I have been competing with performance horses for twelve years in a circuit of amazing horses and kind, supportive riders. My hope for us as a community is to continue growing our industry while also caring for horses outside of our immediate show circle.

1. Being open to experience is as valuable as being an expert

The show horses we partner with are usually perfectionists at one thing: their jobs. The show arena is their domain, and they spend their careers building skills. Often, they are “too good” at their jobs to try a variety of disciplines, and they are “too fragile” for adventures outside of the arena. While show horses tend to be particular about who can and cannot ride them, backyard horses are usually willing to take care of anyone. Backyard horses are the best at opening doors for us. Many of us grew up on backyard horses that made us versatile riders by attempting as many different riding activities as we asked them to.

2. We are allowed to mess up as many times as it takes for us to learn

Backyard horses tend to be more forgiving than show horses. When we practice with our show horses, we are careful about sending the right cues, and we have to be constantly aware of our spacing and timing in the arena. While the most tolerant amateur show horses get frustrated when we continually fail to be ideal communicators, backyard horses remind us that we are allowed to make mistakes...lots of mistakes. As show competitors, we fear making mistakes when the stakes are high. Backyard horses teach us that we can learn more from trial and error than from the pursuit of consistent perfection.

3. People assign worth to horses, and perfection is a constructed ideal

As competitors, we are conditioned to evaluate horses at first sight. We do this even unconsciously. Although none of us like to admit it, we all compare our four-legged teammates to other people’s show horses. There. I said it. But what if the ideal horse is a socially constructed concept? When I was eight years old, I asked my trainer, “What is beauty?” To answer my question, he taught me about conformation by putting a block-headed pinto and a dishy-faced Arabian side by side. From then on, I understood the rules for beauty, but I am still not sure if I believe them. When we look at less-than-ideal backyard horses that we love, we see that perfection can come in the form of sway backs, short necks, and uneven coats.

4. There is no “prime” age

For some of us, our backyard horses are foals growing up at home or retirees. They teach us that horses have lives before and after their show careers. They make us realize that knowing a horse during all of its life stages is more meaningful than partnering with a show horse during the peak of its career. We may outgrow our show horses, but our backyard horses grow with us.

5. When we put horse shows in context, we become less competitive and more supportive.

When we won our first prize at a show after many hours of practice, we admired it and thought, “my precious.” But when we are greeted by our backyard horses with friendly nickers when we return home from a show, we realize that an even better accomplishment is making faithful equine friends that want nothing more from us than our company. This realization makes us take horse show results less seriously but horsemanship and sportsmanship more seriously.

6. We do not have to be in a rush.

Some of us are driven by progress. We watch our horse show videos, critique ourselves, wonder how we were so bad just a few months ago, and make plans to improve. Others of us are laid-back. We are happy learning at our own pace, we are proud of how far we have come, and we plan a series of shows in our yearly schedule in order to escape everyday life. Sometimes, despite all our planning, our trainers will still truthfully tell us before we hope to depart for a show, “You are not ready yet.” In a fast-paced world and an even faster-paced show world, it helps to have backyard horses, that have no agenda, to remind us that horses cannot be rushed. We should push ourselves, but not rush ourselves and our teammates. A slow day spent trail riding with backyard horses can be even more effective for getting in touch with our inner horse lover than an efficient day of lessons with show horses.

7. We can love all horses.

If we find and admire traits in backyard horses that are not obviously admirable by show standards, then our love for horses becomes universal. We would not think of “quality” as something that has to do with the outward appearance or innate talent of a select few that won the genetic lottery, but rather as something that we can discover in every horse. There are retired draft horses that deserve comfort in their last days. There are nurse mare foals that need to be adopted into nurturing environments so that they can grow. There are off-the-track horses that need fresh starts. Loving backyard horses helps us step outside of our show circles, and see that the majority of the horses on the planet are here just to be horses. They may not be ideal to us as show horses, but we can try to be ideal to them as caretakers. The funny thing is--if we allow them to, backyard horses can help us expand our empathy for all horses far beyond our backyards.