My 15-year-old son and I were competing in our first show in over a year. The venue was new to us, and new things can be hard for autistic people like me and my son.
We compete in both dressage and showjumping, a sport called “combined training,” or CT. The stewards add up your scores from dressage with the number of faults from jumping to get the final placings.
Dressage always comes first. Dressage, at the highest levels, is like horse ballet, complete with music. At our level, we must memorize a routine, called a “test,” and perform it for a judge to show that our horse is willing and strong and that together we are a good partnership.
For showjumping, we must memorize a jump course, and then try to jump it as fast as we can. If you knock down a pole, you get a fault. If you go off course but circle back, you get a fault. If you go off course twice or jump the wrong jump, you get disqualified for the entire show.
My son and I competed in dressage back-to-back, so I got to watch him go. All I thought was, “Wow, he’s going to beat me,” and I couldn’t have been prouder.
After dressage we switched to our jumping gear and headed up to the jump arena. I could tell that the day was starting to wear on my kid. He said he wanted to go first with the jumping. I bit my tongue when I wanted to tell him to let others go first so he could see how the course........