I hate horse clinics. That’s right! I said it.

I told you I was going to be radically honest on this substack.

I have never been a fan of clinics.

Even the good ones.

There is something about being on your horse in front of people that can give one a distinct sensation to vomit, or to run, far, far away.

Your horse is being watched.
Your timing is being watched.
Your choices are being watched.
Your relationship is being watched.

It’s as though your relationship with your horse is on trial with a grand jury peering over their glasses at you. Similar to going to marriage counseling but with a sit-com audience nearby. And even IF no one is judging you (which lets be honest, is not often the case), your nervous system may still feel like it is. At least mine, sure does.

For a long time, I thought that meant something was wrong with ME.

Then I spoke with Duey Freeman.

And he made the whole thing make sense.

Duey reminded me that riding is not just mental. It is not just technical. It is deeply physical, emotional, relational, and somatic.

He said:

“When we’re sitting on our horses, we’re sitting right above our horses’ hearts.”

That alone changes the conversation.

We are not sitting on equipment.

We are sitting above a heart.

A living heart.
A feeling heart.
A prey animal’s heart.

Duey talked about how, as infants, we need to be held and rocked. We need food, touch, movement, contact, and relationship. Then he said:

“No matter how big we are, horses can hold us.”

That sentence explains why riding can be so healing.

But it also explains why riding can be so exposing.

Because when a horse holds us and moves us, the body may start to feel things the mind has kept neatly packed away.

Duey said:

“When we’re on a horse and a horse is moving us, that horse is opening up our pelvis.”

And if there is blocked energy, he said horses can:

“begin allowing us to move energy in ways that have never been moved — maybe forever.”

Maybe forever…..

That explains why one ride can leave us peaceful and another can leave us raw.

Why we can get off a horse and suddenly cry.

Why a clinic can feel exciting, useful, terrifying, clarifying, and devastating all in the same weekend.

Duey said:

“It can be incredibly healing. It also can be incredibly triggering.”

That is the sentence every rider, clinician, and auditor should understand. I have been at clinics where I was deeply triggered, where all I wanted to do was pack up my horses and drive as fast and as far away from that place as I could.

Clinics are not just training spaces.

They are nervous-system spaces.

There is the rider’s nervous system.
The horse’s nervous system.
The clinician’s nervous system.
The auditors’ nervous systems.
The other participants’ nervous systems.

EVERYONE is feeling more than they are saying.

And the official contract of the clinic is usually simple: help the person with their horse.

Duey named that too:

“The contract of the clinic is: how does the clinician help somebody with their horse?”

But the horse does not exist separately from the person and the length of time needed for a human to learn something (longer) is often in direct opposition to the length of time a horse needs to learn something (shorter training windows, over a longer length of time).

And the person does not arrive empty.

We bring our histories.
Our fears.
Our shame.
Our hopes.
Our old patterns.
Our need to do right by the horse.
Our fear of being seen failing.

Duey said:

“There’s all of this stuff being triggered and happening, and the participants may not even know why.”

That is why clinics can crack us open.

Not because we are weak.

Because horses tell the truth.

And being watched while your horse tells the truth can feel like standing naked in the middle of an arena.

So what helps?

Duey’s answer is beautifully simple: create more emotional safety.

He said:

“The more emotional safety we can have, the more grounded we are, the more connected to our horses we are, the more safe they’re going to feel, the more safe we will be.”

Emotional safety is not extra.

It is physical safety.

A grounded rider is safer.
A supported participant is safer.
A horse with someone present to attach to is safer.

Duey suggested clinicians could simply name the reality in the room:

“We’re aware that sometimes all kinds of emotional stuff comes up for people here.”

Imagine hearing that at the beginning of a clinic.

Imagine the exhale.

Not, “This is therapy.”

Just, “You may feel things here. Other people may feel things here. Let’s have each other’s backs.”

Duey used that phrase too:

“I got your back.”

What if that became part of clinic culture?

Not just ride better.

Support better.

Not just learn more.

Stay more human while learning.

And for participants, Duey offered perhaps the most radical advice of all:

“If you need to do something to take care of yourself, do it. Even if that means getting off your horse.”

Even if that means leaving. I’ve seen it done and I think the person and the horse were better off for it.

