Five Days Until Show
1. Start telling people who will listen how nervous you are and how it’s been twenty years since your last horse show. That way, when you get stanky scores, you can say, “Oh, I was so nervous! Normally we kick ass. Like when I’m riding alone.”
2. Buy a lot of product to make your horse shiny so as to distract the judge from any mistakes you might make. Hope that if you apply enough Show Sheen, the judge might actually be blinded by the gleam emanating from your horse.
3. Worry that you will forget your dressage test. Then tell yourself that if you forget, you will get eliminated and the test will be over sooner. Which could be a good thing.
4. Ride the test a few times in a ring with no letters, just to confuse yourself further.
5. Book extra lessons. Ask your husband, who has never ridden a horse except for that one time when he was eight, to give you a lesson. Listen carefully to everything he has to say, such as “Good! Good! Now do some of the faster one where his legs go all funny.”
6. Purchase a mandolin vegetable chopping device from Winners on a whim. While making stir fry seriously cut not one, not two, but three of your fingers. All of which you will need to ride in the horse show. Bandage them so excessively that you can no longer get your riding gloves on.
For more of my admittedly terrific horse advice, check out the Canadian Horse Journal, where my advice column is running.