Back when I started working at Webb, I had been out of the saddle for nearly 3 years until I sat on Izzy for a trail ride. It was a spur of the moment trail and it was basically a nose to tail ride the whole time. Flash forward to now, I’ve been in and out of the saddle for nearly three years with Capone and man have we grown riding on our own. I have been rather consistent in the last 2 months with my riding, and it’s paid off big time, especially since most of my rides have been bareback.

To supplement my consistent bareback riding I have been doing some ab workouts, full body stretches and some basic yoga to make sure I am supporting Capone in our ride as he is me. I am trying to figure out a saddle/pad solution that works for us long term to provide all the growth and stability, but we make due with our current saddle or we just go tackless.

But with that all in mind, I wanted to touch on mindset. Most of our rides have been okay rides following what was an incredible first ride back, back in February. There have been times Capone and I work on demons we think exist up the hill and we spook a lot. Others when he’s an absolute stubborn donkey and wants you to know he’s refusing to work. And the magical times when he checks in just like I do and he’s with me the whole time until our 30 mins is up. We track all of our rides with EquiLab, and it’s been massively beneficial for ride recall for me in terms of keeping a riding log. I have all the notes I need about his behavior, my performance and any other notes that might help me remember key factors about a ride. What I noticed was a “meh” rider performance indicated for most of my rides, while it was very obvious to see which days Capone was checked in or not. Why was that? My mindset. My bird brain was quick to give my precious steed the benefit of the doubt while judging myself harshly, which has led to normalizing it as I approach each ride.

My last ride I took Sena out with me and apparently I woke up on the right side of the bed. We got up and at it early, we got ready and booted up and drove our equestrian butts over to Starbucks by the barn. We got food & drinks and settled back in the car for the rest of our journey to the barn. We made it there in 20 mins, which was significantly less than Google had indicated, and we were both happy girls.

I got out of the car started talking to Sena and Capone let out the loudest whinny at me from up on his hill. It was like his way of saying, “oh it’s you, HIII”, and it made my heart so light and full of happiness. We grabbed my Tryon backpack from Cavali Club and my Equiessential Grooming Tote from Noble Equestrian (formerly Noble Outfitters) and made it up to his stall. We dusted Capone off and got him all ready to go grooming wise. We used like two brushes on him since he’s clipped for spring, some Eqyss Marigold spray, Purvida conditioning spray and that was about it. I picked his hooves, stretched his front legs and threw on his bell boots. We already confirmed its fit with my ride before this one, but I used my bridle again this time without my noseband on though. Something about the way my bridle currently sits ruffles me so I took it off to see if that helped and it’s starting to look up. I just have to make some adjustments for the next ride.

I went ahead and had Sena do my warm up, she walked him around our small arena and got a nice stretchy walk out of him. Once he was all good to go I asked her if she wanted to go ahead and trot him, she declined and said she wanted to watch me first since we were bareback. I popped on and trotted him around for a bit before hopping off, putting her back on and letting her figure it out. My confidence rubbed off on her and she was actually able to trot by herself for the first time!! We got quite a few laps of her going around and around trotting like a pro. She was struggling with being bounced off his back because he’s a bit floaty in the beginning and was able to put steering and trotting together for a nice wide circle of trot. I hopped back on to show her certain other things to help aid her and she mentioned that she didn’t know what a canter was. This was a trigger for my brain to go “oh I’ll just show you” without much thought even though I’d NEVER cantered Capone before. I trotted him around felt good about our pace, shortened my reins and asked him for it and he melted like butter into a lofty canter to show Sena what that looked like.

Seeing that I hadn’t ever cantered him before I made sure Sena was taking photos and such (which weren’t all pretty) and I’ll attach that at the beginning. The combination of having a coffee routine, a happy pony greeting and confidence in the saddle/on Pony’s back made for a wonderful step in the right direction. My mindset has changed and I’m not as afraid or anxious going into my rides. I always talk about how I could ride better as a kid than I do now, but there’s a fear factor for me now that life depends on me. If I break my arm and I’m out of work there’s more of an impact than if I did it during school sort of a thing, plus I have to mind my melon more than ever for concussions.

I’m happy to have temporarily squashed my fear, because now I can work my horse to the fullest extent and I don’t feel like a newborn child in the saddle. I know one day when we try pirouettes or jumping sticks that that fear might resurface, but we can get through it together I just know it. I’m excited to see where our partnership goes, this is just the start.