After one recent lesson I was really frustrated by my on-going problem with keeping my heels down.  I'm the only rider who has this problem, of course.  Instead of my heels going down, my toes seem to want to do so, which has me wondering if feet can be dyslexic.

A few days later I was cleaning out my office, and going through old CDs and DVDs to see what was on them.  I came across a video of myself at one of my early shows--about the second or third one I'd been to.  It was our championship class at that particular Class A show.

Ouch!  Was it ever hard to watch.  I looked...well, let's not mince words...awful.  By the way, we won the championship, which just goes to show ya--something.

But while I winced and laughed my way through that video, I realized something.  I HAVE made progress!  I'm NOT a hopeless schlump on horseback!  As soon as that video was over, I grabbed my class video of my recent Regionals Championship ride.   I hadn't watched it yet, so I thought it would be interesting to compare. 

While I got the gate in that class, I was really pleasantly surprised to see myself looking like a whole different rider in the ring. (Note to self:  not riding into a clump of horses and causing your poor horse to break gait is actually even MORE important than keeping one's heels down.)

The takeaway?  Keep a visual record of your progress, so when the riding gets tough, you can take some pride in how far you've come.  And by all means, keep your heels down.  One of us has to!