In a horse world that often rewards pushing through, that matters.

Because sometimes getting off is not failure. Sometimes leaving a clinic does not say you are weak or less than.

It says to the horse: I am not going to abandon myself and then ask you to trust me. I am not going to abandon you, and then ask you to carry me.

Maybe clinics crack us open because horses do.

Maybe the vulnerability is not a sign that something is wrong.

Maybe it is evidence that something real is happening.

And maybe the better question is, “Am I exactly where I am supposed to be?”

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Does my pony need a GLP-1?

We are living in the age of Ozempic.

Dinner parties, group chats, circuit gossip, Real Housewives confessionals, your husband’s best friend’s post-divorce wellness journey — everyone is suddenly talking about blood sugar, insulin, “food noise,” and whether half of the horse world has quietly become a spokesperson for injectable peptides.

So naturally, because horse people are deeply normal (cough!) and never take a cultural trend too far, the next question becomes:

Wait… does my horse need Ozempic?

Before anyone starts lurking around the feed room with a syringe and a podcast transcript, let me be very clear: please do not DIY your horse into the GLP-1 era.

This is not that kind of article.

But the question is not as ridiculous as it sounds.

In my conversation with equine veterinarian Dr. Kent Tooman, we talked about Equine Metabolic Syndrome, obesity, insulin dysregulation, laminitis, and the fact that the horse world is starting to wrestle with some of the same metabolic conversations happening in human medicine.

Dr. Tooman even said he thinks an “Ozempic for horses” is coming.

When I asked him directly if he thought there would be an equine version someday, he said:

“A hundred percent.”

So, there it is.

Your pony may not be getting invited to the latest LA med-spa tomorrow, but the broader point is real: horses are having a metabolic moment.

And honestly?

So are we.

Dr. Tooman said something early in our conversation that stuck with me:

“Horses, I think, are mimicking our human population. So our human population is generally overweight and doesn’t exercise a lot. And that kind of reflects on what happens with our horses.”

Ouch.

But also… fair.

Our horses are living in the same modern world we are, just with better hair.

Too much food.
Not enough movement.
Bodies built for scarcity, now living in abundance.
A culture that calls extra weight “cute” until the biology sends us a bill.

For humans, that bill might look like Type 2 diabetes, joint pain, inflammation, or cardiovascular risk.

For horses, the bill may come through their feet.

And the feet are where this stops being funny.

Because Equine Metabolic Syndrome is not just “my horse is a little round for the hunter ring.”

This is about insulin.

Equine Metabolic Syndrome is a condition where insulin dysregulation is the core problem, increasing the horse’s risk of laminitis. Horses with EMS may be generally obese, carry regional fat deposits, or sometimes appear relatively lean. In other words: you cannot always eyeball it and I can attest to that. (Merck Veterinary Manual)

Dr. Tooman put the basic idea simply:

“Insulin is not doing what it’s supposed to do in the body.”

That is the whole thing.

EMS is not just a fat problem.

It is a metabolic problem.

And that distinction matters because the horse world has a long, proud history of giving dangerous things cute names.

We say “easy keeper” like it is a personality trait.

“He just looks at food and gains weight.”

“She lives on air.”

“He’s always been chunky.”

“It’s just the breed.”

And sometimes, yes, that is partly true. Some horses are built like they came off the genetic assembly line with a famine-survival package installed.

Ponies, minis, Arabs, Haflingers, Fjords, Icelandics, draft crosses, and other thrifty types were not designed for lush domestic luxury. They were designed for harder environments, more movement, less sugar, and fewer humans saying, “Aww, just one more flake.”

Dr. Tooman explained it this way: these horses evolved to survive in tough conditions, where their bodies were good at preserving fat because they might go through periods without much forage.

Which is brilliant if you are a pony surviving a harsh winter in the Scottish Highlands.

Less brilliant if you are a pony in the Pacific Northwest standing in a buffet of spring grass like it’s the Bellagio brunch.

This is the modern horse-keeping problem.

We took animals built for movement and gave them convenience.

We took thrifty genetics and gave them lush hay.

We took horses designed to graze across miles and put them in small paddocks with room service.

