Horses are the ultimate ego leveller. When the horses are appeasing your ego, you are but a mere German trainer away from suicide.

My boss, who could get on a retired donkey and coax passage out of it with a barely visible squeeze of a buttock, was visibly devastated. The rest of us were quite amused, not from any malice, but because we all thought the horse was looking pretty spectacular.

Being a working pupil is hard, because it feels like everyone is purposefully out to get you, horses included. It takes subsequent years to realise that no one is out to get you (except the horses), the industry is just that hard. With horses, whenever something goes wrong, there is always and only one person to blame: the human.

Oh, you can try blame the food – “Vell who iz feeding ze hoss?” – or the tack – “But vhy, did you not hav ze saddle checked?” – or, in desperation, the shoes – “Und WHO hired ze farrier?” … but it all comes down to the common weakest denominator. You.

It’s hard not to take it personally, because, well, it is. So I was heartily cheered to see my superwoman boss choking back the tears as her impeccable seat was picked apart. What a relief to see it happened to everyone! If I had any good sense I would rather have been depressed by the realisation that in SPITE of her forty years experience (and thus my thirty five year shortfall), and in SPITE of sitting on the local version of Totilas, she was STILL struggling. I should have unceremoniously drowned myself in the nearest water trough at this point.

But, as testament to Jilly Cooper’s sordid literary success, horse riders are masochists. What do horses cost? Everything. Will I ever be good enough? Never. Does everything have to hurt? Only if you’re doing it properly.

But it’s not really that simple, is it? Because occasionally, we do get it right. And when it is right… well, there aren’t any words for it, because if there were then everyone would ride horses. In that second, that exceptional second where everything is soft and yet powerful, where we are moving as one with half a ton of free-spirited animal, when we catch a glimpse of a lovely picture in a mirror and go “Oh, I wish that was me, holycrapyayitIS”, suddenly no cost is too great, and every ache is celebrated. We’ve earned our elation, and my god, is it spectacular. And for this reason, we are not masochists, but rather the ultimate optimists. We would sacrifice our weekends and our fingernails for that one perfect transition, that one clean stride, for that exclamation – “JA! WOL!!” – that makes every other minute worth it.

Especially when the next minute involves “Aaaah nein, zat vos sheet.” We live in eternal hope of the next good moment, so keep your heels down, and your chin up, and remember it’s always your fault, but that’s totally okay.