What did your horse teach you?
Second half of the last question:
Is there a particular riding moment that stands out, like a sort of turning point in your riding life?
Oh Gosh. This is one that makes me pause and think back over the last .. er .. . 23.5 years with horses.
Turning point. Hmm. Two. One was in high school when I was schooling/riding Wings (off the track quarterhorse) and hit a moment of total UNDERSTANDING about communication between him and me. Two-way street, not just commands. Hardly profound, but it WOKE something in side of me that taught me to listen, to REALLY listen in a way that I had not before.
Enough that, yes, I wrote the experience into a college entrance essay and paid for the first year of college in 3 scholarships that I received from it. So, yes a turning point in different ways, but it also was the biggest ‘jump’ in my riding development.
The other? Ally. Riding and starting Ally under saddle taught me about the AMAZING blank canvas that is an untrained horse and how much I loved to work with them. It also taught me so much about the resistance and bad habits and bad training that were in all the other horses I’d ridden up until that point in my life.
So, that changed me more as a horse person, not as much as a rider, but ... yeah. BIG changes from both :)
Is there a particular riding moment that stands out, like a sort of turning point in your riding life?
Oh Gosh. This is one that makes me pause and think back over the last .. er .. . 23.5 years with horses.
Turning point. Hmm. Two. One was in high school when I was schooling/riding Wings (off the track quarterhorse) and hit a moment of total UNDERSTANDING about communication between him and me. Two-way street, not just commands. Hardly profound, but it WOKE something in side of me that taught me to listen, to REALLY listen in a way that I had not before.
Enough that, yes, I wrote the experience into a college entrance essay and paid for the first year of college in 3 scholarships that I received from it. So, yes a turning point in different ways, but it also was the biggest ‘jump’ in my riding development.
The other? Ally. Riding and starting Ally under saddle taught me about the AMAZING blank canvas that is an untrained horse and how much I loved to work with them. It also taught me so much about the resistance and bad habits and bad training that were in all the other horses I’d ridden up until that point in my life.
So, that changed me more as a horse person, not as much as a rider, but ... yeah. BIG changes from both :)