Then we acted surprised when their bodies started sending smoke signals.

And the smoke signal is often fat.

Not always one big belly, either.

This is where barn blindness gets sneaky.

Your horse may not look like a sofa with ears. The fat might be hiding in the neck crest, behind the shoulder, over the ribs, around the tailhead, near the sheath or mammary area, or in those little “armpit pockets” that suddenly look less like character and more like a veterinary group chat waiting to happen.

Dr. Tooman said body condition scoring is the place to start:

“Go with your body condition score.”

Not vibes.

Not “he’s always looked like that.”

Not “but everyone else at my barn looks the same.”

Especially not that.

Because one of the most dangerous things about overweight horses is how normal they can start to look when overweight becomes the room temperature of the barn.

That is barn blindness.

It is not a moral failure. It is not because we do not love our horses.

It is because we see them every day.

The change happens slowly. A little more neck. A little less muscle. A little more shoulder fat. A little less movement. A little more “easy keeper.”

And then one day, the horse is foot sore.

That is the moment Dr. Tooman wants people to pay attention to.

He said:

“The humongous thing that you’ve gotta watch for is foot soreness.”

Not the dramatic movie version.

Not the horse collapsing in slow motion while violins play.

Foot soreness.

Tender on hard ground.
Short-strided.
Reluctant to turn.
A little “ouchy.”
Better one day, worse the next.
A horse you keep explaining away.

Maybe it is a bruise.
Maybe it is the footing.
Maybe he is lazy.
Maybe she is stiff.
Maybe Mercury is in retrograde and the pony is emotionally unavailable.

Maybe.

But in an easy keeper, foot soreness deserves respect.

Because high insulin can lead to laminitis, and laminitis is not “sore feet” in the casual sense. It is a painful, potentially devastating failure of the structures that suspend the coffin bone inside the hoof. High blood insulin concentrations can lead to laminitis, which can result in severe lameness, loss of use, and even death. (Merck Veterinary Manual)

Dr. Tooman described the laminae as tiny structures holding the hoof to the coffin bone, like millions — then he upgraded it to billions or trillions — of little attachments.

When laminitis happens, those attachments become inflamed and compromised. If things go badly enough, the coffin bone can rotate or sink.

So no, this is not about whether your horse looks snatched.

It is about whether the body is quietly walking toward a foot crisis.

And that brings us back to Ozempic.

The reason Ozempic became such a cultural earthquake is not just weight loss. It changed the way people talk about metabolism. Suddenly, people who had spent years being told to “just eat less and move more” were hearing a different story: maybe biology is more complicated than willpower.

That part applies to horses, too.

The easy keeper is not morally weak.

Your Haflinger is not standing in the dry lot thinking, “I really should develop more discipline.”

This is biology.

But biology is not an excuse to do nothing.

It is a reason to manage smarter.

Dr. Tooman talked about newer medications, including SGLT2 inhibitors, that are being used in some horses with insulin dysregulation. Current veterinary reporting describes SGLT2 inhibitors as a promising drug class for horses with insulin dysregulation, while also emphasizing that they are not a silver bullet, require veterinary supervision and monitoring, and should not replace diet and management changes. The FDA has not licensed an SGLT2 inhibitor for horses as of a February 2026 review in The Horse. (The Horse)

Translation: yes, the medicine cabinet is getting more interesting.

No, your horse cannot skip the basics.

Kent reminded me, there is no magical shot that cancels out lush pasture, mystery hay, no exercise, and a feed room operating on vibes.

Swimming the Ponies to lose weight: Above is a video of my pony Ginger, but we all call her Big Tasty. Swimming a horse is significantly more efficient for fat loss than traditional land-based exercise, with experts estimating that 3 minutes of swimming is roughly equivalent to a 3-mile gallop in terms of cardiovascular exertion.

The un-sexy stuff still matters. My eyes roll, but I know he’s right.

A body condition score.
A weight tape.
A hay scale.
A forage test.
Bloodwork.
A grazing plan.
Movement, if the horse is sound.
A vet involved before the feet start screaming.

That’s it.

Not a $900 biohacking protocol.

Not a wellness retreat. Although, if you do fancy giving your horse a health & wellness retreat, I highly recommend Pegasus Equine Training & Rehab.

