These wonderful horses are not mine, they are lesson horses.
The problem I had with my horses (now long gone) was that I had either done all of their training since weaning, had reschooled from being ruined, or my first horse who I, as a beginning rider, had taken from being green broke. I tried telling my horses that something was so wrong with me that I could never ride them like I used to, but it all came down to my horses saying, essentially, “BS, we KNOW you can ride. Here, we will prove it to you” as they ignored my inability to ride well any more.
While I ride lesson horses I usually get the lesson horse who came to the stable with very bad training, lots of resistances, a sour attitude toward human beings and I retrain them, at 30 minutes once or twice a week. I tell riding teachers when I first come up that I am an ideal rider to convince beginning (elementary level horses) that even though I have really bad balance and my coordination is horrible, that I STILL expect the horse to obey humane aids. Since I mostly ride at the walk usually our discussions about this do not get too emphatic, but eventually the horses get the message that I expect obedience to my aids.
If I had not learned how exactly to time my aids I would have a lot more problems on horseback since I would be wasting my limited energy trying to translate what I mean to the horse, while it made no sense to the horse at all. Timing my aids properly saves me all types of energy during my short rides. It also prevents me from triggering their resistances, and it prevents me from causing new resistances in the horse.
I spent over a decade trying to get myself back to where I could jump again. Finally a horse delivered a movement that I probably would have been able to ride decades ago, but a certain muscle deep in my core just did not work at all any more and I rolled off the horse. Darn it! It was finally obvious to me that if I tried to jump, even low jumps, and the horse or I did something not straightforward, that I would NOT be able to stay on.
As a consolation prize my riding teacher is letting me work with a double bridle now. I earned the right to try to use the double bridle again by proving over the decade that I DEEPLY BELIEVE that my hands belong to the horse’s mouth and I am willing to temporarily lose control in order not to abuse the horse’s mouth. The horses usually come back to me, relax, and they let me reestablish contact and control without much problem.
School horses are the greatest. They are saints. They deserve to be ridden at least occasionally by a competent rider who knows what to do (some of the school horses do not agree with me about this because they have to work harder when I ride them, and I weigh at least 100 lbs. more than their usual grade school riders.)
I really, really hope that you get better enough so you can go back to riding like you used to ride. But if you cannot it is still all right, I bet that the horses will not mind at all. The horses I ride seem to be quite content to carry me around for 30 minutes, mostly at the walk with limited trotting. If I tried to do what I used to be able to do I don’t think they would like the results at all.
I am pathetically dependent on the good will of the horses I ride. I do my best to ride to the best of my currently limited abilities, and most of them are quite content about it all as long as I do not physically hurt them.
