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LINK TO THE PODCAST; CLICK HERE!
Nancy Dye with Robin Kopala
Dr. Robin Kopala's story ties together riding, grieving the loss of a parent, vet work, and back surgery. Robyn went into this bootcamp thinking we’d talk mostly about riding. What she got instead is a reminder that mental skills touches everything - the show ring, the clinic, the staff table, even the way you recover from surgery. Robin’s story is one of those rare ones where the same skill shows up in four different places. She called me because she wanted to be better for a mare she was already doing well on at about meter 20, but didn’t feel organized, smooth, or truly confident with. The deeper issue wasn’t just technique. It was identity - she kept hearing, basically, “you’re an amateur,” even though she spends her life working on horses.
The label you give yourself changes the round.
Robin said the biggest shift was learning to stop treating “amateur” like a ceiling. We reframed it as: every time you get on a horse, you’re training. You’re a trainer whether or not money changes hands. That sounds simple, but it changed how she thought about winning, consistency, and what she was allowed to expect from herself. She even kept repeating the incantation, “winning is fun,” until it stopped sounding ridiculous. Here’s what surprises most athletes about that part: the belief came second. Action came first. Robin didn’t need perfect certainty to start riding like someone who belonged there. She needed a tiny bit of faith - what I call a mustard seed - and then the repetition that trains the brain to follow.
Being a veterinarian can make riding harder, not easier.
Robin’s job gives her a dangerous superpower: she knows too much. Every little thing can turn into a rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios - lameness, euthanasia, disaster before she’s even entered the ring. That’s a real psychological tax, especially when clients are standing at the back gate and you’re trying to focus on a round. The fix wasn’t to become less informed. It was to reframe the knowledge as an advantage. She’s better equipped than most riders to notice what matters and what doesn’t. Once we flipped the story, the same information that used to make her anxious became part of her edge.
“You know too much.”
The horse told the truth before the diagnosis did.
One of the best examples was her mare with insulin resistance. She wasn’t overweight, which made the diagnosis easy to miss. Robin noticed subtle changes - a lame step after a class, a slightly imperfect right turn, a horse that wasn’t quite turning as nicely as usual. That eventually led to insulin testing, a flare in her feet, and a long-term management plan: soaked hay, tested hay, thin body condition, and controlled turnout from about 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. when the sugars are lowest. That story matters because it shows how easily smart people misread the first signal. The horse wasn’t “being difficult.” She was telling the truth in the only way she could. And once Robin adjusted the management, the horse got back to being herself.
The saddle problem wasn’t a saddle problem in isolation.
Robin has tried nearly every saddle brand imaginable in the last five years for several of her horses, and she’s not being dramatic when she says fit changed everything. When her mare got thinner, saddle fit became even harder because there was less horse to carry the tack and her weight. The behavior list was classic: reluctance to go forward, not wanting to relax through the back, getting inverted at home, occasional bucking. When she changed saddles and the behaviors disappeared without changing anything else, that told the real story. That’s the part a lot of riders miss. A horse with a sore back will often look “behavioral” before it looks obviously painful. Robin’s current answer is less superstition, more science - test the fit, watch the body, and don’t blame the horse for equipment problems.
She didn’t just survive surgery - she redesigned the season.
Robin had back surgery and then spent 12 weeks unable to bend, lift, twist, or ride, plus another four weeks of rehab. Instead of focusing on how it was to not ride or work and spiraling, we pre-planned her mindset to shift focus into the clinic's office work. She worked on office projects she never had time for, discovered she actually enjoyed parts of management, and realized the practice would keep going without her physically doing everything on the road. That’s a useful kind of proof. Not that pain is good. Not that surgery is easy. Just that a forced pause doesn’t have to become a miserable experience and a collapse. Sometimes the win is discovering you can build value on a different bridle path while the old one is closed.
The biggest takeaway is that every hard thing is connected.
Mental skills helped her ride better, manage her business better, survive family loss better, and recover from surgery better. Saddle fit helped both the horse and the rider. Knowing more as a vet became a strength once she stopped treating it like a curse. That’s the through-line here: when you stop arguing with reality and start reframing it in a way that you can embrace it, you get your options and joy back. Robin’s not done. She’s still running a clinic, managing horses, breeding, competing, and planning continuing education events with veterinarians, farriers, and riders. But the way she talks now is different. Less self-protection. More clarity. More trust. If you’re sitting on a problem that feels “just technical,” I’d listen for the bigger story underneath it. That’s usually where the real fix lives.
The full podcast conversation covers mental skills, saddle fit, staff management, getting through surgery and long rehabs, and the veterinary side of high-performance riding - watch here: [Nancy Dye Interviews Dr. Robyn Kopala]
Nancy Dye
Breakthrough, Peak Performance Mental Skills Coach
Emotional Strength & Resiliency Training
Strategic Interventionist
1-561-866-0402
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