Working & Winning - Shannan Goodwin

This article appeared in the February 2019 magazine

Shannan, what does a normal working week look like for you in your job as a Child Psychologist?
I work five days a week. I schedule my day so that I don’t leave the house until 9am, which gives me time to ride of a morning, but I then don’t get home until approximately 6.30-7pm. As a child psychologist I spend my days travelling between homes and schools, supporting children and their families. Most of the time work is very positive. I love working with children to learn about their emotions, behaviours and relationships. At other times it’s really hard, and you have to confront the darker sides of human experience; trauma, abuse and tragedy. On the weekends I also teach dressage.

What commitments do you have at the stables before and after work?
My horses live at home with me. Last year I had Aristede at Grand Prix and my young horse Flemington, both in work. Each morning I start at 5.30am, ride one or both, then my mum Debbie helps with the tacking down so I can get off to work on time. Mum does the afternoon feed and care during the day, and then at 8.30pm I go to the stables to do night hay and leg wraps and kiss them goodnight.

How many horses do you have in work and what is their workload?
Currently I have my five year old Flemington in work, as I sold Aristede (Astro) at the end of last year. One horse in work is a walk in the park compared to last year. When I had to two in work, Astro would get four days in the arena and one day out hacking, and Flemington would get 3-4 days.

Dressage involves quite a bit of training and fine-tuning. How do you go switching from work-mode to training-mode? I treat my training and my work in a very similar way. I have identified I’m a perfectionist, but I have learnt that making mistakes is the key to learning. It’s the same approach with children. The mistakes are the teachable moments. I’m very relaxed these days about my training, as the equation is simple. Explain the idea to the horse, let them build strength as they practice it and trust that it will improve as their strength, flexibility and confidence grows. Supporting children and families is much the same.

Do you do any fitness work other than riding?
My partner owns Transform Active, the gym in town, so I usually meet him there three nights a week to do some resistance training and cardio. I find the weights help with my dexterity, which is so important in the saddle, and I love the cardio to clear my head from a stressful day. We also like to start our week with a walk or jog up the Byron Bay lighthouse.

What are some of your proudest moments in your riding career and in your job?
In my riding career it has been producing Astro from a breaker to a +70% Grand Prix CDI horse. He was my first dressage horse and I pinched myself many times through the WEG campaign, as I know what we achieved was something very special.

Other very special moments have been riding the master classes, as this was always Astro’s favourite. He loved to show people his training, and when the crowd would applaud he got a real kick out of it. Getting the opportunity to train with Carl Hester, Charlotte Dujardin, Gareth Hughes, Debbie MacDonald, Lilo Fore, Stephen Clarke... it has been a blessed journey.

In my work it’s the little moments that mean the most, a child receiving an invite to a birthday party (after years of isolation), conquering their anxiety to attend their first sleep over, finding the bravery to perform on stage. Each day I aim to help the community surrounding a child understand their neurological diversity, and to help the child understand the world around them. When this comes to fruition it lights up my world.

Do you have a strapper to help you on the morning of a competition, and what jobs do they assist with?
I will usually have my mum Debbie or my partner Gabe with me. I have to admit taking one Grand Prix horse to CDI’s is more like taking a holiday. I only rode one test a day and the big tour classes are usually held in the afternoon. So at competitions I like to do most things with the horse myself so that I am in tune with where they are at. Mum is my number one stable cleaner and tail brusher. Gabe is my rock. He can read me emotionally and will just be there, usually giving the perfect pep talk at the perfect time. He also has an amazing eye for dressage and can give me the feedback I need.

What do you do after a weekend comp, to prepare for the next weekend’s comp?
A long drive home (haha), followed by a lot of washing! I like to really analyse the competition and see what worked and what didn’t work. I like to go through the travel down, the atmosphere, the warm ups, the feeding, my mental fitness and physical fitness, and then the actual tests. Then I make a plan for the next competition, what areas need work, what can we change about the preparation to get the best out of the test. This is where the perfectionism gets to have its turn. I would watch my test videos many, many times, dissecting it and planning how I can improve.

Out of your four weeks annual leave, how much of that is used for competitions?
For many years I remember getting the calendar at the start of the year and asking my employers for multiple Fridays off between April and October based on competitions I wanted to go to. I would work flexible hours, staying back late and having shorter lunch breaks to earn the time in advance.

I figured out long ago that I needed extreme flexibility to work and compete at an elite level, as competitions went from being just a Friday off to taking a week at a time. So six years ago I started working for myself, which has allowed this flexibility. Whilst most of my leave is for horse competitions, I take two weeks off the summer to just be at home, swim in the river, eat too much food and go to the beach. And I also like to go snowboarding a few weeks of the year.

How many events would you do in a year?
During the WEG campaign we had ten CDI’s to attend over 15 months, five of those being in Melbourne, which is a 23 hour drive from home. We drove over 25,000km during that campaign with Astro. This worked out to be about a week of every month that I was away. To manage this I worked big weeks when I was home averaging 65 plus hours, then teaching dressage lessons on the weekends, and whilst I was travelling I would do phone consultations, write reports and Skype consults.

This year will be very different. I’m loving training my young horse and will take him out to some young horse competitions, but the pressure is off this year.

Do you do anything in the off season with your horses?
I train through the off season. My horses get weeks off here and there through the year to keep them fresh, but they love to train, so we just keep ticking along.

How do you balance work, family, social life and competitions?
I’m not sure. I like to have a lot of structure and routine in my life, so I feel I’m naturally quite organised. My biggest weakness would probably be doing too much, so I have been learning to take more breaks and ask for help when I need it. On the farm I am lucky enough to have my family living here also. Mum lives across the driveway, my sister and niece live with me and Gabe, and my other siblings and their children visit frequently, so the farm often has family sharing quality time together. And when I decide to start some crazy project, be that building or fencing, my family all turn up in work clothes to help out. This time is really precious to me.

What sacrifices do you have to make to do it all, and do it all successfully?
I don’t believe I have made any sacrifices, but I have set priorities. Trying for the Australian team was a huge ambition, and took an enormous amount of energy, but I loved every minute of it. I wouldn’t make that a full time agenda managing the business and that competition schedule, but it has set my future goals to continue creating the flexibility in my life, so when it comes to next time to try for the team, I’m ready to go again.

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