Lighting the Fire: 2026 Goals

 Today is the Chinese New Year and it is the year of the Fire Horse.  According to Chinese Astrologers it is the year to take action and start galloping. 

Winter is still present here but the sun has some warmth to it and the days are getting longer. You can feel that spring is coming.  

enjoying being naked

guess who's 2?! 

I'm getting itchy to be riding again. So it makes sense to work on my goals for the year.  

For Me: 

1. Be relevant 

I always find it interesting how certain messages seem to come from multiple channels.  I was listening to a podcast from Stacy Westfall that really resonated: She was talking about how riders can freeze or shrink when horses get ramped up. It comes from a desire to be calm but is often perceived by the horses as being abandoned. That we need to match their energy to help them know what to do. Then I saw a post on FB from Dr. Shelley Appleton. she was talking about how women are taught from a young age to shrink and not take up space. But this doesn't work with horses 

"Because horses do not interpret shrinking as kindness. They interpret it as irrelevance.

When you hesitate because you do not want to upset your horse, when you soften your request halfway through, when you step back the moment you feel uncertain or judged, your horse does not admire your sensitivity. Your horse simply concludes, “I’ll organise this.”

So it scans the environment. It drifts. It disconnects. Not because it is dominant or damaged, but because you diluted your own significance."

When Carmen was really acting up I would try to stay calm and took off all the aids. That just freed her up to make choices. Then last year when Quaid was struggling I tried to create a calm centre but in that I stopped giving him direction. So he fell back on instinct. 

All of which is a long rambling way to say my overarching goal is to stay present with my horses and be relevant.  

2. Work on my health and fitness: I aim to continue to work on my strength, flexibility and core.  

3.  Stretch myself a bit. I'm hoping to travel further to show this year.  

For Carmen: 

AI is fun even if the feet don't make sense

1. Improve her flexibility and suppleness. Carmen tends to lock her jaw and neck and then everything becomes tight. We ended last year really working on her flexion and I could feel it helping. 

2. improve her self-carriage: push from behind and through transitions. 

3. Improve our transitions: both between and within gaits. This could also be written as 'improve our half-halts because it's all connected. 

Those are all process goals, but I also have some outcome goals: 

1.  be able to do flying changes. We need this to leave second and get to third. 

2. do a freestyle. I keep playing with the idea but never move forward. I'm not sure what's holding me back but I really want to do one so if I write it out 

For Quaid: 

1. Improve Quaid's confidence at home and away

2. Learn to keep his focus on me despite his worries

3.  Establish and keep a forward rhythm 

Outcome goals: 

1. compete at training level 

2. learn to hack out 

For both horses: trailer out and do new things. So far I have Quaid signed up for a groundwork clinic away  and both for two clinics. Like I said above I'm working out a plan to do an additional show away in addition to the two we normally do. 

Winter is still here and I know it's not done with us yet. But it's fun to start thinking about this year and make plans. 

What plans do you have for this year?