Bareback on Tweed: Day One

I love to ride bareback. In my experience, it gives you a whole new level of connection with your horse. You can feel every twitch in their back, which tells you about their stress or relaxation. You can feel their heartbeat, fast or measured. And you can let your legs hang over their body and feel where your center is—and theirs. It takes away the middle man, the saddle, a physical, and even spiritual, barrier between you. It’s just a totally different level of closeness. 

Bonus: I think bareback improves saddle riding. 

Today was my first day riding Tumbleweed bareback. Well, “riding” would be an overly generous description. Let’s just say we’re starting very, very slow. 

First, we were working at home and, for Tweed, Home is where the naughty is. Fifty shades of Naughty, to be exact. 

I wouldn’t want to ride that bareback! (Or in saddle!)  The struggle was real! He was struggling with everything to do with working at home and not being with his buddies in pasture. Each buck, kick, rear, was a major middle finger to work. 

At those times you wish you could say, Chill out dude. Just do a little bit of work and you get your freedom back!

But no. They have to do it the hard way. Every. Time. 😆 

It is amazing how crazy they can look, then five minutes later be right in your pocket. Once he got it all out, and became a solid citizen, we did some beautiful pole work and then headed to the mounting block for his first “bareback ride.”

He came right over to the sweet spot, first ask, and up I went. (Sorry no photos). 

Some horses will scoot or bolt when they first feel a rider without a saddle. Tweed stood still, but his ears were alert and his back muscles were all twitching under me like I was some kind of huge, annoying fly on his back. 

I thought to myself, yeah, I’ll just sit here and pet on him for awhile, get my own balance, and let him get okay with me. 

After a short while, the muscles in his back relaxed and he took a deep breath, so we walked out and over the poles and then back. I slid off, jumped off, (he seemed a bit confused, but he needs to get used to me “coming off” just in case he scoots too fast and I come off unplanned). 

Back to the mounting block. Again he lined up perfect on the first ask, which is a good thing because he’s a big horse and I need all the help I can get mounting up with no stirrups. 

The second time up, there was less twitching, and I was able to move around and get a feel for him.  

He’s so different than Cowboy or Leah. My legs don’t hang as long on him. He’s a big boy.  

I did the same stuff, petting him and letting him relax, then we did a little work with vertical flexion, and I got some softness from him and more big licks and chews and a relaxed head. 

I jumped down again and called it good. 

He seemed happy with it all. I was happy it went so well for our first time. Everyone was happy. 

I plan to do this all week, adding little bit by little bit. The ultimate goal is to ride him bareback in the snow, because when it’s cold out, I need all the warmth I can get. 

A Garage Patio for Winter

 

I had a fun day with Tweed yesterday enjoying some rare mom and daughter horseback moments. Tumbleweed couldn’t believe he had a buddy with him and seemed to like watching her work and struggle more than he was. You go girl!

There was one point at which everything converged. He couldn’t see Epona and several groups of horses returned to the equestrian area. He went from concentrating on his work to struggling with his attention and then yanking and shaking his head to get out of it. 

It was an “oh crap” moment and in my mind I saw myself getting dumped. His energy was at a 7, but in those moments you don’t know if they’re going to a 10. 

I was on my own, so I had to trust what my trainer had drilled into me—meet his energy and continue to support him—he will come back to you. 

Right or wrong, (it felt right in the moment) I decided to ask for less collection and more forward movement in circles and serpentines. We moved across the arena at an extended trot that I could post. We circled barrels and rode straight, long lines—mixed it up. 

It must have been what he needed because he completely stopped worrying and we were able to get back to the program and have fun. 

So, what does that little nugget mean for the trails? How can I support him in the same way out in the big world?

This meme resonated with me.  

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We are hovering around freezing at night now which means we had to bring in the flowers we want to overwinter. 

The petunias you see here are all volunteers that came up through the bricks. 

It is the most glorious volunteer army of flowers we have ever had. I hope they come back again next year.

As for the potted plants, I read an article last week about people using their garages for patio space. We overwintered our plants in the garage last year, which kept us from parking cars in it. I figured, why not make it a patio space and enjoy the flowers all winter?

So we moved in some of the furniture and arranged the plants around a sitting space. The garage is fully insulated and we keep it warm in the winter. The only issue is sunlight, but we ordered an overhead system of grow lights to add to the floor grow lights we already have. I hope it works.

Building Strength through the Struggle

Struggle: to try very hard to do, achieve, or deal with something that is very difficult.

I had the privilege of enjoying a beautiful fall day with Tumbleweed today. First, by myself. Then, joining up with my trainer. 

Because of our travels, it had been a whole week off for Mr. Tweed, but you wouldn’t have known it.  

Which brings up a point we discussed during the lesson about time and consistency. My trainer said everyone has difficulty finding the time, but in her experience, if you get their best effort when you do work together, the next time should build on that. In other words, quality is more important than quantity. 

She also doesn’t interpret anything Tweed’s doing as disrespect. She sees it more as energy that needs to be directed or redirected. That energy can be nervous energy, when he’s unsure about using his body. It can also be environmental—new sights, sounds, smells. 

She said these are his “struggles,” a word she prefers to use, rather than evasions or disrespect or whatever other word we often hear but implies something negative or sinister.

She says that when he does get anxious, and struggles, I have to meet his energy and slightly exceed it. If he goes to a 5, I have to go to a 5.2, not a 10 and not a 1. She calls this “supporting him.”

