Bareback Ride!!! 6-15-13

Our take home tests are due! We turned them in when we checked in with our monitors and payed our rental fee. Mine was neat and completed. :) It was 41 questions. Very basic and I finished it no problem. For my 1st bareback ride I got JD #89 He is one of the newer horses at Westernaires. He is a very tall dark brown paint. He is very hard to catch in the pasture. It took 5 people to help me surround him. Once you catch him he is a great groom. It went very quickly this morning because we didn't have to saddle just groom and bridle. We pulled our horses and mounted up. I tried vaulting up twice. I got so close! Then I had a wrangler give me a leg up. Once I was on I knew I was in trouble. He is very very very skinny and his withers are HUGE. But it felt so cool at the same time! So free and open. You can feel the horses heat and muscles moving. But his spine was so painful. We rode the horses down to our arenas. Our instructors gave us some bareback tips then sent us out on the rail. We started out walking. Then our instructors had us drop our reins and put our hands out like air planes for balance. Now that was FUN! I had to totally trust JD. Then we had to turn and reverse like that. Most of us could get them to turn halfway then we had to use the reins. It was fun to not use the reins. Then we picked up the reins and started to trot. Once I got into the rhythm of JD's trot It wasn't so painful but any shift in my weight caused him to stop sending me into his bony withers. If I wasn't in the rhythm it was very painful. I'm sure it would have been easier if he wasn't so bony. Then they let us lope! I couldn't believe it! Our first time bareback and they were letting us lope. Loping bareback is so much fun and so much easier than the trot. I could actually enjoy it because JD's spine wasn't digging into me as much. We had 6 or 7 riders fall off. I almost fell because JD's trot was so bad and he wasn't slowing down on the HALT HO. I was pulling back very hard. I was able to catch myself though. I want to ride bareback again, but with a different horse. BAREBACK IS SO MUCH FUN!!!!!! And I got bareback butt look!

Bareback Marks