Not a pony Peloton subscription.

A tape.
A scale.
A blood test.
And a plan.

Now, not everyone has the time, the discipline, the lifestyle or the ability to tackle all of this alone.

So if you are looking for a helping hand, the team at Pegasus Equine Training & Rehab have helped hundreds of horses navigate equine obesity and EMS, without equine ozempic.

What if the horse, who needs more fitness, is not quite ready for more reps?

That is the annoying little pickle with overweight horses, metabolic horses, older horses, rehab horses, and horses coming back into work after time off.

They need movement.

But the body they currently have may not be ready for the kind of movement we usually think of first.

Trotting endless circles?
Rude.

Hill work?
Helpful, but maybe not day one.

Canter sets?
A touch ambitious for the horse who has spent the winter as a decorative hay processor.

The problem is not that these horses need to be punished into fitness. Absolutely not. Straight to jail with that energy.

The problem is that they need smart conditioning — the kind that builds strength, mobility, and cardiovascular fitness without asking sore feet, tired joints, ligaments, and tendons to pick up the entire tab.

Enter: water.

The horse pool.
The aqua treadmill.
The equine YMCA.
The “we need cardio but the legs have filed a formal complaint” solution.

Swimming your horse may not be as expensive or inaccessible as you might think. Most people I talk to, think its going to be thousands of dollars. If you want to drop in at Pegasus in Seattle WA or EPIC in Ocala, FL - it costs the same to swim your horse, as it would to swim your dog.

In my conversation with Dr. Kent Tooman, we talked about how modern horses are starting to mirror modern humans: more weight, less movement, more metabolic trouble. He said horses are “mimicking our human population,” meaning many are overweight and under-exercised, just like us. Rude, but fair.

And when it comes to metabolic health, he was clear: exercise matters. A lot.

His ideal target?

“Thirty minutes of hard exercise, five to seven days a week.”

Wonderful.

In theory.

In reality, a lot of us heard that and thought: Sir, I am simply trying to survive Tuesday.

Because that is a lot. For the owner. For the horse. For the horse coming back into work. For the overweight pony whose joints did not personally consent to a sudden comeback tour.

This is why swimming is so interesting.

Water lets the horse work hard without the same concussive load. UC Davis explains that buoyancy reduces weight-bearing stress on bones, joints, and soft tissues, while water resistance makes muscles work harder than they do moving through air. Water at hip level can reduce weight bearing dramatically, while still asking the body to engage. (Horse Report)

Translation:

Swimming is not a spa day.

It is cardio in disguise.

It is strength work with splash effects.

It is your horse entering their Michael Phelps era, minus the swim cap and questionable Olympic Village rumors.

And for overweight horses, that matters because fitness is not just about calories. It is about changing the body.

More muscle.
Better circulation.
More stamina.
More mobility.
Better metabolic support.
A horse who can gradually do more because the body is becoming capable of more.

This matters especially for EMS-risk horses. Merck Veterinary Manual describes Equine Metabolic Syndrome as a condition where insulin dysregulation increases the risk of laminitis, and management focuses heavily on diet, foot care, and exercise when the horse is sound enough. (Merck Veterinary Manual)

That “when sound enough” part is the whole plot.

Because you do not exercise a horse through active laminitis because you read a spicy Substack article and got inspired.

No ma’am.

You call the vet.

You call the farrier.

You make a plan.

But once a horse is cleared for appropriate work, water can become a very clever bridge between “not fit enough for serious land work” and “ready to build a real program.”

Dr. Tooman said something about swimming that should make every comeback-horse owner perk up:

“There are horses that come here just to stay fit. They don’t have problems. But you can swim them and you won’t put any pressure on… ligaments and tendons.”

That is the magic.

Not no work.

Just smarter work.

Swimming can help the horse start rebuilding condition without making every joint and tendon send an email marked urgent.

For the horse coming back after time off, that can be gold.

For the overweight horse, it can be a game changer.

For the horse who needs a job but whose body is saying, “Please do not make me jog circles like a divorced accountant training for a 5K,” it can be life-changing.

But — and this is a big wet but — swimming is not for every horse.

