About a month ago, I exclaimed to my trainer “I can ride!” This should not have come as a surprise since we have had horses for eleven years and I had been taking lessons before that, but I was beginning to wonder. <\/p>\n
Looking back, I stopped riding consistently enough when I came off Lily in early June. I didn’t get back on a horse for two or three weeks, and then Lily injured herself immediately thereafter. Caring for her injury and rehabilitation took up most of my horse time, and I only occasionally rode Hap or my trainer’s horse Havoc. By the time I was ready to move Lily home to exchange with Hap, I had become very unfit.<\/p>\n
However, with Hap back at my trainer’s, I have been riding more consistently. I was rather discouraged at first, since I always felt so weak while I rode, and very stiff and sore afterward. For me, balance on a horse is a given after all these years, and the muscle memory remains, but balance and memory need some strength to back them up, and I just didn’t have it. I tried to avoid thinking about what would happen if Hap performed one of his big spooks, which involves dropping his shoulder, pivoting and trying to bolt, because I knew there would be no chance of me staying on. Fortunately, Hap has been particularly lamblike this autumn, and his biggest spook has been an occasional flinch.<\/p>\n
Today was the last nice day before a threatening storm front, and I decided to enjoy the mild autumn day by riding bareback. I rode Hap twice this week, so I decided to ride Havoc. From the bareback point of view Havoc is a wonderful horse because he is so well-trained, but he is a big mover, which makes it a bit of a challenge. And like many Thoroughbreds, he has a back bone that puts one strongly in mind of a stegasaurus<\/a>.<\/p>\n I rode Havoc longer than I would have predicted, feeling the my muscles stretch and relax as I rode him. Havoc thought he was getting a good deal, because on my best day with the bareback pad, I ask for less from the horse than I do on my worst day with a saddle. I refused to think about how much this is going to hurt tomorrow, because even when I am in good shape, I get really sore after I ride a horse bareback.<\/p>\n I’ll pay tomorrow, but I had a great time today.<\/p>\n URL fixed in response to comment<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About a month ago, I exclaimed to my trainer “I can ride!” This should not have come as a surprise since we have had horses for eleven years and I had been taking lessons before that, but I was beginning to wonder. Looking back, I stopped riding consistently enough when I came off Lily in … Continue reading I’ll Pay Tomorrow<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Npw-fb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","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=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}