Regarding the hills, she said the reason he does better on the shorter ones is because he is able to get through them faster before that energy builds up. On the longer ones, like last Thursday, he built up his energy / anxiety, I tried to slow him, and then the energy was redirected into headshaking. She says the energy has to go somewhere and it’s our job to direct it or, in that case, redirect it, by turning him back up or riding it out.

For now, she gave me some exercises to do during the winter to get him engaging his hind end and reaching or extending in front with various degrees of collection, as needed. I start him out in vertical flexion, then slowly release a little back to him, just enough for him to continue in vertical flexion on his own. If he drops it, which he often does, I pick it back up and start again.

When we get that going well in all gaits, we move to riding to new objects (for example, a barrel with flowers on it or anything else new) gathering him into flexion about 3 horse lengths before the object (a signal that something is coming up that I want him to pay attention to) then walking him slowly to the object and asking him to acknowledge it by stretching into it and dropping his nose. 

After he’s doing that well, the last exercise is walking and trotting circles in collection but asking him to move his shoulder over to the right or left just one hoof length from where we’re tracking. And when he’s doing it consistently to ask him to move into the circle in a smaller circle (maybe a 10’ circle) same gait, hind end engaged, and moving his shoulders over, rather than dropping them.

It was hard work for Tumbleweed today, but his evasions or “no’s” or, ahem, attempt to redirect the conversation and expectations, were only trying to slow down, stop, or get too fast. It was all easy to ride and redirect.

These will be the things we continue to do to strengthen his body and my ability to communicate and direct him, but she also encouraged me to keep riding the trails and give him that exposure piece, even if it means walking him down some of those steep hills. 

She also encouraged me to look at everything he can do, his successes and how far we have come. 

When she put it like that it seemed obvious how comfortable we have become as a riding team and how much effort Tumbleweed has really given me—a ton of effort. It is up to me to help him through his “struggles,” when they arise, and be the kind of team leader that navigates him towards success.

Come to think about it, life is about the struggles for all of us. We become stronger, smarter, braver, by working through them.

An Anniversary Week

Last week I contacted my horse starting trainer about the things Tweed and I are experiencing on the trail and asked her opinion about how she deals with it. 

Her first answer went straight to respect. The head-tossing is him getting bigger than me to escape the work. But she agreed that he needs to be collected, just like we do in the arena, and encouraged to use his hind end. So, what I’m asking is correct. It’s just hard. 

Later that day, she had time to reflect and write more, and she said that it’s hard work for them going up and down hills and they often want to rush it or get out of it. She sees it a lot. She said that is why she spends so much time on preparing them, getting them fit and using their bodies correctly. One thing she does is asking them to back up hills. (That’s something I tried with success two weeks ago).

Exposure (lots of trail time), Fitness (learning to use his body and being in shape), and Respect (which is best worked out in safe spaces beforehand). 

There is one thing I left out of my 3-prong approach, and that is TIME and consistency. As a full-time babysitter, I haven’t had that, but going forward I have to figure out a way to make more time and be more consistent. I think it’s possible with the help of the other set of grandparents, and coincidentally, they are asking for more opportunities to help. 

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Speaking of time, it was my husband’s and my anniversary yesterday, so we went on an adventure to the San Juan Islands. 

We had a lot of fun island hopping and discovering fun things we’d never seen before. 

At our last romantic dinner, Sunday night, we talked about our life together so far, all the many things we’ve seen and done, our children and grandchildren, and what we want our life to look like going forward into this last chapter. 

We used to see nothing but infinite possibilities, but now we see our changing roles and the realities of aging. In some areas, we need to shrink our lives and prepare for those changes, and in other areas, we need to still expand. 

We decided to go somewhere new for every anniversary going forward. Close, far, doesn’t matter—just experience something new and delight in the adventure together, like we did last weekend and the day we got married, license in hand, no plan. 

All these years later, he is still the person I love getting lost (and found) with. Home, for me, is wherever he is. 

Change of Plan

(This hill is steeper than it looks, but not as steep as many of the others we encounter.)

Well, we had an interesting day today doing the hill in front of the equestrian campground. (The Rocky Horror Hill is for another day). Tweed played all his “best of” hits for my trainer to see: head tossing, speeding up going downhill while head tossing, and even trying to buck going up because I wouldn’t let him canter. 

She was able to compare that behavior to his bushwhacking (confident & tuned in, he’s a bushwhacking pro) and smaller hills (easy to control his speed and calm, no problemo). 

She agreed with my 3 areas of focus: exposure, respect, and fitness, and she was able to determine that this issue is almost entirely fitness related, which seems to be building his anxiety (and mine).

So, what to do. 

More hills and more extended collection work in the arena to build strength and body confidence. As I ride the trails, it’s fine to zig zag, choose better paths down, or even get off and walk him down (until he builds up fitness and confidence). 

She does not think I should stop him on hills. She’d rather that I turn him around and go back up when he starts head tossing on the descent. We had a long discussion about why, but it comes down to balance and confidence. 

Next week she’s going to work with me on a program we can use all winter to keep building his strength. 

For now, until the equestrian park closes, lots of hills he can do well to build up his strength and confidence, and a continuation of the bushwhacking (which he seems to love), and trail exposure. 

Work from his strengths, as he is a horse who seems do well with that focus. Honestly, they probably all do, and surprise, surprise, so do humans.