mister big, bad bull rider?" "I know that if you wanted it bad enough you'd be sitting better." And he walked off. At the time, I was furious. How dare he? What did he know, anyway?
And here's the kicker. HE WAS RIGHT. When I went home and decided that I wanted to go to the National High School Finals Rodeo worse than anyone else, I rode harder. I worked at it five, six, seven days a week. I rode my horse when it was hot, cold, rainy, muddy. And I went to the rodeos and put everything I had into every run I made. And I DID IT. I qualified for the NHSFR in Gillette, Wyoming, not only in the Queen Contest but also in barrel racing. At the time, I'd never been prouder of any accomplishment in my life. It happened because I set a goal, I worked really hard at it, and I achieved the thing I wanted most.
Fast forward a couple of years. Okay, several years. Now I have three kids and a fantastic husband and my priorities have changed. I still love barrel racing, and I still want to win. For the first time in my life I have access to a covered arena 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But at the moment I am severely lacking in the area of horsepower. The mare I "ran" this weekend is 17, she has some serious lameness issues, a major gate issue, and not a whole lot of heart. I have done everything humanly possible to solve her lameness issues. I have spent countless hours working on her gate problem (which I wasn't aware of when I bought her, making her the second horse I've owned lately that came to me with a gate problem no one bothered to tell me about.) She has hurt me once, dragging my leg down a set of metal panels in the alleyway, plus she has an endearing habit of trying to take her head from me and run off in any direction. She has fallen with me at a local barrel race, putting a front leg through the reins before getting up. She's so fractious in the on deck area before my runs that I have to wait until the horse before me runs to get on her.
So as I stood there this weekend waiting my turn, feeling my heart pounding in my chest and trying to keep from throwing up, that still small voice in my head said, "Why are you putting yourself through this? This is supposed to be what you do for fun!" And naturally, after all the drama and anxiety, she went in there and didn't half try. Honestly, I worked harder than she did.
If I'm going to work that hard, spend that much money, and give up time with my kids to practice, loping the pattern and hitting barrels is not my idea of a fun weekend. Now to be fair, the barrels I knocked over this weekend are the first ones I've ever hit on this horse. I've run her 20 or 30 times and won a check on very run but two. It's worth pointing out that those checks were 3 and 4D checks. There is a certain amount of "ish" I'm completely willing to put up with for a horse that runs 1D or 2D times. But as I left the arena this weekend, the phrase "too much sugar for a dime" kept running through my head. As my husband so eloquently put it, it costs the same to feed a decent horse as it does to feed junk. And he's right.
I took my colt to Starkville not long ago and had a fantastic weekend, no drama at all and even won a little money with him just loping the pattern. No army of people to get him in the gate, no wondering if he's going to hurt me acting stupid. Just a fun weekend and a reminder why I do what I do.
People without children have no idea how difficult it is for me to even get to ride a horse some days. The only reason I get to practice at all is because my husband is willing to help me by saddling horses and taking care of the kids while I ride. Add to that the "mommy guilt" that my kids pile on when they don't me to leave and the supernatural levels of exhaustion that come with being a parent of small children. I have to remind myself every single day why I want to do this anymore. But something inside me does, and it just won't go away.
My husband, who is always very honest with me, knows that I am realistic about my abilities as a rider. That seems to be the one factor that many people choose to ignore. Parents want to go buy the fastest horse there is, and automatically assume that their kid can ride it. There's a reason that some people do this crap for a living and some of us do it for "fun!" A great rider is the difference between a horse that places in the third division and one that places in the first division at a handicapped barrel run. Don't get me wrong, some horses have God-given ability that others just don't have. And some make up for their lack of natural gifts with supernatural amounts of heart and try. I have a horse standing in my pasture that no one's been on in six months, and if you saddled him today and sent him in the gate he'd bust a gut trying to win something for you. It's just who he is, and I love him for it.
So I've said all this to say: I'm ready to ride something that I like. If I don't love the horse I'm running and it's not fun to make that run, I'm going to find something else to ride. I've reset my goals and raised my expectations for myself. A wise man told me the other day that if I want my young horses to quit being 3 and 4D horses, I've got to quit being a 3 and 4D rider. And you know what? He's right, too.