Many young girls, develop a love of horses and desire to own and ride one. Even though I grew up in a rural area, I really never had that desire.
As our kids grew up and we often spent a few days each summer on the Skyline Drive with them, often a trail ride was suggested by husband or daughter. Though I did take one or two of these rides, I often elected to hike with one of my sons while hubby and daughter rode.
We have plenty of land on our farm for a few animals, besides the two dogs and the oft visiting neighbor's bull, and we have considered a couple of beef cows and perhaps a couple of mature, already broken horses for gentle rides around our property, the neighbor's property and the local trails for horses. To take on this responsibility, we first have to determine if we like to ride and if we can handle the grooming and maintenance involved. Hubby took a 4 lesson session of riding and he liked it, so today we started western riding lessons together. One of my personality traits is anxiety at trying new things and I rarely suggest trying new things, so I entered today's lessons with a fair degree of anxiety. These lessons involve going out into the field, harnessing the horse you are to ride, walking him/her to the riding ring building, combing and brushing the horse, cleaning the hooves, then bridling and saddling the horse before the actual riding part of the lesson. After learning the basic posture and control and working through walk and trot and how to get off the beast, the preride routine is reversed, unsaddling, unbridling, cleaning hooves, brushing, reharnessing and walking your mount back out to the field to remove the harness and release the horse. I managed all of this fairly well and actually enjoyed it. Of course, I think most of my comfort was that I was in a huge building inside a fenced ring with hubby and his horse and the instructor in the ring with me. This process will be repeated 3 more times in the next couple of weeks and then we decide if we will sign up again.
No pictures of today's event, maybe after a couple more lessons.
I miss riding...so jealous. When I 'retired' I gifted myself riding lessons. I got to ride for 5 years before the instructor stopped 'teaching' adults. Of course by then we were not really students, but wow do I miss the trail rides.
ReplyDeleteHope you continue to enjoy the experience.