My riding life started trail riding in the foothills of the Andes mountains east of Santiago Chile. I was 6, I had 2? “lessons” with two grooms who spoke no English and I had just a tiny, tiny bit of Spanish. I was “taught” basic halting (badly), turning (crudely) and cantering desperately holding onto the pommel like I was instructed to. Contact? Never mentioned. Finesse with my aids? Never mentioned. Riding the horse (or pony) humanely? Never mentioned.
After that we followed one of the grooms through some challenging country, up and down steep hills. We were taught to lean back going down those hills.
Then came the rather boring riding on the beaches east of Montevideo, Uruguay. My parents ended up getting bored, and that was the end of me riding for years,
Then I had 2 lessons after begging for years. As far as my mother was concerned, my two lessons when I was 6 were good enough that I should never ever think that I needed more lessons. Well I joined a rather large group lesson (over 6 beginners IIRC), then my mother got super, super irate because all of us beginners did not IMMEDIATELY have our heels down, way down, down enough to injure our unstretched tendons. My lessons ended.
Then ONE trail ride out West in Wyoming at the Grand Teton National Park, western saddle, follow the leader, walking with a little bit of trotting.
Then several years later my father finally realized that if he wanted me to come back to the fold after joining the underground newspaper in college and becoming radicalized he better get me a horse.
So with my limited experience I ended up with a 5 year old green broke (3 weeks of so so training) Anglo-Arab gelding.
After reading all the books on riding in my Junior and Senior High School I realized I knew NOTHING about horses and riding. At that time my mother thought learning to ride was going to be a breeze–enter a riding school with my pitiful level of experience when every other student had managed to have semi regular to regular lessons, often for years.
Yeah, right.
I escaped from my parents, sort of picked up my future husband on a Trailways bus (still together after 54 years later) got my horse, boarded at a stable with rough and ready hunt seat lessons, and I tried to learn to ride well in the Forward Seat on my own, hah!
My wonderful horse forgave me.
Various hunt seat boarding/lesson stables, still trying to learn the Forward Seat when the ruling expert at that time was George Morris. I did not fit in. Got back to trail riding, got into riding in gloriously huge pastures (30+ acres?) in a barn whose owner/riding teacher had been started riding taking lessons for Gordon Wright, George Morris’s teacher. For a short while I though I had hit the jackpot but I was wrong. Since I worked 2nd shift I missed most of the regular lessons, I could not afford private lessons, but I did have fun schooling, galloping, jumping and trail riding my saint of a horse.
Then I saved up enough money so I could afford 3 months as a residential student at the North Fork School of Equitation run by Kay Russel, who promptly destroyed any idea I had that I was a decent rider. In turn she did make me a decent rider, and she was the first really, really good riding teacher I had in my life.
Then I saved up for my first Arabian, a weanling chesnut Sabino colt, after a lot of looking he was the best conformed Arab I could afford. Then I learned that colts DO NOT READ THE BOOKS, and I learned to have hair-trigger reflexes and I learned how to convince this colt that training was necessary. After gelding him he turned into a sweetie, then he got kicked in the elbow, hairline fracture, and a lot of my dreams went down the drain.
Then more weanlings, one a Paso Fino filly and my first Davenport Arabian (another chestnut sabino colt.) I never really “got anywhere” because my undiagnosed Multiple Sclerosis was getting worse and worse. After a drunk driver in a big American car drove head-on into my little Ford Escort a lot more dreams died, it hurt me too bad to ride more than once a year for around 4 years. Luckily my horses remembered the training I had given them just fine–sometimes it was picking up where I left off several years before for a ride. My horses never let me down but they were getting older and older. This wreck triggered my MS though it took almost 9 years before I got diagnosed.
Nowadays I feel VERY LUCKY if life and the weather let me get one 30 minute riding lesson a week. My riding teacher is absolutely wonderful, even better than Kay Russell, the only other really good riding teacher I had in my life. She works with me being crippled with MS, and she uses me to help her lesson horses who for some reason do not fit or stop fitting into her lesson program. That is fine with me, I LOVE training horses, the minute when they finally understand the idea is so totally wonderful. I just walk and trot in the ring since my balance is so horrible I no longer feel safe on the trail. If I did not ride I probably would no longer be able to walk, a few times my riding teacher has witnessed me being barely able to walk to the ring, ride 30 min., then be able to walk securely without canes if necessary after I get off. My riding teacher now truly believes that riding horses, even just at a walk, is wonderful physical therapy for MS.
I get bored in the ring. To relieve my boredom and the boredom of my lesson horse I got into riding with a double bridle again. My riding teacher had never taught someone to ride with a double bridle so I have been educating her and training her horses with the double bridle.
The conversation with the horse with the double bridle bits right now is the only thing that keeps me from dying with boredom just riding in the ring. There is not much I can do in 30 min. once a week but I improve the horse’s contact, work on hand-leg aid coordination, train the horse to ever more subtle aids, and I still enjoy riding.
I hope I ride until the day I die.
Then I had my first son. The lady running the stable with the wonderful pastures did not adapt well to this (she herself had 4 kids, teenagers, but whatever.)
