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María Alejandra Ramelli

Lesson #1

If you’re not going to the hospital you’re getting back on”

This is the favorite quote of many trainers. It means that if you fall
off your horse, you have to get back on, unless you have broken a bone
and have to go to the hospital. If you just got hit hard, then you clean
yourself up and get back on. Horses teach you this lesson, but you also
apply it for other real-life situations. For instance, if you get a bad grade
at school, you have to work your way through that bad grade on the
next test. The idea is that you don’t stop doing something just because
you faced a challenge. You just dust yourself off and do it again.

Lesson #2

“You do it until you get it right”

No matter if we are riding or not, we should always do our best until
we reach perfection. As equestrians, we can’t leave anything undone,
or poorly done. We have to do the exercise until we do it perfectly. And
in every difficulty, we have to look for options until we find the best
solution. This rule also applies for real-life situations, where you can’t
leave something badly done, or half done. For example, composing
music, doing a math exercise, or even cooking all require persistence.
Usually, when I’m doing a difficult math assignment I can hear my first
trainer’s voice saying: ‘We are not done until you get that jump right’,
and then I know I can’t give up on that math exercise until I’ve done it
right. Equestrians are usually perfectionists, especially dressage riders.
We don’t finish something until we get it right.

Lesson #3 “

Happiness can be found in very simple things”

Horses teach you that you don’t need to go to the Olympics or
win a competition to be happy. Happiness is found in much simpler
things than that. There is no greater happiness than when you teach
your horse something he didn’t know how to do before, or when
you make your horse do something you couldn’t do before. One of
the best memories I have is when I taught one of my horses how to
back up by myself. He was seven years old, and no one had taught
him to back up before. I had never taught that to any horse either, so
I watched about a hundred videos to teach him in the best possible
way. It took me four days to make him understand that he could also

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