Musical Horses

One of the things I love about being at a boarding barn is the social aspect - having friends at the barn is pretty awesome.

Yesterday was so much fun, a bunch of us were all riding at the same time and we decided to trade off horses. The two middle-school girls took turns riding Katy while ML rode one of their horses, Willow. ZS and I swapped so she rode Jetta and I rode her horse Cisco.

Jetta was so good! I was a little worried because ZS is a western pleasure rider and Jetta is, well, a bratty dressage/jumper horse some of the time :) Anyways, ZS and Jetta did great together and I had a blast riding Cisco.

While I do ride western, mainly I do trail and some reining with a tiny bit of western pleasure in the mix. I've never ridden a finished western pleasure horse and I have to admit that it was a whole lot of fun! I'm not a fan of the four beat lope that looks like the poor horse is crippled, and while Cisco can go incredibly slow, he didn't bob his head or carry it super low. And it was fun!

I made him go a bit faster than he's "supposed" to go (still a ton slower than I'm used to on Jetta) and I made him do flying changes and jogging and stopping. I'm sure he was not as enthused about me riding him as I was. I know what a spur stop on a horse is, and how to ride it, but I've never done it before. Very interesting. If you don't know what it is, it's when you apply both spurs to the horse to get them to slow down and drop their head and neck. This way you don't have to pull on the reins. To go forward you use your calves or one spur. It took me a minute to figure out how to lope but then I didn't want to stop! I might just have to steal him :) Especially because ZS's parents want to send him back to where they got him because he's got horrendous ground manners. He bites and kicks and rears though you can tell he knows he's not supposed to, but I guess he's gotten away with it enough from his previous owners that it's pretty ingrained now. I'd love to work with him for a couple weeks and see if I can help her out, but ZS is a pretty experienced horse person and doesn't let him walk all over her and he's still pretty naughty.

I wish I had a picture of me riding him, I'm sure we looked ridiculous with me in my breeches and tall boots with giant western spurs on.



This is the image I got when I googled musical horses.
Just think of us as less pink and frilly ;)


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