The Real Meaning of Ride Your Horse in Western Pleasure
January 28, 2010 by Jean
Filed under Horse Lovers Chat
Ok maybe it’s just me and you haven’t fallen into this particular horseback riding trap…Or maybe you have and just don’t want to admit it. What’s the trap? Read on and find out…
You love your horse and aren’t sure how to really get them finished for a particular riding discipline for example western pleasure. So as a responsible owner you send them out to a Professional Trainer to be trained. Then after months of paying a board and training bill and waiting to get on your horse yourself and ride…after all you and The Trainer don’t want you to ruin the horse….ever heard that one?…..
Anyway, you finally get on to ride your horse and in your mind the horse is push button right? All you have to do is just sit up on his back and look pretty and just let him do his thing. So you get on, you look pretty, you sit up there and you can’t get your horse to do a ***** thing you want him to.
The Trainer made him look awesome but you can’t even get him to lope slowly or even on the right lead. When he jogs he leaves his hind quarters out behind and bounces you all over the place. Your back feels like your spinal cord is being hit with a hammer each time the horse moves his back legs. Well maybe it’s not quite that bad but it’s sure not what you expected.
Two things I have learned from my years in horses:
No matter how trained the horse is you have to ride him every stride to get the results you want. It’s not enough to have him trained and just sit up on his back and look pretty. You actually have to know what cues he has been trained to respond to and you have to ride his stride.
Get on him early enough in the training to know exactly how he is being trained and that you can really ride him with the same cues your trainer is using. The trainers legs will hit your horse in a different place than yours and they most likely have much stronger legs than you do. So make sure early on that you can continue to ride your horse in the same way he is being trained or you are wasting your money and maybe even worse yet…You may find yourself very dissatisfied with this horse that in the beginning you really wanted to keep.
Your horse needs to be trained for you to ride, not your trainer.
