01/25/2020
I’m not crying ur crying 😭
We're not crazy.
Hours of training come down to three minutes in the ring. Months of preparation come down to eight minutes on course. Hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds come down to six minutes riding a page of movements.
What you see is three minutes in the ring, a six minute test or an eight minute run. You see that rider being judged on a matter of seconds, seconds that they have worked days, weeks, months, even years for.
But what you don't see is the rider sat up in the stable for night after night, wishing, praying and willing their horse to eat after colic surgery.
You don't see the rider sitting in a vet's reception, filling out yet another set of insurance claim forms, knowing that the claim will be rejected and what little savings had built up since the last vet bill would soon vanish.
You don't see the rider who works 14 hour days but always heads to the yard after work to lunge or ride and put their horse to bed for the night, despite the fact they haven't eaten all day.
You don't see the rider who invests every single penny they have into lessons and training because they couldn't afford a schoolmaster and had to settled for a half-cracked reject horse with a whole bunch of ''quirks''.
You don't see the rider who sits on the edge of their bed each night and worries they aren't doing enough, they aren't training enough, they aren't spending enough, that they aren't good enough.
You see seconds of a horse and rider, what you don't see are the parts that matter the most. The hard work, the blood, sweat, tears, the horses we lost, the horses we saved, the horses who saved us...
Friends, partners, long suffering husbands and family spend years watching us chasing goals and dreams only to find that, when we achieve them, we just raise the bar a little higher a start all over again because we don't give up, we always want just a little bit more.
You don't understand what we do, you don't have a passion that sets your soul on fire, you don't have huge dreams that are scary just to think about, you're the ones who call us crazy.
But looking at you, living a life without a passion, a life without dreams...well, from where we're stood, you're the crazy ones.
© cromwellandlucy ©
Photo credit: The Eventing Dentist taken by Dave Cameron Photography
