I sometimes feel that I'll never get as far as I'd like in horseback riding. I co-own a horse (since November), and am learning to ride her, as she's an extremely complicated horse to ride, but I find myself wondering that if I'd bought a more "schoolmaster" type horse, could I have gone to the NAJYRC in '07 or '08? I just feel that, although learning to ride her will make me a better rider in the long run (more flexible in terms of who I can ride), I feel that missing the experience of the NAJYRC may be punishing later on.

Even to me, that sounds spoiled. I co-own a horse, which normally would never have occurred, and still I am unhappy. However, I am a competitor, and knowing that I won't be competing this year dampens my spirits. Especially when I go and watch the other co-owner of my horse compete her. As much as I love watching him ride, I am a bit saddened by it because of the fact that I can't do it myself. That I'm not good enough to do it.

So it comes down to the fact that I own a horse that I'm slightly unhappy, or I guess the word would be frustrated, with. What does this mean? That horses are frustrating me? Or just this one mare?

Perhaps it is because I feel slightly incompetent when I ride her, as if I haven't been riding in my life before, even though I've been riding for six or seven years. I do like her a lot, but even though I've been around her a lot and owned her since November, I don't love her. That could be because we don't share much of a bond, or because she's already bonded in the two years previous to me buying half of her (with the other co-owner). It makes me feel useless, in a way.

Even though she bucks, and kicks, and bites, and rears, I'm still not afraid of her. Most of the people at the barn are afraid of her, but I am not. Is that youthful recklessness, or just bravery? Because it isn't as though I haven't been punished for this sense of "bravery" before. She's bucked me off before. Although she's done worse to other people, that's all she's done to me (and bucked many many times, almost every time I ride her, although I stay on the majority of the time). In a way that makes me feel better, but in