Our own expertise.

My old guy (still acts like a sassy 2 year old)...yeah we've pretty much done every equine sport with him (minus dressage and jumping). The only times I've gone off horses was in a hunt saddle - nothing to grab on to. And falling off is scary...best thing is to get back on.

Ah see, England, all saddles like that, nothing to sit in, you sit on.
We had one western saddle at the stables, we fought over it.
I always rode with my stirrups too long. So much more comfortable.

yah a lot of women, which is why it was nice to get away on the horse and do it just business.

Yes, I'm not sure if it was concidered dressage either. I know I did experiment with dressage a little with leg-yielding. SOO COOL!! And thanks for the "Finished Horse" compliment!

When I first started riding Owen, he was a monster-beast. He wouldn't let you near his stall and nobody was on his back in a few years. He was retired hunter/racer. Something must have happened to him long down the road because he lost trust in his humans and didn't want to be around them. You'd try to muck out and he'd bite or try to kick you. If you put him on cross-ties, he'd fight you all the way out the stall, bucking and rearing, then he'd run straight off and you'd be gathering up the entire barn to catch him. For a long time he was neglected because nobody knew how to handle him.

He was a challenge to me and since I was going around looking for that stuff (stupid stupid me! A lot of times I should have stuck with the easy ones but I am glad I didn't for this one) I put years of effort into getting him to trust me and we built a relationship. After about a year of slowly allowing him to get used to me going into his stall and petting him, grooming, ect. I started riding him. A year after that I started training him. He had that strong spirit every retired racer/jumper has. Man, he was impossible to stop and had no finishing skills AT ALL! It took years of dedication to get him to learn the little tricks.

Leaning forward to stop is probably different because I trained him the way I wanted to do it. It may not have been conventionally done, but it worked none the less. It was a lot of "Okay Owen, today we're going to go in the fields and work on..." all by ourselves LOL. I'm not sure the "proper way" to do much. I did win a lot of competitions when I started riding but I phased out of that because I liked to ride for pleasure, not for anyone else. I didn't need others to tell me I was good, I just knew I loved it and that was enough for me.

Unfortunately, later down the road Owen got old and sick. We spent all the time we could together, I slept in his stall with him for the last couple of nights. We loved each other more than anything in the world. I can still remember the first snowflake-y nights when i'd race out of the house and down to the barn. We loved the fresh snow. He'd hear my boots tromping down the concrete and I'd hear him pawing down the stall door and peeking out the feed hole, waiting for me to tack him up and ride. I never made a sound but he always knew it was me. It was never too cold or too hot, nor was I too tired or too unwell to ride. I will always think of him.


PS. I never leaned that far forward to stop, just enough and sat deep in the saddle. It sounds like I'm describing 2-point jump position in the last post LOL. Definitely not that far forward! And, I HATE western saddles! I rode at a little barn for a while with these cool oddly gated horses called Paso Finos. They used western at that barn although typically Paso's are supposted to be ridden in dressage saddles. I didn't like it one bit, but the horses were awesome. Here's some info if you guys want to read up on these beautiful animals!