Hit a horse training setback at a horse show? Don’t panic – rebuild. As a riding coach, I remind my students to break retraining down into the simplest pieces.

The rest of this article I wrote for Canadian Horse Journals is available on their site https://www.horsejournals.com/riding-training/rider-development/psychology/when-things-go-wrong-show-ring

But he never does that at home!” When my horse responds to a cue “most of the time”, he hasn’t quite learned it. A busy horse show atmosphere is sensory overload for a green horse. By August, judges have sadly DQ’d a scorecard full of horses not “quite” ready for the ring. Summer school stinks

The horse show warm up ring- a sea of horses and riders, each rider in their own head -and under pressure. Time pressure, peer pressure and pressure to succeed in the horse show ring. While riding’s not technically a team sport, looking out for one another benefits everyone!

Learning to carry on after a mistake in the show ring is part of becoming a savvy horse show competitor. Guard against one element of your pattern, course or test dominoing the remaining elements.