UC Davis notes that horses are not natural swimmers, some adopt an inverted posture in the water, and swimming can create large ranges of motion through the hind-end joints, which matters for horses with certain neck, back, hip, or hind-end issues. (Horse Report)

So no, we are not throwing every horse into the pool like a Labrador at a lake house.

This is not Baywatch: Barn Edition.

Swimming should be introduced thoughtfully, by people who know what they are doing, with a horse who has been cleared for that kind of work.

Some horses will love it.

Some horses will learn it.

Some horses will say, with their whole face, “I would like to speak to a manager.”

And that matters.

The question is not: Is swimming good?

The question is:

Is swimming good for this horse, at this time, for this reason, in this program?

That is the difference between a tool and a trend.

Because we horse people do love a trend. We find a thing, make it our personality, buy the matching equipment, and suddenly every horse within a 50-mile radius needs the thing.

Swimming is not the whole program.

It does not replace hay math.
It does not replace body condition scoring.
It does not replace insulin testing.
It does not replace a farrier.
It does not replace a vet.
It does not cancel out unlimited grass because “he swam on Tuesday.”

The pool is not a permission slip for chaos.

It is a tool.

A very wet, very useful, very underrated tool.

And honestly, I love it because it reframes fitness. It takes the conversation away from shame and toward strategy.

The owner of the overweight horse does not need to be blamed.

The comeback horse does not need to be rushed.

The metabolic horse does not need us to hide away until the feet scream.

They need thoughtful movement. The kind that meets the body they have now, not the body we wish they already had.

Sometimes that means walking.

Sometimes that means hills.

Sometimes that means a track system, a grazing muzzle, a hay scale, and the world’s least glamorous spreadsheet.

And sometimes?

It means putting the pony in the pool.

Not because we are fancy. Because we are paying attention.

The Pool Pony Cheat Sheet

Swimming may be useful for:

• Overweight horses who need low-impact conditioning.

• Horses coming back into work.

• Horses who need cardio without the same concussion.

• Some rehab programs, with vet guidance.

• Horses who need strength, mobility, and variety.

Swimming is not ideal for:

• Every injury.

• Every temperament.

• Every stage of rehab.

• Horses with active laminitis unless cleared by a vet.

• Horses who panic in water.

• DIY experiments with no experienced handlers.

The pool is not magic.

But for the right horse, at the right time, with the right people? It might be the most underrated fitness hack in the barn.

Looking for a pool near you?

Two facilities where my horses have gone for aqua-therapy, that I recommend;

• Pegasus Equine Training & Rehabilitation - Melissa Ledford & Co - Redmond, WA

• Equine Performance Innovation Center - Dr Alberto Rulan - Ocala, FL

We are told to watch this rider, copy that feel, use this system, adopt this timing, sit this way, hold this belief, ride like that person. Some of that is necessary. Skill is passed down through observation, instruction, and repetition.

But somewhere along the way, many riders stop learning from others and start disappearing into them.

We compare. We perform. We edit ourselves. We start trying to become more acceptable, more legible, more approved of, more like the kind of horse person we imagine other people will respect.

And then we wonder why we feel tense all the time.

Barbra Schulte explained to me the difference between confidence and judgment, and described the way the mind spirals when we feel watched or criticized. But what I heard underneath it was something even bigger: there is a difference between learning from people you admire and abandoning yourself in the process.

That difference matters.

Because the minute we leave ourselves, we become easy prey for the rest of it. For the negative self-talk. For the fear of what the clinician thinks. For the story that the better rider is the one in the next horse over. For the quiet humiliation of trying to progress at the exact pace, style, and expression of somebody else’s journey.

No wonder so many people feel lonely in barns full of horse people.

When Barbra said, “Do Barb, Do you” she didn’t mean reject instruction or refuse correction. She meant something much saner and much braver:

let yourself be yourself.

Let your learning be your learning. Let your path be your path. Stay with your own body, your own timing, your own horse, your own truth.

That is not complacency.

That is integrity.

The horse world has a lot of monkey-see-monkey-do in it. That can create technical sameness. It can even create temporary success.

But horses do not actually ask us to become replicas. They ask us to become honest.

They ask us to feel what is happening.
They ask us to tell the truth about it.
They ask us to respond from somewhere grounded rather than performative.

