I recently went to my first ever Arabian Horse Association regional show. Region IV in Nampa, Idaho to be exact. I had no idea what to expect. My friend, a horse show veteran who’s competed and won at nationals, told me to expect to feel more nervous. So that’s all I knew.

But I didn’t feel a little more nervous. There wasn’t a swarm of butterflies in place of the usual fluttering few.

Instead, I felt a crushing sense of doom and dread, worrying the entire 8-hour drive over that something bad was going to happen. Having lived through the show to tell about it, I now know this doom cloud, like the dirt cloud around Pig-Pen, was due to the elevated stress of the show. But my cute little naïve brain didn’t know that. And I wouldn’t figure it out until going through a few rough days.

So, if you’re an amateur getting ready to head to your first big show, whatever that means to you and your discipline, here are some things to keep in mind. These aren’t to scare or intimidate you. Just to get you thinking about them and preparing yourself so you’re not quaking in your Ariat boots with no one to talk to and trying to keep the cold-sweats from pitting out your show shirt.

1. Higher Expectations Means Higher Stress

The layers of expectation and stress are like striated bands of rock across the trainers, the grooms, and the clients. The pressures are different for each person, but they’re pressing down on everyone.

The trainers feel a bigger sense of expectation to perform. For their horses to win. The reputation of their barn, and their brand, is on full display. You might not ditch your trainer if you aren’t winning, but plenty of people do. To some degree, it makes sense. People want to win. And a winning barn is bringing in clients. But those expectations can also be a burden. Which is why you should thank your trainer whether you’re winning or not. (And a quick aside, if you’re one of those people who thinks about ditching the barn at the first glimmer of a missed championship, make sure you recognize that you’re the one in the saddle and the entire ride is left in your hands. Literally. The reins are literally in your hands. The trainers can only do so much.)

Grooms feel the higher pressure of a bigger show in the form of work. Lunging, grooming, and prepping horses. Coordinating prep time to show time so horses aren’t standing around tied for hours. They keep track of the tack that goes with which horse and for which ride, fully prepared to switch any of it out at a moment’s notice because the trainer (or the client) decides it’s not going to work for the class.

Yours truly switched out her saddle and her bit a couple hours before her class. I watched as the trainers switched in different curb straps, saddle pads, and boots, all for just the right feel before heading into the ring. The grooms help with all of those little changes. Little changes that don’t happen at such a high rate at the smaller shows. Greater expectation breeds exacting preferences.

Which leads me to…

2. Take Care of Your Own Emotional Needs

All the added pressure means the trainers don’t have the capacity to be your trainer, your horse’s caretaker AND your emotional support animal. Their priorities are your horse and your horsemanship. If you’re feeling sad/stressed/emotional/mad, or literally any emotion that isn’t contributing to the quality of your ride, you should call your spouse, your best friend, or get a hug from a fellow competitor. I know we look to the trainers to help us with so much, and they want to, and most of the time they do. But in this environment, at a bigger show, it’s not realistic to get all of your support from them.

• Bring Band-Aids and Neosporin.
• Drink water. More than that.
• Wear sunscreen.
• Do you have to poop?
• Get plenty of sleep.
• Take a shot of whisky if you can’t get to sleep.
• Bring Imodium in case you get the nervous squirts.
• Do NOT take a laxative. I don’t care how backed up you are. You’re just asking for it. Wear your belt looser and just accept your bloated horse-show look.
• Take Aleve for all the other aches and pains.
• You’re a good rider. Trust yourself.
• Have some chocolate. Always chocolate.

3. Take Care of Your Own Non-Emotional Needs Too

Think of all the advice you might get from your mom if you called her up and whined about all your problems, great and small. Then go make a list of what she’d tell you to do. Then paste that list to the back of your phone so you don’t forget what taking care of yourself looks like in the moment when all you can think about is how bad your ride was, how much your head/stomach/back hurts, or how you don’t even know why you show at all. It might look a little something like this…

4. Offer Emotional Support To Your Barn-Mates

In the throes of horse-show induced stress and agony, it can be easy to lose perspective of what’s really important. You and your placings are not, in fact, the center of the universe. Take a moment before your class and look to your friends and tell them good luck. Tell them how good they look in their jackets, dickeys, chaps, whatever. Smile. Tell them a joke. You’ll both laugh and you’ll both unclench just a teensy bit. See if they need anything off of your non-emotional support list. They’ll for sure laugh if you ask them if they think they might need to poop.

5. Keep Perspective

If you have a bad go, remember it’s not a bad life. (See reference to losing perspective above). We’ve all forgotten a pattern, picked up the wrong lead, or got the gate at some point. Take a breath, have a cry in your horse’s stall, then reset. Don’t blame the judge or the dirt or the champion. No one likes a sore loser and you do yourself disservice anyway. Learn from your mistakes. A trainer I know who likes to be referred to as the Boondock Warrior said he never learned as much from a win as he did from getting his ass kicked in a class. Lick your wounds. Reflect on your pain points and where you have to get better. Then pick yourself up and commit to doing better.

6. Make sure to celebrate

You’re at a bigger show! You put in the work to get there. Make sure you take some time to look around, to appreciate the progress you’ve made to get you to this point. And whatever your placing, find the silver lining. It can be easy to focus on what didn’t go right. That’s how we grow. But if all you do is focus on the negative, the experience isn’t going to feel like much of a party. And who wants to spend thousands of dollars to show their horse just to beat themselves up for not doing better? (Yes, I know, lots of people DO this. But I’m trying to help you not be one of those people.)