{"id":4380,"date":"2026-02-08T19:52:54","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/?p=4380"},"modified":"2026-02-14T04:21:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T12:21:24","slug":"first-ever-horse-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/08\/first-ever-horse-show\/","title":{"rendered":"First Ever: Horse Show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I remember back in 2021, I asked myself the question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf money were not an issue, what would I be doing right now<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It made me realise that I was an adult with autonomy and I could finally learn to ride a horse if I wanted to. And I remember how anxious and scared I was about being the only Black person in a traditionally white-dominated space. So much so that I wrote a zine about it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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5 years later, here I am.
Not only am I bolder and braver, but I’m totally comfortable in my own skin;
fully living and experiencing my life even if I\u2019m the only Black person in the room.
And last weekend I rode in my first ever horse show.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This was a schooling show, and I rode in two \u201cwalk trot equitation over poles\u201d classes and I ended up placing 4th and 6th which landed me some ribbons! My goal with this show was to have fun and gain the experience of being in a show and that kind of environment. It really reminded me of when Eden and I did schutzhund, and the times I volunteered at the DVG Nationals.<\/p>\n\n\n

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I think the thing that I\u2019m most proud of accomplishing is being able to remember two courses and successfully riding them. In the past, whenever I saw a course map my brain would just turn off and I would immediately tell myself, \u201cI can\u2019t remember all of that<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t have the brain capabilities to remember all of that<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sick and tired of talking down to myself, and discounting what I\u2019m capable of doing.
So immediately telling myself that I can\u2019t do something is a behaviour that I\u2019ve been working hard of ridding myself of in the past couple of years. I am more than capable\u2014and able\u2014to do anything I want.
And so since I started riding, I\u2019ve been playing puzzle and memory games to challenge myself to get better at remembering things. That way, when the time came for me to ride a course I could be more confident in my memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m a competitive person, but I think first and foremost we all need to remember\u2014and prioritise\u2014having fun and being kind to each other (this includes the animals we ask to compete with us).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019m so thankful and happy that I have such an amazing trainer, and every other student at this barn is an absolute gem of a human being who embodies those traits. And it felt good to not only participate in the show, but to also cheer on and support the other riders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m so proud of myself and overjoyed to be representing the melanated equestrian girlies in the ring\u2014and during Black History Month, no less!! I know Younger Shirley would’ve been so amazed to learn about the woman she would one day grow up to be.
Here\u2019s to celebrating not just Black history, but Black futures as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I remember back in 2021, I asked myself the question: \u201cIf money were not an issue, what would I be doing right now?\u201d It made me realise that I was an adult with autonomy and I could finally learn to ride a horse if I wanted to. And I remember how anxious and scared I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,27],"tags":[28,25,64],"class_list":["post-4380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventures","category-brain-dump-2","tag-brain-dump","tag-for-me","tag-the-saddle-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4380"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4413,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions\/4413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}