There is an enormous difference between being coached and being erased.

I think many riders know exactly what that feels like. You begin with love. Then, gradually, you become more concerned with how you are perceived around horses than with what is actually happening between you and the horse. You become hyper-aware of who is watching, who approves, who disapproves, who belongs more naturally, who seems more talented, who the trainer likes best.

The center of gravity moves outside of you.

And once that happens, your spirit gets quieter.

Barb said something else that felt important:

when we feel judged

and don’t know how to stay grounded,

we often rebound by judging other people.

We hand the pain right back. Hurt becomes criticism. Insecurity becomes blame. Vulnerability becomes posturing.

That is how disconnection multiplies in the horse world.

The antidote is not superiority. It is coming home to yourself. Quietly and lovingly.

That may mean breathing before you react. It may mean asking, what is actually my job here? It may mean owning a mistake without collapsing into shame.

It may mean letting someone misunderstand you without rearranging your soul to win them over.

It may simply mean this:

Do you.

Ride topless, ride bareback, ride solo, don’t ride at all. Wear sweatpants to the barn, spend thousands of dollars on a new pair of yellow dressage boots or say out loud an ambitious goal you’ve always had, but were too afraid to share, for fear of mockery.

Do the horse world a favor, and just do you.

Do you with humility.
Do you with rigor.
Do you with a willingness to learn.
But do not spend your one wild life trying to become someone else’s version of a worthy horse person.

The horse world doesn’t need your homogeny, your compliance, your assimilation. We’ve done all that, it didn’t work.

The horse world of today needs you to be an individual not a cog in a wheel.

Challenging the status quo, pushing against conformity, sitting back or speaking up. Asking questions. Saying no. Voting with your feet and standing up for your horse.

Horses don’t care for your conformity.

They are asking for presence.
They are asking for congruence.
They are asking for the version of you that is not split in five directions trying to earn someone else’s permission.

This is the permission slip to not look for the permission slip.

Because maybe confidence is not becoming untouchable. Maybe confidence is becoming un-abandonable.

That feels like a better goal. In riding, in life, and certainly in the horse world.

This piece grew out of my conversation with Barbra Schulte on the Dear Horse World podcast.

Question for you: Where in your horse life are you being invited to stop performing and start being more fully yourself?

Leave a comment

The horse world asks that question all the time, as if it reveals everything.

I think it reveals very little.

Because the best horse people I know are not governed by either instinct. They are not with horses simply to win, and they are not with horses simply to avoid losing. They are with horses to learn. To be changed. To make sense of themselves and the world through a relationship that refuses to let them stay shallow.

Horse shows are finite.

They have rails and ribbons and scores and placings. They have clean outcomes. Winners. Losers. Better. Worse.

That kind of horsemanship matters. It asks things of us. It sharpens us. It tests our preparation. It can reveal courage, discipline, resilience, and excellence.

But it is still finite.

And horses, at least to me, are an invitation into something much bigger.

Borrowing from James Carse, horse shows are a finite game. Horsemanship — real horsemanship — is much closer to an infinite one. The finite game asks who won. The infinite game asks who you became by staying in it. (Simon & Schuster)

“I’ve never put all of my focus on winning. Being a horseman is what I desire the most.” - Jeroen Dubbeldam

That distinction matters because the moment we become over-fixated on winning or losing, we leave the present moment.

And the present moment is the only place horses can actually meet us.

When we obsess over the external outcome, everything becomes fragile. The round becomes fragile. The lesson becomes fragile. The ride becomes fragile. Our confidence becomes fragile. We stop relating to the horse in front of us and start relating to an imagined result.

That is a terrible place from which to try to find feel.

It is also a terrible place from which to enter flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist most associated with flow, described it as a state of optimal experience and optimal performance — total involvement in the task at hand. Not fixation on outcome. Absorption. Presence. Full engagement. (Claremont Graduate University)

That is why I think curiosity matters more than scoreboard thinking.

Curiosity keeps the world open.

Curiosity lets us ask:
What is this horse teaching me?
What am I missing?
What is trying to emerge here?
What if this moment is not a referendum on my worth, but an invitation to grow?

