I frequently get asked by my friends and family about how Dom is doing and how he is coming along, and normally, throughout this process I have been able to give detailed answers and describe all of the things we have been working on and any of Dom’s silly antics. But this past month hasn’t been the same.

I have been so busy with other aspects of my life that I haven’t had the time I was hoping to spend with Dom. So, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how far Dom and I have come since we started this journey together.

Riding and training horses isn’t my profession. Throughout our journey to the Thoroughbred Makeover, I have been balancing my full-time job, training Dom, taking lessons, spending time with friends and family, caring for my dogs and other horses, and of course the other general day-to-day chores. But this past month was extra busy! My work picked up, we had many family events to attend, and I was experiencing some health issues, which are hopefully resolved for the time being.

It has been a lot to manage, and I’m certain so many other horsemen and horsewomen understand the struggle!

Even though I know there are others who understand and must feel the same way, I still felt like I was letting Dom down and letting myself down. I have been seeing online and through social media the progress that other trainers and horses have been making, and it has made me worried that we might not be as ready for the Makeover as I had originally hoped.

Progress in Dom’s cantering. (Courtesy of Jessica Hanneman)

But the other day I had a talk with my good friend Dustin, and expressed my doubt about whether or not Dom and I should make the trip to Kentucky. I told him that with the expense of traveling and not feeling as prepared as I had hoped, I didn’t know if we should make the journey and potentially embarrass ourselves in front of everyone at the Kentucky Horse Park.

But what he told me really stuck with me.

He knows that Dom is my forever horse and I don’t plan on adding to my herd for some time, so he asked me, “When would you get the chance to have this experience again?”

He told me that even if I make the trip down and we don’t score well or have some embarrassing moment, it will be a story that I can look back on one day and laugh about. Or even if we’re driving down and we have a truck problem and can’t make it, we will have a story to tell and at least we would have tried.

His perspective really made me reflect on why I signed up for the Thoroughbred Makeover in the first place. I didn’t sign up because I thought Dom and I would win. I signed up because I love Thoroughbreds, I wanted to show that they can have the potential for so much more than just racing, and I wanted to help show that even in cold and snowy rural Western Wisconsin, they can still have successful second careers.

So I reflected on how far Dom and I have come since we started this journey together. Before I bought him in October of 2022, I hadn’t ever taken a dressage lesson or ever owned a Thoroughbred. In fact, prior to 2020, it had been 10 years since I had spent any considerable amount of time in the saddle, and when I bought Dom, I was definitely still regaining my confidence as a trainer and had set out to learn a completely new skill, dressage.

I had a lot to learn about putting/keeping weight on him and maintaining his feet. When we started Dom’s training, he didn’t think that he could back up (especially in a straight line) or canter a 20-meter circle, and he didn’t understand much about lunging either. He was a little scared of going on walks down the road away from the farm, and he was terrified of cows in the field.

But now, he is putting on muscle, getting a top line, has special shoes that protect his feet, and is on hoof supplements. He can lunge both directions and is no longer afraid of cows (at least at a distance). We can back in a straight-line, an L-shape, and back U-turns. But what I think is the biggest sign of the progress that we have made has been our work in the canter. It has been the hardest gait for us to work on together, but recently the pieces really started to feel like they are coming together. We have had longer moments where it felt as though Dom was really trying to be collected and on the bit, lift his front end, and have impulsion, and I was able to support him with my legs, provide enough contact in the reins, and sit up tall. Now, his head placement wasn’t perfect and we didn’t keep our much-improved form for any great length of time because we are both still learning and gaining the muscle, but compared to where we started (not being able to canter on a lunge line in a 20-meter circle or ever having sat in a dressage saddle), it is a HUGE improvement!

Even though we aren’t at the point where I hoped we would be, we have learned so much together, come so far from where we started, and will keep learning more over the next couple of months! And although there are other trainers out there who have more experience and other horses who might have progressed further along, at this point, we are still planning on showing in dressage and competitive trail at the Thoroughbred Makeover. Like my friend Dustin said, “No matter how it goes, we will still have a story to tell and will remember it for years to come.”