United States Eventing Association

This excerpt from "Finding Purpose: A Life Managing the Passion, Compulsion, and Borderline Addiction Called Horses" by Chelsea Canedy, is reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books.

Canedy was recently featured in our "The Horse First" video series, where she discusses regulating the horse's nervous system and how she worked with her horse Fox to build a stronger partnership.

Find A Way Through Shame

Near the end of my freshman year at the University of Connecticut, I began looking for a horse that I could ride for my Pony Club A-level ridden test. The United States Pony Club has established Standards of Proficiency that provide riders a clear progression of skills from Level D (beginner) through A (advanced), and in order to receive a particular rating, you have to demonstrate your knowledge and ability in front of USPC examiners. I had ridden lesson or lease horses through all my other ratings (or certifications), but at the time I didn’t have access to a mount that had the physical capabilities necessary for the A-level eventing test, which was about equivalent to running Preliminary level at a USEA-rated event. Pony Club hadn’t yet separated out the different discipline paths you could follow to reach your A rating, like it offers now (dressage, eventing, show jumping, hunter seat equitation, Western dressage, and Western). It was one track—eventing—and I had one more summer before I was going to age out of Pony Club youth member status when I turned eighteen. It was important to me to attain my A rating before then.

I found an ad in a local newspaper for a horse for sale that sounded like a potential option: a Thoroughbred gelding that apparently had a good bit of jumping experience and had been sitting idle since his owner had gone off to college a year or two prior. His owner’s parents wanted to find the horse a new home, as he was living by himself in their backyard, costing them time and money. I arranged to drive to their nearby location and meet him.

When I arrived, I was introduced to Mikey, a very large-boned, seventeen-hand chestnut with a kind, relaxed eye and a willing manner. I only rode him on the flat, as his small paddock was also the riding space, and he was so out of shape I didn’t dare jump anything. I also didn’t have the money to purchase him, even for the few thousand dollars the family was asking (in today’s market, a horse like Mikey would likely go for around twenty-five thousand). But his owner’s parents were willing to work out a deal: We agreed I would take the gelding for the summer, get him back in shape, show him, use him for my A rating, and then help sell him, giving the family the profit. I saw it as a win-win for everybody, and thankfully so did they.

Little did I know what a huge undertaking I was embarking on and what a giant “ask” I would have been making of any horse. I cannot imagine taking that kind of leap now. Looking back, I have such a deep appreciation for Mikey, as he was clearly an incredibly generous being. Just the fact that he was living alone, fairly content in that backyard, seems incredible to me now, not to mention the fact that he was so relaxed about some stranger showing up and riding him for what was the first time in years. I had lucked out again and didn’t even know it.

When I shared my plan with Steve, he was (thankfully) willing to help. I think he was probably as doubtful about the situation as I would be if presented with it now, but as I’ve explained, he was always up for a challenge! Basically, I had four months to recondition Mikey, pass my A-level test, and get him sold. Because he was such a relaxed and willing horse, Mikey was game to try, too. He was relatively straightforward on the flat, just lacking muscle and fitness, and as it turned out, he had a bigger jump in him than Steve and I ever could have guessed by looking at him. As he got in shape, the jumping got easier and easier. I have a picture of me jumping him over a huge oxer at the end of that summer, the rails at almost the top of a five-foot set of standards, and him clearing it with room to spare. I had never had a horse who was so simple to jump, and it was empowering!

Unfortunately, it also turned out Mikey had little-to-no dressage show or cross-country experience. I took him to a regional dressage rally and never made it more than three-quarters of the way down the centerline toward the judge’s booth because he was so scared of it. We completed our test in the top three-quarters of the ring, our circles accurately shaped, though not in the proper locations. And it took Steve, Jenna, and I over an hour to get Mikey over a small ditch at home. It was an anxiety-inducing experience for all, and I genuinely hated every minute of it. When we were done, Mikey was sweaty and amped up, I was in tears, and my instructors looked exhausted. Knowing what I know now, I would have handled teaching him about the ditch very differently—starting from the ground, taking my time, breaking it down into much smaller steps, and working under the philosophy that “we don’t have to get over it today.” I am certain a different approach would have left us both feeling much better about the ditch and about each other.

Despite the challenges, however, Mikey and I had quite a bit of success at the regional show jumping and eventing rallies that summer. Then it was time for my A-level test. I honestly felt incredibly well-prepared, having done several prep clinics with the toughest Pony Club examiner in the region and leaving those sessions with confidence. So Mikey and I joined five other A-level hopefuls at a farm in upstate New York in the late summer.

One of the main purposes of the A-level test is to show that a candidate is ready to be a horse trainer, not just a rider. To that end, part of my test included “catch rides” on unknown horses, and we were to discuss what we were feeling and working on in the saddle with the examiner. The farm where the five other candidates and I were taking our test had horses on site for us to use for the catch-ride portion of the exam. We rode in whatever tack the horses were brought to us in, which added a layer of complexity—say, if the saddle didn’t fit us, or the bit choice wasn’t one we were comfortable with.