In my conversation with Barbara Schulte, she kept returning to focus, engagement, and the nervous system state that actually allows learning to happen. And one of the most liberating things she said was this: there is no failure in learning.

That line belongs in every barn, in every program, in every tack room.

Because when we make winning the whole point, we narrow the meaning of the experience. But when we choose growth, the whole world expands — ours, and often the horse’s too.

This does not mean goals do not matter.

Of course they matter.

We are built to strive. We are built to stretch. There is deep satisfaction in setting a goal with a horse, pursuing it honestly, and discovering that you are capable of more than you knew. The pursuit matters. The achievement matters. The discipline matters.

But the most important goal is rarely the one printed on the prize list.

The real goal — the infinite one — is who appears along the way. Who you had to become to achieve that goal. What you said yes to, and equally important, what you said no to.

The horse that appears under us is changing.
The person that appears in the saddle is changing too.

Those are not two separate stories. It is a tale of one change, happening in connection.

We grow together toward connection, or we fall away from it.

We become more honest together, or more defended. More embodied, or more performative. More attuned, or more controlling.

Connection does not come from wanting to win badly enough.

It comes from wanting to grow badly enough. I think that’s why the riders who I admire that are striving for the Olympics, who are striving for championships, develop their own horses, they don’t just buy them.

They know that the champion they want to be, is the one who developed along the journey, they didn’t just buy a fast track to the podium.

There is hunger.

A hunger to discover what we are capable of.
A hunger to understand our horse more deeply.
A hunger to tell the truth about where we are.
A hunger to become someone your horse can actually trust.

That is infinite horsemanship.

Finite horsemanship asks: did you win? Did you do the thing?

Infinite horsemanship asks:
Did you become more present?
More skillful?
More humble?
More aware?
More relational?
More yourself?

The older I get, the less I think horses are asking us to choose between ambition and meaning.

I think they are asking us to put them in the right order.

Go ahead and chase the goal.
Go ahead and enter the class.
Go ahead and test yourself.

But do not confuse the arena for the whole world.

Because the ribbon is finite.

The score is finite.

The show season is finite.

But the person you become in devotion to a horse — that is the real work.

And that is the game that never ends.

It was Barbara Schulte telling me to breathe.

Not as a vague wellness cue. Not as the sort of thing people say when they don’t know what else to say. She meant it precisely. Melt into the saddle. Feel your seat. Stay with your body. Slow your internal rhythm enough that you can actually learn.

What struck me most about riding with Barbara was that she was teaching two things at once: the mechanics of the skill, and the nervous system state required to absorb it.

And the more I sit with that, the more I think …

….one of the great tragedies of the horse world is how often we confuse struggle with inadequacy.

Because most riders have been taught, implicitly or explicitly, that when something feels hard, the problem is them.

They aren’t brave enough.

Talented enough.

Tough enough.

Fast enough.

They should know this by now.

They should be farther along.

They should be less emotional.

They should be more like someone else.

But Barbara kept returning to something much truer: when learning breaks down, it is often not because the rider lacks what it takes. It is because the sequence has broken down.

That is such a different story.

Every skill has an order. There are fundamentals. There are pieces. There is understanding before fluency. There is feel before refinement. There is repetition before consistency. And when we try to rush to speed, polish, or performance before those pieces are installed, the nervous system gets flooded, the body gets hurried, and the whole experience starts to feel like failure.

It isn’t failure.

It is overload.

Barbara described the ideal learning state as neither collapsed nor frantic. Not half asleep. Not in fight-or-flight.

Alert.

Open.

Engaged.

Aroused enough to care, but not so activated that clarity disappears. That sweet spot is dynamic and fragile, and a great teacher notices the moment a student starts to tip out of it.

Not after they’ve fully unraveled. At the beginning.

That was what felt so different in that lesson. If my internal state started speeding up, the answer was not more chaos. It was not “just do it.” It was not “you’re overthinking.” It was not pressure piled on top of pressure. It was to slow the movement down. Return to position. Return to breath. Return to sequence. Return to what my actual job was.

That feels like a horse lesson. It also feels like a life lesson.

How many of us have spent years interpreting overwhelm as a character flaw?

