Okay, I admit I woke up dreading my lesson yesterday with the trainer from Germany. For the past two days Baleno and I had been yelled at, lectured, ranted at, and although I know I’m not supposed to take it personally, I couldn’t help feeling I was the worst rider on the planet. And worse yet I was probably ruining my horse.

Years ago when I was a groom at a large competition barn, there was a woman who boarded her horse there. She took countless lessons and bounced and pulled and jerked and never seemed to get any better. We were all bothered by her riding and lack of improvement and frequently noted that there was a special place in horse heaven for her beautiful, unbelievably tolerant horse. “Poor guy,” we’d lament, as she bounced and pulled and whammed against his sides with her ungraceful aids.

I remember at the time mentioning to my boss that if I was ever that woman—in other words stuck forever with horrible habits I can’t seem to break to the point that I was torturing my horse—that I hoped someone would tell me. It’s like the time I had to tell an employee he had body odor. We were both embarrassed but he appreciated that I mentioned it. He promptly changed deodorant.

So after my lesson yesterday, when my horse spent 45 minutes looking like a giraffe instead of the 3rd level dressage horse he’s supposed to be, after he was so annoyed by the whole exercise he reared, and after the German trainer said five million times, RIGHT REIN!!!!!!!!!!! I was not looking forward to my lesson. I felt like that woman. The one who never improves.

So dreaded was this lesson that I had all kinds of scenarios running through my head. I imagined a sudden stomach virus.  (“You know, I spent the night at the porcelain alter; I’m going to cancel”). I imagined a minor bout of totally curable, unserious lameness. “Baleno’s just a little bit off. I think we should cancel.” Last night during dinner I had a totally explainable muscle spasm in my left arm, which immediately escalated into an imaginary heart attack. Who could blame me for wimping out on an equestrian tongue lashing if I was in the midst of a myocardial infarction? ?

But the weather took care of the problem for me. After two days of glorious sun, we had a stinker of day on our hands. Cold, windy, snow falling in the high country, flurries in town, and did I mention wind? But I’m also known as a non-weather wimp. “That Emily will ride in any kind of weather,” I’ve heard them say. The German, however, was not quite so hardy. Turns out he was miserable out there teaching, and about a half an hour before I was due to load up Baleno and start driving, he cancelled.

Even if the weather hadn’t been miserable, why wouldn’t I just bail out? I don’t quite know the answer to that. Perfectionism? A sense that I hadn’t quite conquered my ability to “take the best and leave the rest” as I’d been counseled? That I had paid good money? That my pride forced me to persevere? Where does pride end and misery begin? Who knows. But sometimes we get just a little too serious about our hobbies.