Her name is Copper. She was a schooling horse I rode at the barn where I took my first English riding lessons. She was very special to me and I was heartbroken when they moved her to their other barn across town for trail rides. I learned a great lesson from her.
She was a difficult horse to ride, in fact since she came to the barn no one had made it through a lesson without falling off. Nobody told me that before I got on.
She had a lot of "energy", and it took a bit of work to keep her at a walk, but otherwise she gave me no troubles at all. We even did some jumping. She was a great jumper.
After the lesson was over and I was walking out of the arena one of the older girls came over to me. She told me how impressive my ride was and apparently, I was the first person that horse had not tried to throw.
The point of this story is not how awesome I am (ok, maybe a little), but how different it would have been if someone had told me this horses history before I rode.
For me, it was a first hand lesson about preconceived notions and labels, and the power of our minds. If someone had told me this horses history beforehand I can almost guarantee that I would have ended up on the ground at some point in my lesson.
and the only difference would have been in my head.
