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At a recent Plaidcast In Person, host Piper Klemm referenced what she called Goodhart’s Law—the idea that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
It’s apropos for the equestrian industry today. Horse show success was once a way to gauge progress, but has increasingly become the end goal itself. And as Dr. Holly Helbig, veterinarian and professional trainer, points out, that shift may be undermining the heart of horsemanship.
From Measure to Mission
“The horse show used to be a measure of how well your training was going,” Klemm said during the discussion. “But when the horse show became the goal in and of itself, it lost meaning.”
Helbig agreed, adding that this kind of thinking shows up in the smallest lessons—like how children learn their diagonals. Years ago, she told Klemm that when a child first enters the walk-trot ring, diagonals are often the only thing a judge can score, so instructors teach kids to look down rather than to feel the rhythm. “We spend the first two years of a kid’s riding career telling them to look down,” Helbig said. “Then we spend the rest of their life telling them to look up.”
That habit, she explained, represents a larger problem: replacing the cultivation of feel with the pursuit of check-box correctness.
A System That Rewards the Wrong Things
Helbig has watched beginners lose blue ribbons because of diagonals, not because of safety, confidence, or position. She recalled two walk-trot riders—the only ones in their division. One rode beautifully but missed her diagonals; the other was unsteady yet stayed on the correct one. “My little girl was second in every single class behind the other one,” Helbig remembered. “And it just got me thinking, is that diagonal really that important at this stage?”
Her takeaway was simple: in early riding, feel, position, steering, and confidence should matter more than technical precision. “We’ve created a bad habit that we spend the rest of a rider’s life trying to unbreak,” she said.
Horsemanship in the Age of Perfection
The diagonal debate links to a broader cultural issue. “We’ve done this to the kids,” Helbig admitted. “We’ve tacked up for them, micromanaged for them, and made it all about showing. They aren’t getting the hours it takes to build intuition around horses.”
In her own program, she required students to tack up their own horses—even at shows—and invited them to watch whenever a medical case came in. “I’d scoop all the kids up and say, ‘Come look at this. What is it? Look at this ultrasound. Let’s look at this x-ray together.’ ” Those experiences, she said, teach young people to read horses as living beings, not just vehicles for ribbons.
Helbig is also a longtime supporter of Pony Club, where she speaks each year on behalf of Zoetis. She praises its focus on horse care, public speaking, and citizenship: “It’s about developing good humans, not just riders.”
Shifting the Focus Back to Learning
Our sport often mistakes the metric for the mission. Medal finals, once a measure of readiness for international competition, have become stand-alone goals; walk-trot ribbons have become measures of success rather than steps in education.
Helbig sees hope in trainers who resist that pull. She highlighted Ohio professional David Beisel, whose children started on safe but ordinary ponies. “They weren’t drilled for perfection,” she said. “Now his sixteen-year-old daughter is winning Grand Prix classes, and his son is right behind her. His target was for them to enjoy horses, not to win—and it paid off.”
That philosophy, Helbig believes, is the antidote to burnout for both riders and horses. When winning becomes the only purpose, learning stalls. When curiosity and joy return to the center, progress follows naturally.
Redefining Success
Helbig’s proposal is straightforward but radical: stop judging walk-trot classes on diagonals; reward connection and confidence instead. Reintroduce responsibility in barns. Let kids tack up, observe care, and talk about what they see.
“The memories that matter aren’t the ribbons,” she said. “They’re the nights at the barn with friends, off your phone, communicating with your animal and getting to know them.”
In other words, success in the ring should be evidence of good horsemanship, not the definition of it.
Want more insight from Dr. Holly Helbig? Listen to episode 452 of The Plaidcast and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform for conversations with the most influential voices in the equestrian world.
