The Horses We Rode – Part 1

Dear Reader,

If dogs are Man’s best friend, then Horses are Women’s best friend (dog girls don’t come for me). The bond between a girl and her horse is often over romanticized and made into a sappy sitcom. As a child I had seen too many crazy horses buck off good horseman to even consider that only I could gently tame the wild beast, but there is a lot of truth surrounding giving an undergrown girl an oversized horse and setting them loose. There is something about sitting on the back of a thousand-pound war animal that gives a little girl confidence and a scrutiny that she otherwise might not have. Throughout a woman’s life, her different horses help to teach life lessons, and she can often look back at certain times in her life and see how the horse she had at the time affected her.

The Rancher’s Daughter’s Childhood Horses and How They Shaped Her – Part 1.

Or

Hang on and Learn to Ride Because Getting Bucked Off Really Hurts – Part 1.

Bronco

My first horse was, in fact, a pony. Not just any pony, but a palomino pony that my dad scoured the county to buy in time for Christmas. This horse and girl relationship started off relatively ideal and innocent. My dad would pony me and my sister around the yard (technically he was hers, too), and when we bought a saddle small enough for us, we made countless rounds in the round pen. When I got the hang of riding independently, I would follow my dad around on my pony while he rode colts out in the pasture. This was all fine and dandy until I started to become a more confident horsewoman, then Bronco suddenly didn’t want to go anymore. When Bronco had had enough of me, he wanted to buck and run off. After a few times of this happening, and one time of me riding my dad’s horse, while sniffling with red eyes and a snotty nose and my dad riding Bronco back to the house, Bronco found a new home.

Life Lessons Learned from Bronco:

Bronco taught me how to ride a buck, which is very important when starting a horse-riding career. He also taught me how to make a horse do what I need it to do even when it doesn’t want to in a firm, but fair manner. Not only did this skill help further my communication skills with horses, it also helped me to learn how to make my desires clear when talking to other humans about what I need from them (of course, I had to learn that unlike horses, humans are allowed to say no).

King

King was actually the horse that I rode up to the barn after Bronco laid down with me for the last time. King was also the slowest horse that I have ever ridden. We used to call him Eeyore because he looked like he was mopey all the time. He only bucked once in his life when my dad was training him, but King was also the safest horse that you could put a kid on. I plugged around bareback in the yard for many miles on King. His steady gate gave me the confidence to learn how to lope bareback and to press my limits with what stupid things I could do off of the back of a horse. That’s really the only time I ever came off of him. My mom loves to tell the story of looking out the window and seeing me hanging off the side of him as he determinedly walked to the barn. I had been riding him bareback and while in the middle of trying to remount from the back of my dad’s truck bumper King decided that it was time to head to the barn. To his credit, he only struck a trot after I had given up and slid off.

Life Lessons Learned from King:

The steady and constant riding environment let me learn to have confidence while I am learning something. I may learn it slowly and have to repeat the steps many times before I master it, but it will eventually come, and I don’t have to worry how long it takes or how clumsy I look while learning. I also learned to be ok with sticking out. Not very many people had a flashy paint gelding everywhere we went.