The horse who was a saint at home and a bundle of nerves everywhere else

There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from unloading a horse at a competition, watching him throw his head up and hollow his back while he eyes the dressage arena like it personally betrayed him, and then driving home three days later with a string of disappointing scores and a head full of questions. For years I had heard eventers talk about horses who were foot perfect at home and feral out, and I always nodded politely, assuming they were exaggerating or that the problem was the rider. Then I bought the horse.

He was a big, dark bay with a kind eye and a soft mouth. At home he floated across the flat, jumped everything I pointed him towards, and cantered past barking kelpies without so much as flicking an ear. He loaded like a dream. He stood on the float like he was reading the paper. The moment we rolled into the lorry park at our first event together - the Melbourne International Three Day Event at Werribee, the one everyone in Victoria jokes about because you can smell the city from the cross-country warm-up - he turned into a different animal. Spooking at flags, jogging on the spot, snapping his jaw at the bit. I walked out of the dressage arena wondering if I had somehow missed a memo, and trying to understand why a horse so relaxed in his own paddock became so wound up at a competition.

The horse who behaved like a guru at home

Let me start with the version of him I knew best, because I think that is where most of us get stuck. At home, in the sand school behind the house, with only the magpies and the wind for an audience, he was the horse I had always dreamed of owning. He warmed up quietly, listened to my half-halts like he had been reading my mind for years, and cruised through changes of rein without a squeak. Our dressage tests at home were the sort that made me feel smug enough to record on my phone. I would pop into the Mania in the Middle updates and write things like "he's going to win a 1*," and my friends would roll their eyes.

He was the same on the cross-country schooling fences. I could school the whole Adcock Cooper Hollow complex out at Boneo Park and he would prance through it like he had been there a hundred times. Our local rallies, the ones held at Werribee or down at Ballarat, were a social occasion rather than a test. He ate his haynet, watched the other horses, and went home. So when I started entering proper events, I genuinely believed I was on a good thing. The slow realisation that I had a horse who was perfect at home but tense at shows was a humbling one, and it was the start of a much longer education than I had bargained for.

What changed when the float hit the road

The first warning sign, looking back, was the float. Not loading - he always loaded - but the moment the engine started. He would crane his neck to look out the back window and start to chew the bit. By the time we pulled into a competition venue, his neck was crested, his eyes were wide, and any softness I had at home had evaporated. I tried every trick I knew: longer travel, shorter travel, a calmer float mate, a calmer float mate who was a gelding, a calmer float mate who was a mare. Nothing changed the look he gave me when I opened the back ramp.

At our second event together - a local one-day at Tatura, the kind where you set up under a gum tree and your mum waves from the tailgate - he was so wound up in the warm-up that he cantered off with me during the first leg yield. I pulled him up, took a breath, and tried again. Same result. I sat in the lorry park afterwards with a cup of tea going cold in my hand and thought, right, something has to change. Not the horse. Me. And probably a few of the things I was doing around him.

Reading the signs of arena stress

It took me a while to separate what I was seeing from what I was feeling. The tight back, the clamped tail, the horse that would not let me bend him left or right, the sudden desire to canter before I asked - all of it was just his way of saying that he was frightened and he did not have the tools to tell me gently. I had spent so long reading about training scale and suppleness that I had forgotten to read the horse.

I started keeping a notebook after every competition, scribbled on the back of a photocopy of my test sheet. I wrote down what he did before the test, what he did during, and what I did in the warm-up. Patterns emerged. He was worst first thing in the morning. He was worse when the warm-up was busy. He was much worse if I had argued with him the night before about his feed or his rug. He was calmer if he had twenty minutes to graze on a long line before I got on. None of this was revolutionary, but it was information. And information, as anyone who has tried to get a horse fit in a heatwave at Sydney International Three Day Event in January knows, is half the battle.

Changing the warm-up and the routine

Once I had the data, I started to experiment. I changed our warm-up to look more like our work at home. I dropped the draw reins I had been using because they made him worse. I started lunging him for five minutes in the warm-up before I got on - not to tire him, but to let him see the venue from the ground. I stopped lunging for events at places like Adelaide Horse Trials in the middle of summer, because the heat out there can turn a worked horse into a wreck, and I added walk breaks for about twenty minutes after the test to let him graze.

The biggest change, though, was the day before. I used to school him at competition venues on the Saturday morning before our Sunday test. Now I keep Saturday as a quiet day. A short hack, a graze, plenty of carrots, and the sort of conversation you have at three in the arvo in a lorry park at Wallaby Hill when the sun is coming sideways through the trees and everyone is too tired to pretend they are professionals. That single change - giving him a day to be a horse - was probably worth more than any training session I have ever paid for.

Working on the connection from the saddle

The other thing I had to fix was me. My old habit was to ride harder when he got tense, to push through the resistance because I had been taught that was what winners did. The more I pushed, the more he braced, and the more he braced, the more I pushed. It was a slow-motion argument that neither of us could win. I had a long think about how I wanted to ride him and, more importantly, what I wanted him to feel when I asked a question.

I went back to basics. I spent a whole winter on respond to my seat work, which is a slow and unsexy process that has nothing to do with ribbons. I rode him without reins in the school at home until my lower back ached. I rode him out in the bush at Yarra Glen until he stopped flinching at the sound of a ute. I taught him that pressure off means try again, and pressure on means try softer. None of this translated instantly at competitions. It translated gradually, the way real training always does.

What the shows taught me about my own nerves

Here is the bit I do not love admitting out loud. A lot of his tension was mine. I had been so wound up about producing him, about justifying the price I had paid, about not embarrassing myself in front of the local eventing crew, that I was riding every test like it was a final. He could feel that. Horses always can. The day I realised that the horse was a mirror was the day I started to make real progress, and it was also the day I started to take my own preparation seriously.

I started doing the boring things. I planned my test the night before and said the movements out loud in the dark. I watched videos of the warm-up, not to copy, but to remember that everyone is winging it a little. I drank water, ate brekkie, and put sunscreen on even when it was overcast at places like Wallaby Hill, because the sun will bite you through the cloud in the Southern Highlands. I would sneak away to catch the briefing on my phone in the lorry park as a way of resetting my brain between phases. (Look, I have a day job. Horses do not pay the mortgage. Anything that gives me five minutes of not-thinking about the dressage test is a win.)

The biggest shift came when I started treating the event as one ride in a long list of rides, rather than the ride. He felt that too. He started to lower his head in the warm-up. He started to look at the dressage boards instead of through them. He stopped jogging when I picked up the contact. We still have off days, and we still have days when he is a complete goose, but the gap between the horse I have at home and the horse I take to shows is closing. It has been closing slowly, which is the only way it was ever going to close anyway.

If you have a horse who is a saint in the sand ring and a stress-head at the show, the work is real and it is mostly unsexy, but it is also the work that will give you back the partnership you thought you had bought in the first place. Start a notebook, change one small thing at a time, and remember that the horse is reading you as much as you are reading him. There is no quick fix and there is no shortcut, but the horse on the other side of it is worth every late night and every kilometre on the highway.