I Did It!

There it is.  My green string.  I can hardly believe it.

I PASSED MY LEVEL 3.

This means more to me than I can ever explain.

I set out to achieve L3 and somewhere in the middle, I realized that what I wanted was the horsemanship and not the string.  After my liberty audition, I was determined that my freestyle would flow naturally out of my progress with Cricket.  I was not going to "try for my freestyle."

So I just went about playing and riding.  And things got better and better.  I had folks telling me to just video it and get it done.  I didn't want to - not because I was afraid of failing but because I didn't want to turn everything into something artificial.

My goal, as I prepared for camp, was simply to go and just let things unfold.  If nothing else, Carol would give me feedback on what I needed to achieve L3.

On the second day of camp, Carol asked us to ride a figure-8 with 1 or 2 sticks.  When it was my turn, I just started at the walk, asking Cricket to find the pattern.  We moved to a trot and then just flowed into the canter.  It was a little helter-skelter but it was okay.  We worked it out.  I could hear the strains of "Barbie Girl" over the loudspeaker and just started to have FUN!

And then I heard it.  Carol's voice.  "That's solid level 3 riding."  And I knew we had it.

As we wrapped up camp on Tuesday, Carol asked us for our highlights.  I told her my biggest highlight was not necessarily my green string.  It was that I came to camp and for the first time, I wasn't the one saying, "I'll just trot" or "I'm not going to canter."  It was that I made this journey with my horse.  Truthfully, the string was just gravy.