The first catch-ride horse I sat on was simple enough, and I must have explained what I was doing in a satisfactory way, because the examiner seemed pleased and suggested a horse swap between me and another candidate. While riding that first horse, I had, of course, eyeballed the other horses and riders in the arena. My second mount had looked pretty well-schooled when I’d watched him go, but when I got on, I could feel immediately how behind the leg the horse was and realized that his first rider had been doing a lot of work. So I put on my “trainer hat” and thought about how I would handle the horse’s issues for his long-term success, not just how I would make him “look pretty” for the next fifteen minutes. After all, I was meant to be a trainer now, not just a rider. I went about the process of “legging him up” in the way that Steve and I had worked on countless times: light aid, no response, light correction with the stick, leg off, start again. I repeated this process methodically until I started to feel the horse respond to my light leg aid. I was not concerned with his shape in the bridle nor his acceptance of the bit, because I did not want to muddy the horse’s understanding of going forward with any pressure from my reins. I didn’t want to end up in a contradictory “kicking and pulling” situation, and I didn’t want to have to work so hard with my legs to put him in a round package to my hands. I simply wanted to check the box of “response to my leg” before I moved on to “finding a connection to the bridle.”

Forward first. Leg before hand. Dressage Training 101.

I hadn’t worked on this process for long when the examiner asked me to give an explanation of what I was doing. I did, similarly to the way in which I just explained it here, and she asked a few questions, which I answered with my same training philosophy in mind. I felt confident it was the right process for the horse in that moment, from a training perspective. And I would stand by that today.

After the catch-ride phase of the exam was over, the examiner took each test participant aside to discuss their performance and indicate whether they had passed or failed. The first two riders looked relieved after their brief conversations with the examiner. They had clearly passed. I was full of confidence in my process and explanation of it as I joined the examiner for my results. I was totally and completely unprepared for her to tell me that I had failed the catch-ride section of the A-level test.

The examiner told me I had not shown the full capability of the second horse well enough during my time riding him. I knew this assessment was made in comparison to how the other candidate had ridden the horse. Without negating the work of the other candidate, I wanted to explain again that I had been filling a training gap in the horse’s understanding of basic flatwork. But I couldn’t find the right words, and I knew there was no point in arguing anyway. The other rider had made the horse look better than I had, and it seemed that was all that mattered to the examiner. She had already made her call, and there was no going back. I was also on the verge of tears, so I could not have spoken clearly if I had tried. I felt like I had been punched in the gut.

The examiner told me I could continue with the rest of the test if I wanted to, but I was devastated, and knew I was in no shape to ride a horse. I also knew that because of my age and the relative infrequency of when A-level tests are offered, there would be no opportunity for me to retake the catch-ride portion of the test, even if I passed every other section.

So that was that. I never even rode Mikey in New York. My mom and boyfriend, who had accompanied me, helped me pack up all the things we had so recently unpacked, and we drove home.

I was so ashamed. I was also angry. Maybe I just wasn’t good enough. But I knew I had a better understanding of training theory and process than some of the other riders I had tested with. I also knew there was nothing I could do about the results. I felt powerless, livid, and embarrassed. I cried when I explained what had happened to Steve, and he agreed that I had demonstrated and explained how to train that particular horse correctly. After talking it over with him, I knew that I would handle the ride the same way if I was back there again, even knowing how it would turn out (with me failing), because that was the right step for that particular horse’s understanding. But that didn’t make me feel any better when I had to tell person after person what had happened.

A few weeks after the test, a local vet who rode with Virginia came to try Mikey. She loved him and bought him (and kept him until he died, many happy years later). I fulfilled my promise to his owner and her parents, sending them the profits from his sale before I headed back to school.

For years after the rating fiasco, even after I’d left Connecticut behind, I told people who asked that I never got to take my A-level test because I never had the horse for it. I did this mostly because I was too embarrassed to simply tell people I had failed. I also didn’t want to go through the process of explaining what had happened, as I didn’t want to come across like a know-it-all. I always knew, though, that Mikey was the horse for it. I just never got the chance to prove it.

The endeavor of trying to earn my A rating held several life lessons for me. The biggest was acknowledging that sometimes you have to choose a process over “looking pretty” in the moment, because it’s the right thing to do in the long term. I would learn time and again this could be very hard to stick to in high-pressure situations, such as those in front of other people or in competitive spaces. But horse shows and clinics are isolated moments in the course of a horse’s career. The bulk of training happens in between those events and is an accumulation of all the little moments you are in contact with a horse. It’s not all going to look pretty. Every one of us has had to fumble our way, ungracefully, through learning new things in our lives—horses too. Sometimes growth is messy, and when you try to gloss over the mess to make sure it looks a certain way from the outside, you will inevitably be leaving some ugly stuff bubbling underneath that will eventually come to the surface.

For that catch-ride horse, and horses like him, he might have never advanced to real collection on the flat because he never truly worked from his own engine or carried his own balance. Or he might have lost confidence and stopped at fences because he didn’t believe his rider when asked to move forward to a better distance. These are both typical issues that tend to surface with horses that are chronically behind the leg. They have a way of manifesting at some point in time, just like our own personal issues that we bury rather than work on. They rear their ugly heads at inopportune moments because we don’t address them when they first appear, because we want to look like we “have it all together.” But if we are striving for successful long-term outcomes, we are better off taking the time to work on things more slowly and methodically, checking for true understanding in ourselves and our equine partners—onlookers and examiners be damned.

Failing my catch-ride test was also one of my first encounters with the effects of shame. Shame is the feeling that you, as a person, are deeply flawed when something goes wrong in your life, rather than being able to separate your identity from that situation. I had a hard time telling people the truth about failing my rating because I thought it reflected on me as a person. Who will still like me if they know? Who will want to hire me to help with their horses? Who will think I’m worthy of their time and attention? Maybe I really am not good enough.

This has been a recurring theme in my life with horses. I couldn’t see it then, but I do in hindsight, even as I still work with the pieces of me that struggle with shame. It’s a tough one to eradicate.