How many of us have mistaken the messy middle of learning for evidence that we are not made for the thing we love?

Barbara used a phrase I haven’t stopped thinking about: the messy middle.

That stage after beginner excitement but before refinement.

The stage where you understand enough to know what you are trying to do, but not enough to do it consistently. The stage where the skill lives clearly in your mind but unreliably in your body. The stage where some days you touch it, and some days it vanishes completely.

That is where so many riders begin to turn against themselves.

Because the horse world is very good at displaying polish and very bad at honoring process. We celebrate the finished picture. We rarely talk about the repetitions, the frustration, the false starts, the rewinding, the note-taking, the deliberate slowness, the humility of breaking something down into parts and beginning again.

But Barbara’s point was deeply liberating: there is no failure in learning.

Question for readers: Where in your riding life are you being asked not to quit, but simply to stay with the messy middle a little longer?

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There is confusion.

There is poor sequencing.

There is going too fast.

There is not enough repetition.

There is nervous system overload.

There is bad instruction.

There is a mismatch between horse and rider.

There are old voices in the mind surfacing at exactly the wrong moment.

But if you are still learning, then no, there is not failure in the way we so often mean it.

That distinction matters because the moment we label struggle as personal deficiency, curiosity dies. We stop looking for the missing ingredient. We stop asking better questions. We stop seeing that maybe the issue is not that we cannot do it, but that the learning needs to be chunked differently, slowed down further, rehearsed more deliberately, supported more skillfully.

Barbara also spoke about positive reinforcement in a way that landed hard for me. When a teacher says, yes, that was it — just like that — something real happens in the body. You soften. You organize. You understand. You do not just feel encouraged; you get information about what pattern is worth repeating.

That matters.

The horse world often underestimates how much human beings need accurate reinforcement too. Not empty praise. Not flattery. Accurate reinforcement. A good teacher marks the moment that matters. A good learner helps install it: writes it down, visualizes it, studies the sequence, watches the video, remembers the feel, practices between lessons.

That may be one of Barbara’s most empowering ideas: learning is not something that only happens to us in the presence of an instructor. We can participate in it. We can help ourselves learn.

We can ask:

What is the sequence?
What is my job?
What do I control?
Where do my eyes go?
What does this feel like in my body when it works?
How do I come back when I start to tip over the edge?

That last question may be the most important of all, in riding and in life. Because the brain is full of what Barbara called pop-up thoughts: old criticisms, old shame, old judgments, old stories about what kind of rider you are or are not. They arrive quickly. They feel true. They are often not true at all.

The work is not to never have those thoughts.

The work is to notice them before they take the reins.

To feel the body tighten and know it is time to breathe.

To hear the spiral begin and interrupt it with something truer.

You’re okay.
Come back.
What’s your job?
Do the next thing.

That is not just mindset. That is self-leadership. That is refusing to let an old script run the whole show.

And perhaps that is what confidence really is.

Not perfection. Not certainty. Not doing everything right.

Confidence is staying on your own side while you learn.

Confidence is refusing to turn against yourself in the messy middle.

Confidence is knowing that discomfort is not a verdict.

It is just the place where a new pathway is being built.

There are few places that reveal us more honestly than horses.

They show us where we brace, where we rush, where we abandon ourselves, where we perform, where we disconnect, where we lose the thread. But if we let them, they also teach us something much kinder: that real progress is built slowly, sequentially, and in relationship with the truth.

Not the fantasy of being naturally gifted.

Not the performance of having it all together.

The truth.

The truth that learning is vulnerable.
The truth that nervous systems matter.
The truth that almost everyone you admire has spent much longer in the messy middle than you think.
And the truth that sometimes the most healing thing a rider can hear is not work harder, but: what if nothing is wrong with you?

Maybe you are not broken.

Maybe the sequence needs work.
Maybe the skill needs chunking.
Maybe your body needs safety.
Maybe your mind needs a better script.

Maybe you just need enough time, enough repetition, and enough honesty not to mistake the middle for the end.

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That feels true far beyond horses.

And maybe that is why the best horse conversations are never only about horses.

This piece grew out of my conversation with Barbara Schulte on the Dear Horse World podcast and part of what I now call, The Dear horse World Project.