Horseback riding is a teamwork partnership between a 1,000+ pound animal and a human (Both can be of varying sizes). The tricky part is that neither speak each other’s language. The horse doesn’t understand the words, and the person doesn’t understand the gestures and nuances of a silent language.
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of learning a new language, you will know that it takes a tremendous amount of practice, a lot of grace by the people listening to you speak said new language, and a lot of persistence on your part to forge those new pathways in your brain.
Horseback Riding: A Partnership Built with Time and Practice
Horseback riding is much the same way. The most difficult part, is getting enough practice. Horses are very expensive to maintain, and the land that they stand on is getting scarcer closer to big cities with the population growth is. Which translates into limited practice as each lesson is expensive.
Which other sport, musical instrument or language mastery, is done in one-hour increments per week or less? But parents and riders want to master riding in three or four lessons, or maybe at most, a year.
If your rider rides one hour per week for 50 weeks a year, they will only have 50 hours of practice. Experts agree that mastery of a skill requires 10,000 hours of practice! Which would be approximately 200 years of one hour a week practice! Give your rider or yourself, grace. Horseback riding is an art form, not a destination.
Why do we push ourselves to be with horses? We do it for love the horse, the exercise component, the love of the great outdoors, the relationship of horse and rider, and the friends and camaraderie of barn life.
Horseback riding is a combination of strength, balance, and timing, all of which take a lot of time and practice.
You may go to a barn that will allow you to do tricks and fancy things on their horses, long before you are ready, but it doesn’t mean that you should.
Who pays for your fancy tricks?
Maybe they include galloping around a barrel unbalanced and kicking the fire out of your horse, maybe the trick includes jumping over a jump, when you cannot hold your body in position, maybe it’s going up a mountain trail bouncing and sloshing from side to side unbalancing your horse.
Who pays for all of this?
Your horse does!
Is it worth that thrill, a TikTok video, capturing your jumping moment, or bragging rights to other parents?
If you ride at a lesson barn, the horses have seen it all. Your rider will grow up, and move on with her/his life. The faithful lesson horse continues to teach year in and year out.
Every bad jump, every rider mistake, every selfish act on the human’s part, is etched in the horse’s body. The code word for a battered horse body, is “some maintenance required.” Some or many, have worked that horse too hard, too long, too inappropriately, or even poor genetics, and the horse’s body is breaking down.
Is it worth it?
You could argue, that the horses don’t belong to you so who cares what happens to them? It doesn’t matter how many lessons they did that day, or what they’re going to be doing tomorrow, or in the future, as long as you have your fun today.
But in that moment that you are riding them, they are yours. You paid for that time, and you have a responsibility to their well-being. I don’t think that we are intentionally cruel to our horses, I think that we don’t think through all the facets.
Which leads me to my next question. Is it fair to expect the horse to be a top-level athlete, while you are not? Is horseback riding not a partnership? So, if you have one athletic partner, and one out of shape partner, who pays for it? Your horse does. You owe it to the horses that you ride, to be as strong, flexible, and willing to learn as they are. I’m not saying that you have to be tiny or super thin, I’m saying that you need to be super fit, physically and mentally (although the horses will help with the latter.)
Many families cannot afford more than one lesson a week. Ok, so what do you do when you’re not riding? You train your own body, daily strength/weight training, cardio, stretching, and core work. You can’t practice on the horse every day, but you can make your body fit so that you can learn the skills more quickly.
Which leads me to my next point, horseback riding is extremely physical. If you have to hold your rider’s hand to walk down the hill to catch her horse, don’t! Because on the way back up the hill, she will have to do it unassisted and leading her horse! Don’t do the things for the kids, that they need to do themselves. You carrying their saddle, seems kind, but it isn’t.
Next, read this topic: Make them carry their own saddle.
