Focus On What You Can Control: Takeaways From Eventing Camp

I was lucky enough to attend the Florida Horse Trials Association annual CAMP, a 2-day clinic in Ocala jam-packed with riding and unmounted learning sessions from a slew of talented eventing professionals for the second year in a row.

This is the adult amateur summer camp I’ve been longing for. I met so many fun and kind adult riders and their lovely horses. When we weren’t riding, we were getting to know each other and swapping stories over wine and pizza back at the barns at the lovely Majestic Oaks Ocala Farm.

Last year, I took my more seasoned Novice/Training level gelding for a good tune-up on our skills in all phases. This year, I brought my ultra green bean, War Feather, an 8-year-old Thoroughbred gelding who ran his last race in December. Wyatt, as I call him in the barn, is my 2023 Thoroughbred Makeover entry. This clinic was well-timed for where we are in the Makeover retraining process.

Wyatt and I were paired in a group of similarly green and young horses. The nickname “rodeo group” certainly stuck. But every single rider & horse pair logged some serious progress over the weekend. It was fun to not only be a part of it, but watch others improve as well. Here are some takeaways from the weekend:

Focus on what you can control

In our green bean group, the goal was really simple: to survive. If we accomplished that, then maybe it was to get around. In the dressage ring, we were encouraged by our instructions (Carol Ogden, president of the FHTA and Megan Fischer-Graham, a dressage trainer for more advanced groups) to focus on riding an accurate test. That meant understanding the true size of a 20-meter circle, how to come through the corner and implement a straight approach across the diagonal, and how to feel the footfall of our halts to encourage the young horses to stand square. It’s all a work in progress, of course, when you’re riding a wet noodle off-track Thoroughbred, but it boiled down to instilling good fundamentals and focusing on what you could control. These were all good reminders and tips for things I can actively be working on at home, too.

Don’t be afraid of forward

I feel like this is one that I need to have tattooed on my body somewhere. It’s easy, especially as an amateur rider, to feel over-faced or out of control as you introduce more pace in the gaits, especially on a young and green horse. But forward energy is key, in many ways, to helping your horse find his balance and to do the job you’re asking, especially over fences. My young horse has a big and powerful canter stride and honestly, we hadn’t done a lot of canter work before this clinic. But Carol encouraged me to let my horse move freely to find his balance and scope over starter-level fences. It was so cool to see and feel him get the hang of both the canter and improve his form over fences as the day went on, and as I learned to trust him at a more brisk pace.

Break it down into baby steps

On Saturday night, Andi Davison from Flourish Veterinary Consulting and an amateur eventer, spoke to the group about goal setting and the benefits of a positive mindset. She encouraged riders to set small, attainable goals to chart progress toward the larger, perhaps more vague or ‘big picture’ goals we hope to achieve in the longterm. This concept felt timely and quite applicable to my current situation – retraining a retired racehorse for a second career as a sporthorse with the hopes of showing off what we’d learned in 10 months at the Kentucky Horse Park in October. I set a goal at the clinic (thanks to help from Andi) to be able to canter full jump courses by the end of April. Thanks to the help from our instructors, Wyatt and I did our first full canter courses on Sunday at the clinic! For our next goal, I’d like to be able to canter an accurate 20-meter circle. These two small steps will help us feel prepared for our debut at starter level eventing hopefully before summer.