Wednesday night is riding lesson night, the best night of the week!

Before I get into the lesson, let me back up – my favorite breed of horse, the type I would like to own some day, is a Fresian. You have probably seen them, as they are very often used in movies & tv shows because they look very dramatic. Here is a picture of someone doing horseback archery on one:

So I think you can see the appeal. 🙂

Anyhoo, the place I was riding on Sundays (more on that later or maybe another entry) happens to have a Fresian stallion who is absolutely beautiful. About a year ago, we were out at their ranch, and I mentioned that someday I wanted to ride him. Their response was, “You can ride him now!!!” Obviously, I jumped at the chance, so I got to groom him & saddle him and then – dream come true! I mounted up and got to ride him!

For about 3 minutes. He bucked me off. I knew from the first second I was on his back that I had no business being on this horse, but man I really wanted the chance to try. Thankfully I was not seriously injured – my back was messed up for about 6 weeks, and I was walking like a 100 year old lady, but it healed on its own and I was back in the saddle by February.

So it wasn’t the first time I’ve been bucked off a horse, and it certainly won’t be the last (once as a child my horse scraped me off on a tree) but you know, I’m not 12 anymore, I’m almost 45, and I’ve entered the stage of my life where you have a good one of everything and a bad one of everything – a bad knee, a good knee, a bad ankle, a good ankle, etc. – and a healthy sense of what being seriously injured feels like. This created some serious fear in me – I feel like I’m a competent beginner rider until the horse starts acting up and then everything I know flies out the window – I become a ball of tension & fear, I start over-managing the reins, I start giving crazy mixed signals, I am hovering out of the saddle… This then creates a feedback loop in the horse where I’m tensing up which they can feel and then they tense up and then I get scared and start sending all kinds of mixed signals which frustrates them and makes them more antsy….and round and round we go.

I know that it’s super important to get past this, which was a main driver for why I wanted to start taking lessons.

So this past Wednesday, my usual horse, a big chestnut named Lucky, had a saddle sore and couldn’t be ridden. He was swapped out for Chet, who could have been Lucky’s twin, just a little smaller, which was great for me because I have come to prefer smaller horses. Turns out, Chet has a bit of a sassy side, and he kept doing this thing where he would refuse to go forward, toss his head, and backup. And this turned me into a ball of stress and fear like you would not believe. The instructor kept telling me to relax and put my hand forward (I wasn’t) and to take a deep breath (I didn’t) and not worry (oh, I was worried.) We trotted for like 4 steps before she said “Ok, you’re going to walk and just get past….whatever this is.”

So I will tell you this much, I stayed on that horse the whole time and I am super proud of that, because if it had been my Sunday horse I would have bailed off of him in a heartbeat. I won’t say I did a great job, because I definitely never actually relaxed (plus I discovered I do this weird thing where I cross my left hand over his neck….why? Couldn’t tell you) but I definitely made a lot of progress overcoming my panic, and at the end, we kind of, sort of, got to the point where he would walk forward some. Score for me!

I really hope I get to ride him again, because I think this is going to be just what I needed.