There once was a girl who grew up loving horses. She was fearless. Anything furry with four legs she was keen to throw a leg over. Her mother even used to tell her as a kid to get off the Samoyed, it’s not a pony!
Once she door knocked in country Naracoorte looking for a horse to ride. Her uncle had a farm there, but what use was a farm that grew lupins and didn’t have horses? Luckily for this brave girl the neighbors let her have a ride on theirs as lawsuits, public liability insurance and suing people was something for the movies, and country kindness went a long way!
There were so many times that she would offer to ride other people’s naughty horses, simply for the opportunity to ride at all. She was tough and these horses and ponies were no match for her.
She’d gallop fearlessly across a paddock, saddled or unsaddled, it didn’t matter, riding was riding, even a neck injury caused by a horse screeching to a halt and a bruised coccyx wasn’t enough to slow her down.
She’d ride on busy roads where empty milk cartons or cigarette packets would be thrown at her from cars by blokes with equally empty heads. She’d ride through the reserve by herself down to riding club with no thought to the consequences should she fall alone.
She’d borrowed a horse and taken it hunting and jumped hedges she’d never even dreamed of, simply by believing the owner when they said it jumped well!
While pregnant she even picked an argument with a rearing horse that in hindsight was probably a bad idea, safety of baby should have been paramount but instead, having the win over the horse took triumph. Landing on her arse, bruising her tail bone and having to own up to a husband and hospital staff as to what she’d actually been doing took more courage for her than riding the horse itself.
In the 6 years that followed there was very little riding, but it never really left her heart.
Coming back to riding after having a baby can be scary to some. But not to this woman! She was unstoppable. The best thing she thought about horses as an adult vs horses as a child was that no one was going to tell her what to do or how to do it. That included spending up big on cars/floats and horse gear. It was her time to have some serious fun!
While riding for pleasure she’d had a few falls. Nothing significant that comes to mind but there were falls nonetheless. While she was fearless she wasn’t reckless and was always taking well calculated risks.
As the riding for pleasure turned into a job she loved, there were many people who would ask her to ride their horses for them. Not a second thought entered her mind as she’d drive from place to place hopping on any Tom, Dick or Harry horse that the owner wasn’t keen enough to hop on first. She was thrilled at the fact she was being paid to do what she’d always done for free! Winner winner chicken dinner!
What she discovered was that there were a lot of horses that weren’t as well behaved as hers. That they weren’t always a pleasure to catch, lead, to tie up, to float or even to ride. There were anxious horses and anxious riders. She realised that so many people were not having as much fun with their horse as they could be or even as much fun as she was having with hers.
More often than not that there were reasons why they needed her to ride. Sometimes it was behavioural. Sometimes an owner lacking confidence. Often the issues were caused by undiagnosed pain and she was able to point them in the direction of someone to help. Perhaps the horses had sore teeth, sore backs or a sore poll. Sometimes the horse was running all over the owner. That the ground manners were lacking and they hadn’t even realised that their horse could improve in this area. She was surprised by what some considered normal and was happy to show them there was an easier way, a pleasant way, where the horse would look to their owner for guidance instead of running them over like a bowling ball.
So she began the task of assessing their current situations and making plans on how to improve things. Some owners were open to her ideas and accepted that groundwork was the key to their success. They were pleasantly surprised that eliminating soreness medically plus sorting out their groundwork and manners often led to far better results under saddle than they had even dreamed of.
There were other owners that thought their groundwork was already very good and it was just the riding they needed a hand with. Being new to the horse industry she wanted to please everyone and there were times she felt a horse wasn’t ready on the ground but she’d hop up anyway just to keep the owners happy. Sometimes this went well and sometimes it didn’t. After eating dirt a fair few times in the last few years she began to get wiser. Although she could sit a buck or two, pig roots were child’s play and a rear could be diffused, she started to figure out that there was a much better and safer way to approach these situations and that was to sort these issues out from the ground first.
The horses that she thought of as her true successes had had the time spent with them on the ground before progressing to ridden work and owners that were very open to working with her. The ones that didn’t go as well were ones where people hadn’t quite put their full faith in this woman and had wanted to keep going in their old trains of thought, not being open to new ideas and new methods.
It would generally be at 3am or some other random hour that the thoughts would come to her. She had a light bulb moment when she realised that the reason her horses would go so well was the high level of expectation she placed on them to respect her as she did them in return. They went well because she took the time with them to give them solid groundwork. That she not only took care of their physical needs but their mental ones as well. She wanted them to relax and enjoy themselves and not be worried about life. While she asked for a lot from her horses, she gave them everything in return. Her horses responded to her with focus and trust.
While she was once the fearless crash test dummy rider, the mature and sensible side was slowly emerging. She’d be lying if she didn’t say that there weren’t certain moments that made her wish for her brown jods, but a healthy amount of fear of these large, exquisite animals is quite normal.
Creating happy partnerships between horse and rider is what she truly believes in. Above all else she learnt to follow her instincts. If her gut said the horse wasn’t ready, it probably really wasn’t!