Therapeutic Riding: Standing Still Is A Lot More Work

I’ve always known that standing still on a horse is a lot more work than moving, but I became even more acutely aware of this fact as I was volunteering at Pegasus Farm Monday night.

Monday kicked-off the start of the new year at Pegasus — and a new semester after horses, riders, volunteers, and instructors had two weeks off. Randy (who hadn’t actually broken his arm, by the way), in the spirit of trying new things in the new year threw our routine on its head.

I suppose it would help to first know the routine. Us volunteers brush and tack the horses, then wait until Randy is ready to get the class mounted. One at a time, we lead our horse to the ring where Randy does tack saftey checks. Then we lead the horse to either the mounting block or the lift, Randy gets the student on, adjusts the stirrups, and then sends us out into the ring to walk while the rest of the class mounts up. Repeat 4-5 times. It takes a good 15 minutes for a full class of six to get mounted.

Once everybody is in the saddle, Randy comes out and watches us walk around once or twice, keeping an eye on stirrup length and other issues. He then has us all halt on one side of the ring, performs one of his famous monologues about communicating with the horses, and sets us a specific task and an obstacle course.

Well, Randy decided that he’d had enough of allowing the horses to act like herd animals in the old system, following each other around instead of paying attention to the riders.

So, this week he assigned each of us a letter (dressage letters posted around the ring) by which to stand and wait. So instead of moving while the class mounted, we had to stand. Then, we did the obstacle course one at a time, and moved from letter to letter one at a time when instructed. The result was that we spent most of the lesson standing still.

I of course, was leading the pushiest, stubbornest, least-likely-to-stand-still horse in the bunch. And we were one of the first mounted. I went home more exhausted than I ever have from a solid hour and a half of walking.

I can understand and appreciate the theory behind Randy’s new tactic. Every horse, especially in the group lesson situation, needs to get away from the herd and listen only to the rider instead of the tail in front. It was good for the students to have to make their horses stand still and concentrate on what they were doing instead of following the helmet in front of them. It was good to break up the routine so that we all had to think a little harder.

I can appreciate getting horses and students away from the herd mentality through this exercise, and I don’t mind doing it occasionally. But I sure do hope we don’t have to do that every week.