Chapter 76: Riding the three-year-olds

And so, the day after Jay asked me to exercise Zena, he also let me ride his horses, Junior and Casper. They are two really beautiful paint horses, both barely three years old, and for all of you who don’t know horses, that is really young. That’s the age when you put a saddle on the horse, sit on him for a while, just to get him used to the weight of a human on his back. Junior had been ridden before, but for Casper it was the first time with a saddle, and the first time with a rider.

First, Jay worked with both of them from the ground, getting them tuned to him, making them ready to communicate and cooperate. Then he rode them himself, making them turn on really small circles and stop and back up real western style. Then he casually just asked: “Do you want to ride?”. I thought he was joking, to let me, an English rider through and through with no experience riding really young horses, sit on his beautiful, sensitive western colts, seemed crazy. But he was serious.

And I was amazed. Jay had worked so well with them from the ground, teaching them to listen to his voice, that I had no problem getting them to walk, trot, canter and turn. The western way of stopping, when instead of using the reins, you just change your sitting position, push your feet foreward, away from the horse and say ‘whoh’ and when the horse has stopped you back up a couple of steps, that turned out to be the the hardest for me to get. Both the horses did it perfectly with Jay, but with me they barely even stopped, let alone backed up.

But I’ll get there. I still have the whole month of April to re-program my body from the stiff English style to the relaxed and layed-back western style. Just you wait, I’ll be a proper cowboy before I leave here.