Cursing herself for her nervousness, Eevee gobbled up the last sip of her morning coffee.
She hadn’t been able to sleep last night because of the show today
and had been trying to calm herself down all morning, first gently:


And when that didn’t help, she got firmer in her mind:


But here she was, the thermos in her hand shaking slightly with her nerves.
She still couldn’t fathom what had become of her after the whole burnout situation,
she used to be a shy and insecure person, but now, she was even further back than square one.
“Don’t dwell on the past, focus on your horse and the show now!” She told herself once again.
But she was still slightly shaking when she tacked up Special, making the horse nervous with her.
“Good boy, don’t mind me, you’ll do good, I know you will! You’re Special, aren’t you?”
she winked at her young gelding. She hugged him firmly and buried her confounded face
in the soft fur of his neck. Special just quietly stood there,
as always, the most well behaved horse ever.
Then it was time to mount and that’s when Eevee felt how much of her nerves she’d carried over to Special.
His walk was just fine, but his trot was all tensed up and when she tried to ask for a canter,
he jumped right into the wrong one, like weeks before, before Sasha had helped to solve the problem.
With her heart pounding in her chest, Eevee entered the arena when they called out her name:


“Damn, why did they make it sound so professional? This was not gonna end well” Eevee though to herself.
And of course, once Eevee had gotten inside the competition area of the arena and then had to walk past the first planter, she felt Special creep up and softly jump aside to get around the scary plant.

The rest of the test went about the same, Special tried to dodge every single planter
at the arena letters, but did his best in between, when there were no scary plant predators around.
Relieved, Eevee hugged Special on the way out of the arena, she knew it had been her nerves
that had made the horse more spooky and weary, so with that in mind, Special had done a great job.
If slightly dodging a planter is the worst he’ll do on his first dressage competition ever,
he was a horse to never let go of anymore.

A real Special one!