I was like this!! I rode other people’s horses in my young adult formative years. Long long ago in the 70’s, visiting in Walsenburg, Colorado, I paid a cowboy to ride his horse. This wasn’t a rental horse situation. This guy rode horses as part of his job, probably cows. I got on his horse and rode out into the dessert, just me and the horse. I came back and rode around his property, because it was just a little boring out there in the dessert scrub. The cowboy seemed very very nervous. He said something about his wife being nervous about my riding the horse. I couldn’t understand why. I can ride. I had horses in my age 6 to age 18 youth years. sheesh!
I had just moved to the country in the mid 90’s and rode a co-worker’s horse. I rode in an arena pretending I was going to chase and cow and rope it. We backed up in the chute and burst out, pretending to chase the cow. Oh that was fun. Thankfully, that was a well trained cow horse. I rode a horse on their property also. I cantered around and had a good time. Yee Haw. Turns out, these people actually understand what a good horse is and when a horse is “beginner safe”. However that didn’t apply to me because I rode horses from age six to eighteen. har har! They told me to buy the mythical ten year old gelding that had been there and done that. Good Grief! How boring that would be!
Turn the clock forward and bought my two year old and yearling. That purchaset made me find Jenny Vaught and the Parelli method. I started with horses again at the age of 48, When I traveled for work, I would find fox trotter people or Parelli students and visit them. I rode their horses.
I rode fox trotters somewhere out east and rode in a park where the real Camp David was located. It looked like an abandoned boy scout campground. What the heck? What I remember most about that experience is the horses that knew what they were doing. They had a job. The horses knew their job. But, there was no feeling back of partnership between human and horse. I began to miss that feeling.
Turns out, some people who profess to being experienced horse people don’t follow my simple rules. Some of the rules are groundwork before riding and the horse knowing what stop is before you ride next to a 6-8 lane busy road. I visited a friend in Phoenix. We rode her fox trotters in Phoenix. I was riding a horse that didn’t understand the signal for stop, whoa, slow down, scream-we-are going to cross a six lane road in Phoenix for goodness sake and you have not yet stopped! The horse was great with kids, cars on the road, bushes, everything, but had never learned to stop. People just pulled back on her mouth without teaching her what that meant. I used the snaffle bridle provided to me by my friend. The bridle was missing the chin strap. So when my “bend the horse to a stop” reaction occurred, I pulled the snaffle bit out of the horse’s mouth. I was riding a horse that did not know how to stop with no bit in the mouth. Not that the bit did any good because she had no idea what people wanted when they hauled back on the metal in her mouth. Luckily this horse stopped when the other horse stopped. That is the only reason I am alive today. You ride along the six or 8 lane road in Phoenix and come to a road crossing. There may or may not be a stop light.
The second day, I used my bridle. I had brought my own bridle to Phoenix with me just in case. At least I could bend the horse’s head around. I rode that horse for three days around Phoenix. About the 3rd day, she had learned to read my body signals and was learning what stop was. On the fourth day, I left Arizona and came home. I no longer ride other people’s horses unless I know them well and they use the same signals to the horse that I use. Consequently, I have not rode many horses other than my own.
I rode Jenny’s highly developed and trained horse once. I was good enough that he did not take off in a gallop when I asked him to move forward. When I asked him to slow down, my lower legs did not relax. It took me a good long time of trotting around and sometimes cantering around before I could relax my legs enough that he slowed down. My lower legs kept telling him to go forward. I had to fight my legs to relax.
But I digress. I was going to tell you why you can’t ride my horse unless you understand the same things I do.
My horse goes forward when I lightly tense my core muscles. We call this “life up”. I am trying to teach Cisco to go forward when I squeeze my toes. Sadly, I forget to give this signal most of the time.
My horses know to go faster when I lightly press my calves against their side and tense my core muscles.
I do use the portion of my legs from my hips down to my knees for stabalizing my body if the body starts to fall out of the saddle to the side.
Here is what we do not do. We do not use our legs from the knee down to hang on. We sit in the saddle on our back “pockets”. That is how we keep balanced up there in the saddle or bareback. You look at those bucking horse/bull riders, they are sitting so far back on their “pockets” for balance that they look like they are laying down on top of the horse/bull.
So here comes someone who has watched TV cowboy shows or rode horses on a dude ranch. The someone tells my horse to go by pressing their lower legs quite firmly against my horse’s sides. My horse thinks that is a signal to GO FAST! My horse takes off. The rider squeezes their legs really really hard against my horse’s sides as a reflex to hold on. The rider’s body tilts forward as a life saving measure. Squeezing the legs even harder against my horse’s sides makes my horse go way faster! As long as those legs are locked against my horse, Cisco will be going fast. I did this once myself when first learning how to ride Velvet bareback. My legs tensed and locked. I knew my legs had locked and Velvet was not going to stop. Sadly, my brain thought it was going to die and it would not let my legs unlock. I had to ride that out and thank goodness Velvet was not a horse that approved of going fast for very long because of some leg pressure!
Thankfully, Lucky Star gets dominate quickly and slides to a stop. No one is going to tell him to canter very far. That isn’t in his nature. So the human is way off balance trying to hunch down into a life saving bend. When Lucky slides to a stop, the human is off balance and will just tumble forward, much like what you see when those jumping horses refuse a jump, but the human body is tossed forward.
I’ve seen well-trained Velvet bolt with a beginning rider and thankfully it ended well.
It has taken me years to figure out what these riders do to cause my horses to bolt. Yes, they lock their lower legs and squeeze very forcefully.
No, you cannot come out and ride my horses. You must take lessons from me first. I do not have a beginning rider horse.