A Bareback Ride

Dawn and I took a brief ride yesterday and I got on her bareback. My younger daughter only rides Dawn bareback, so she's pretty used to it. Bareback feels very natural to me - that's pretty much the only way I rode until I was in college, and I rode all sorts of horses that way doing everything - jumping, galloping, you name it. I used to ride Noble bareback from time to time, I've ridden Lily a few times bareback, and even tried out Maisie, although getting on and off was a bit of a challenge - she's 16.2 - and she really didn't like it very much.

But since Dawn has big hematomas that are close to the girth area, and since we weren't going to do any strenuous work - just some loose rein walking, I decided to ride bareback today. I used the big mounting block - I'm too old for the jump up on your belly and swing your leg over method my daughter uses. Dawn felt very comfortable to me - it's easy to sit on her in just the right place and she's shaped pretty nicely for bareback - just enough withers and spine that there are two sides instead of just a round barrel shape, but not too much withers and spine either. We walked around on the hill behind the stable and in the arena.

She had had 4 of the past 5 days off, so she was feeling pretty good, and pretty interested in looking at things going on - people on the trail and in the vegetable garden. On the field, she wanted to trot, so we did that briefly - I didn't want her to trot much until the wounds and hematomas are a bit better healed. She did one big spook in the arena, but I stayed on pretty well and she tolerated me digging in one of my heels to stay centered.

Here are some nice pictures taken by our wonderful p.m. barn lady who was there bringing in horses and feeding. She's still wearing her ride mask here - and you can see in all the photos that she's pretty distracted:

Here her mask is off, so her pretty face shows:

Here she is walking down our little hill:

I think she'll be back to full work very soon. Bareback was fun - I may have to do some more of that!