The Anxiety Monster

For once it wasn't Stinker that was suffering from the anxiety monster.  It all started on Tuesday when life decided to flip me the bird.  He ended up getting Tuesday off because I didn't get home until 9 pm despite my plans to leave early and ride in the evening.

Sad and pathetic Socks to go with sad and pathetic me

It is a well established fact my horse does not like it when I am anxious.  He feeds off my energy and we both end up a hot mess because I don't have my usual patience and he gets even more flustered.  Wednesday, I tried to ride and it was less than ideal to put it nicely.

Stolen from SB

First off he was wound up from cantering on Saturday, so every little leg movement resulted in head straight up and him asking "CANTER????"  Yeah, dude so not what I was going for.  Eventually I settled for some semi decent work and called it a day because I just wasn't in a good frame of mind to improve anything.

Sad pathetic forelock plus sweaty face

The rest of the week I kind of settled down until right before my lesson on Saturday.  I got not so great news right before I was leaving.  I was really upset and didn't even want to go to my lesson.  I thought about canceling but couldn't bring myself to do a last minute cancel.  So I decided I could always see if she was willing to ride.

I was so distracted I didn't even get a bonnet packed, so the world saw his dinky little forelock.  It was terrible.  Luckily Stinker loves trainer and had his game face on for her.  In the end I was very happy that I sucked it up and rode.  And I was really impressed that he mostly ignored my anxiety energy and went to work instead of worrying about why I was worried.