What Are You Waiting For?

A letter about seizing the day, trusting your own readiness, and the chances you may not get again.

I returned from the National Dressage Pony Cup deeply moved and introspective.

What did it were the horses and riders. Non-traditional breeds going down the centerline, presented seriously, ridden with real intent, in a big venue that could easily have felt intimidating. Riders of every age and skill level, putting themselves out there in front of judges, in front of strangers, in front of the version of themselves who was probably still telling them they weren't quite ready. There was one moment I kept coming back to. One of my own instructors, someone I respect and admire, took a horse down the centerline at a level that, a few short years ago, would have looked improbable. Not impossible. Improbable. This is the horse whose flying changes, not long ago, were awkward enough that if you had told me at the time she'd be showing this test, this year, I would have raised my eyebrows.

There she was, doing it. Challenging herself and her horse. Within the bounds of reasonable, but decidedly not what anyone had penciled in. And it was inspiring, and I could not stop thinking about it on the drive home.

Expected is not the same as reasonable

I want to name the distinction that ride kept surfacing for me, because I think we blur it constantly.

Some of us tend to wait until the next step feels expected. Until the ride is a foregone conclusion. Until we can look around and see other people going, "yes, of course she's ready." That is a very high bar, and perhaps the wrong bar. Reasonable is a lower bar than expected, and it is often the right one.

Reasonable means the horse can do the work on a decent day. It means you've prepared. It means you've stress-tested the difficult bits and they hold, most of the time, in something like the conditions you'll meet. Reasonable does not require the ride to be inevitable. It requires it to be earned enough. If you wait for expected, you wait for a level of consensus around your readiness that, for most adult amateurs, is not coming until well after the window that actually matters has all but closed.

The most dangerous thing your coach might tell you

If you are lucky enough to work with good coaches, they will almost never tell you that you cannot do a thing. That is not how good coaches think. What they will more likely tell you is that there is no rush. The levels aren't going anywhere. There is always time to improve.

These are, in one sense, completely true statements, and I have said versions of them to myself a hundred times. They are also, in another sense, some of the most quietly costly sentences in this sport.

Because there is a translation problem hiding inside them. Capable and urgent are not the same word. Capable means you can. Urgent means you must, immediately. Your coach is often only reading the second one, and telling you it is absent. She may not be wrong. But readiness does not require urgency. Readiness is its own reason to go. And urgency, it turns out, is not always visible when it is actually present, because the source of the urgency is usually the finiteness of the partnership itself, and the partnership does not put that on a schedule anyone can read in advance.

I know this because it happened to me.

Lilikoi at Prix St. Georges

Eleven years ago, I was schooling the movements of the PSG on my homebred mare. Her name was Lilikoi. Some of you have already met her, in the letter about the ego of being right. This is the same horse, and this is the story of us at PSG.

We were, by any honest read, ready to attempt the test in a show. Not to win it. To go down the centerline, ride it competently, and take the score I could reasonably expect on an above-average day. My coaches at the time discouraged the idea. Not because they thought I couldn't do it. Not because they thought Lilikoi couldn't do it. But because, in the perfectly reasonable frame of the professional trainer, we could (and should) be better prepared. There was no rush. There was time.

I remember sitting with that. And I remember the specific, quiet thing inside me that would not stop saying: I am ready, and she is ready, and I want to know for certain what I already suspect. So I went for it. I entered the show. I rode the test. I scored about where I thought I would, which is to say, just enough to hit the milestone I had wanted, and just enough to confirm my own read of where our partnership actually was on the above-average days.

I went home a little proud of myself and mostly relieved. And I filed it away as one show, one milestone, one good weekend.

What I did not know, sitting in the truck that final day, is that Lilikoi would be permanently retired before we ever got another chance to show. Not at PSG. Not at anything. The next window I was planning for did not come. If I had listened to the eminently reasonable "there's no rush," I would not have that ride. I would have the memory of schooling the movements, and I would have the plans, and I would have no test I actually rode.

I have thought about that weekend many times since, and I have asked myself, in the honest way, whether it was dumb luck or something more. The honest answer is that it was some of both. I could not have known. Nobody can. But I gave myself permission to trust my read, and the universe agreed to hand me the ride before it closed the door. Dumb luck is real. So is going anyway.

What this is, and what it isn't

I want to be careful, because I don't want to confuse readiness with foolhardiness.

This is not blanket approval to "just do it." This is not about showing before your horse is truly prepared, or entering a level whose movements you have not honestly schooled, or letting FOMO override the training scale. That kind of going-for-it costs the horse, and the horse never signed up for our ambition on our timeline.

What this is, instead, is a permission slip. Permission to notice that your own read of your readiness is data, not vanity. Permission to distinguish between "I can" and "everyone else agrees I can," because those two arrive on different schedules and the second one is not required. Permission to hear "there's no rush" as the specific sentence it actually is, which is your trainer, honestly, not seeing urgency from where she stands. Permission to weigh that against what only you know, which is the shape of your own life, your horse's soundness, the window you can actually see.

And most of all, permission to be prepared for any result. If you enter that test and score lower than you hoped, you still have the ride. You still made the decision. You still went. The going was the point. The score was information you would not have otherwise had, and the milestone was real regardless of what came back on paper.

The window you can see

You cannot know how long any partnership has. You cannot know when the next window opens or whether it does. What you can know is what today looks like, what your horse feels like this month, what you have honestly prepared for, and whether, on the above-average days, you are already ready for something you have been told is not urgent.

The instructor I watched go down the centerline at Pony Cup was not being reckless. She was being brave. She had done the work. She had read her horse. She had decided that reasonable was enough, and she had stopped waiting for expected. And she got the ride, and whatever the score was, she has it now, and no one can take it from her.

The next window is not promised. This one is the one you can see.