10/09/2022
Riders should be trained and prepared for a variety of situations aboard a horse. 🐎
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=634154401376847&id=100043468792096
What about Sarah? At 8 years old, she started riding with lessons at a Hunter Jumper barn, and showed Hunters until she was 18, then off to college. She loved the social scene chatting with the other girls as they sat on their horses waiting for their class. She and her mom traveled to surrounding States, winning tons of ribbons. Grandparents poured a small fortune into the passion.
Sarah showed up at my barn at 24, a college graduate, still with the pickup and trailer bought for her show years. She had a great job and money to buy a new horse for her new adventures. She wanted to try Eventing and Fox Hunting. We rode together in the arena and went out to see the cross country course.
At the first downhill slope, she held onto her show leg position centered on the saddle flap when she needed to move her feet forward to keep them under her for the slope. It was difficult. We jumped a little log on a flat section and she went forward, leaning on her horse's neck. We went up a hill, she failed to move her legs back to keep them under her. Then on a gentle downhill slope, we came to an 18 inch coop. She stopped and went silent, her head hanging down. She was crying.
I asked what was wrong, and she said through tears, "I can't do this". As I had many times before, I said sure you can. It's just different, like you were a figure skater and now you want to play hockey. You can skate. It's just a little different. Sarah dismounted and walked her horse back to her trailer, loaded up and she tried to pay me. I told her to hold on to her money until she returned. I never saw Sarah again.
Educate me. Tell me that Hunters are not a dead end. Explain to me why Sarah never returned, and why as a Staff rider in so many hunts I had to help a former show Hunter get her horse through a hedgerow because her horse couldn't stand the brush tickling her horse. All my experience indicates that show Hunters grow up and discover they cannot do much with a horse. They went down a dead end road. Why do parents continue to send their kids down this well known dead end road?
