I rode Lily yesterday morning, but it seemed too hot to ride by the afternoon, so I decided to ride Hap with his bareback pad. As always, he was wonderful.<\/p>\n
When I bought the bareback pad several years ago, before I bought Lily, I didn’t plan on using it for Hap. I thought it would be a nice thing to have here at home, so when nieces and nephews came out I could put the pad on Smoke and let them ride him in the round pen.
\n
\nI bought the pad at a now-defunct tack store in Franktown. The guy who sold it to me warned me to be careful. I assured him that I am the most careful person still riding horses.<\/p>\n
The pad was a handsome hunter green made of a thick, plushy fleece. I thought how well it would look against Hap’s mahogany bay coat, and decided to see what he thought about it. I spent some time sacking him out with it, and felt rather silly, because he obviously couldn’t see why I was making such a fuss, though he appreciated the treats.<\/p>\n
The pad was sufficiently plush that it looked like it could cushion even a Thoroughbred’s unforgiving spine. I had never had the slightest desire to ride Hap bareback. However, as someone who learned to ride as an adult, I had always envied people (like Corinna<\/a>) whose childhood experience included extensive bareback riding. On the clickryder list<\/a>, there were a bunch of women, apparently middle-aged enthusiasts like me, who were extolling the benefits of riding without a saddle for their balance and confidence. A week or so previously, I had even hopped on CJ, a small Arabian, without a saddle for a few minutes, to school him when one of the kids was having trouble. I had been surprised how much I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n It was a hot sunny day. My trainer was finishing up with someone else, and I asked her if she would stay around while I experimented. I just wanted to get on Hap and walk around for a few minutes. Oh, and could she help me mount?<\/p>\n No doubt we could have sent video of me mounting to one of the “America’s funniest” shows, because I am not good at getting a leg up, but finally, after a bit of a fuss, I was on Hap. Quite tentatively, I asked him to step off, and then to walk in a circle around my trainer. There was a world of difference between Hap and fat little CJ, but it still felt very cool. I could feel every shift of weight and change of bend. Hap was as calm as if we had been doing this twice a week for the past ten years. <\/p>\n I trotted all the time without stirrups when I rode Hap with a saddle: how hard could it be to do so without a saddle? I quickly discovered that there was a big difference. I had always prided myself on my balance, but I felt quite challenged without the saddle. However, Hap helped by staying in a very slow, smooth jog trot, and kept his back up and soft, so we managed. I didn’t know he had that cute little jog until I rode him with the pad.<\/p>\n After a few minutes, I knew that I would be very sore the next day, since I was stretching muscles in an unusual way. I declared our first session a success, and dismounted, determined to do it again.<\/p>\n The next step was to find some way of getting on Hap that didn’t require the help of another person. Hap would probably stand for me to try to jump up on him, but I didn’t really want to risk my knees (or his back.) On the clickryder list, I had heard about something called the Bareback Buddy<\/a>. People swore by it, and although it seemed expensive, it came with a money-back guarantee, so I placed an order.<\/p>\n I was quite dubious when I took it out of its package. It didn’t look like anything any self-respecting Thoroughbred would tolerate. Once more, I went through an elaborate sacking out process with a puzzled Hap. I rigged him up in the Buddy, and did everything I could to see if he would react. Once more, I asked for my trainer to stand by and spot me. She was as appalled by the Buddy as I was, but had to admit that Hap didn’t seem to care. <\/p>\n The Buddy is a long strip of wide webbing that goes across the back of the horse behind the withers, and wraps around the offside foreleg. The nearside has a loop which serves as a stirrup. <\/p>\n Quite carefully, I rigged Hap by the mounting block and put all my weight into the loop. Hap stood like a statue. I cautiously mounted, than leaned down and unhooked the Buddy. He didn’t react when I threw it on the ground beside him. I decided the Buddy was a success.<\/p>\n That summer, I rode Hap quite a bit with the bareback pad. I enjoyed what it did for my balance, and even more for what it did for my confidence, both in my riding ability, and in Hap’s new found calmness. At first, I didn’t ride him bareback unless I had ridden him the day before with the saddle, but even that rule slipped after a while, because Hap was always calm when I rode him with the bareback pad. <\/p>\n Now, I use the pad to ride Hap when I feel lazy, and don’t want to work too hard. I use it when it is too hot to wear chaps. I use it when my neck and back feel tight, so the massaging action of bareback riding will help relax them. This past winter, used it once because I didn’t want to get snow on my saddle. I realized how far we had come when I realized I felt confident riding Hap bareback in a snow storm.<\/p>\n Most of all, I use it because there is a sense of connection without a saddle that is not quite there with the saddle. To judge from Hap’s behavior, he enjoys that sense of connection just as much as I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I rode Lily yesterday morning, but it seemed too hot to ride by the afternoon, so I decided to ride Hap with his bareback pad. As always, he was wonderful. When I bought the bareback pad several years ago, before I bought Lily, I didn’t plan on using it for Hap. I thought it would … Continue reading Bareback riding<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[58,107],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses","tag-horse","tag-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Npw-6b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}