The Amateur’s Guide: Still Learning

By Sarah Farrell

It all started with a smaller local show.

Four days of showing. A beautiful show with just the right atmosphere. Friendly, supportive, well managed and community focused. Exactly the kind of horse shows we need more of in our sport.

Annie and I had a great time.

Then, with just one day in between, we packed up and headed to the next show.

A larger, week-long show. One that has a lot of nostalgic significance for me. It’s not the biggest show we’ll do all year, but it’s my favorite. And this year, I really wanted to do well.

I’d been looking forward to these 11 days all year and like every adult amateur knows, getting there had taken weeks of planning.

Projects at work were carefully scheduled around it.

The family calendar had giant blocks of days colored in with “Sarah’s at a horse show.”

I’d built a plan for my business so it could mostly run without me.

I’d said, “I’ll be at a horse show that week,” more times than I could count.

I knew it would be busy. But it wasn’t just a week and a half I was hoping to survive. It was time I had set aside for something I loved. I wanted to be present for it, enjoy it and completely soak it in.

For a little while, everything went according to plan. Then it didn’t.

On the Monday between shows, the one day I’d left myself to tie up loose ends before checking out for the next week, a project at work completely unraveled.

Mission critical. It would require my full attention over the next five days if I wanted to save it.

At almost the same time, it became clear that my husband and I hadn’t interpreted “I’ll be at a horse show all week” quite the same way.

His work needed him in the office (vs working from home) and my son still had baseball practices, games and a birthday party to get to.

Now “we” were figuring out rides, practices and play dates in real time.

At first, I thought I could hold it all together.

I quietly let go of filming new content at the horse show.

My son became very familiar with early mornings and the character building that happens when you do stalls at 6 a.m., then sleep on a bench under a cooler for a while to warm up.

I answered work emails and checked in with clients between Annie’s morning bath and my first class.

The parents at baseball are now completely unfazed when I show up in breeches and boot socks, and they sweetly ask how the “horse event” went that day.

For a few days, the plates kept spinning.

Until they didn’t.

By Friday, I wasn’t really at the horse show anymore. Physically, yes. Mentally, I was everywhere else.

I was thinking about work. Baseball laundry. Birthday gifts. Tournament schedules. The consequences of my flustered 10:30 p.m. work email.

Whether I’d forgotten something. I did.

Whether I’d dropped another ball. I had.

I was doing all the things, but none of them well.

Then came Derby day.

My favorite class, at my favorite venue of the year.

The morning started with Annie spooking in the ring.

Then I went off course.

Then I added in the two-stride.

That was my Derby preparation.

Later that afternoon in the Derby, Annie stopped at fence six.

That was enough. I scratched the rest of the show.

I had never scratched like that before.

I stood back at the barn torn knowing that I could still continue. There were two more days of showing. There were more classes I had entered, more chances to turn things around and more opportunities to prove that one bad day didn’t have to define the whole week.

Could I have pushed through the weekend? Probably.

Normally, I’d encourage anyone not to let one bad day define their horse show. That’s part of this sport. It’s also one of the things horse people are proudest of.

Horses teach us resilience and grit. They teach us to get back on. To keep going. To work through fear, pain, disappointment, frustration, exhaustion and every other reason we might have to stop.

Those lessons are what make horse girls a special breed. They have defined us and shaped us our whole lives. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

But this time was different.

There isn’t a prize for being the adult amateur carrying the heaviest mental load.

There isn’t a ribbon for holding together the most moving parts.

I told my coach I was scratching, got in my car and…. I felt relieved.

In fact, so relieved that it surprised me. It even scared me.

I’d spent months looking forward to these two weeks. I’d worked incredibly hard to make them happen.

How could I possibly feel relieved that they were over, especially when they had ended the way they did?

For a few days, I wondered if it meant something bigger.

Maybe I didn’t want this as much anymore. Maybe horse showing had become too expensive, too complicated and too difficult to fit into this season of my life.

Those thoughts felt very real.

And for a week or so, I believed them. It took some time to recover before I could reflect properly and understand something else.

The relief I felt driving home that Friday night wasn’t about horse showing. It was about finally putting down the impossible weight I had been trying to carry all week.

As adult amateurs, we’re remarkably good at making the horse show happen.

We juggle careers. Families. Finances. Schedules.

We make sacrifices for months so we can have one week doing the thing we love most. And it can feel unfair.

Maybe it is.

But maybe this is all part of navigating this era of being a horse girl.

It might be unrealistic to believe life will stop life-ing while I’m off at a horse show, doing my hobby. The thing I do for fun.

Work will still need me.

My family will still need me.

There will still be baseball laundry, birthday gifts, deadlines and responsibilities waiting for my attention.

So what am I supposed to do about it?

The lesson can’t be that I need to become tougher. Or that the answer is to be better organized, or how to have stricter boundaries around ‘me time’. And the goal can’t be to just get better at carrying it all.

I’ve already learned that lesson and I've spent a lifetime proving just how much I can carry.

That isn't the lesson horses are trying to teach me anymore.

And I already know how to push through. Horses taught me that years ago.

In fact, much of my identity has been shaped by those lessons.

When I was child, horses taught me to be confident and brave.

As a Junior, they taught me independence and responsibility.

In my 20s, they taught me resilience and instilled a work ethic that is still the foundation I stand on today.

But maybe being an adult amateur is teaching me something new. Maybe the lesson isn’t always pushing harder. Maybe resilience doesn’t always look like surviving every bad day or proving how much I can carry.

Was scratching actually quitting? Or was it the first compassionate decision I had made for myself all week?

I still don’t know that I would make the same choice every time. There will be other difficult rounds and other weekends when pushing through is exactly what I need to do.

But this time, I felt pushed far enough.

The stop at fence six wasn't the whole problem. It was simply the moment where it became obvious that I was no longer keeping it all together.

Everything I'd been carrying all week had finally caught up with me and it cost me the thing I'd been looking forward to most.

I still have one horse show left this season, and life won’t suddenly become less complicated by then. In fact, it’s the week school starts and fall sports begin again so…. send prayers.

I’ll still have responsibilities outside the barn.

I’ll still have to juggle.

But maybe I don’t have to spend the whole week proving how much I can carry.

I’ve already spent a lifetime learning how to endure.

Maybe this era of horse showing is teaching me to recognize what deserves my endurance, and what deserves my compassion.