Horseshows: How To Navigate All The Colors Of The Silken Rainbow.
My daughter rocked her first show. I mean, she literally won every class. Every class. Boom.
I must say that I was super humble. I didn’t post pictures of her with all of her blues, nor did I hang them from my groom box or back pockets, although I love the “Oh this? Yeah, she kinda won” feel of that look. We didn’t even do the obligatory picture with the ribbons strung all along the horse’s reins, browband & whatever else we can hang them from, although they would have all been blue. In the walk/trot division. In a western saddle. With 5 kids on the division.
Flash forward to the next 3 years of a first place drought. She’d have a great go with one glaring mistake & her spot in the sunlight would fly off into the sunset. Of course we would have the “we don’t do this for ribbons” chat where we would talk about what she learned, what she did well & what her trainers (see what I did there?!) thought she could improve on for next time. It became a beneficial & unfortunately predictable life lesson. At. Every. Horse. Show. We. Went. To.
This past January, she competed in a local schooling show on an equine veteran & won quite a few classes. No longer just pasting a smile on her face in a brave show of sportsmanship, my kid beamed from ear to ear, floating over the showgrounds in a sparkly bubble of tweenage happiness.
While resisting the urge to spam my friends’ social media with the Blue Wave, I had a thought: We still don’t do this for ribbons. So at the end of the day Mandy & I chatted while driving “Mo” back to our barn & talked about what went well, what she learned & what her trainers thought she could improve on. We talked about how blue is a symptom of hard work & perseverance & how we give our horse just as much love & carrots when the ribbons are beautifully blue as we do when they are brown & ugly.
No, every kid does not get a ribbon in our sport but that does not mean that there is never a lesson or value in each outing. Blue ribbons can teach humility & there can be a sense of pride in riding out a primary color dry spell & cheering on those who are winning. My caveat is that if we as parents spam our friend’s Facebook or Instagram with blue ribbons hanging from every available piece of tack, be ready to do the same with the brown ones too.
