Bareback!

I'm pretty sure that Starbuck's still not ready to gallop with me riding her and I'm not in any hurry, but I feel like we've really achieved a lot as far as walk-trot-steer, ride in roundpen, ride in big arena goes and wanted to do something different today.  I hadn't ridden any horse bareback since I was a teenager but have been wanting to try it with Starbuck for a while now, especially since it'd be a way to squeeze some quicky riding in at lunchtime during the work week, and decided that if she was amenable today that I'd give it a shot.

I've seen Clinton Anderson use the Jeffrey's Method to gentle a horse on one of his DVDs - you jump up and down next to the horse until she's cool with what you're doing, then jump on her back and lay across her back on your stomach for a second, then do it again for a little longer and a little longer... until finally she's completely calm and you can straddle her.  So I got the jumping up and down part pretty much covered, then lay across her back for a second, but I think I got blinded by the goal because I forgot to "warm her up" to the idea and tried to hop right up and straddle her way before she was comfortable with the idea.  It's funny, I think I knew I was going to fall off since right before disaster struck I actually remembered to take my cell phone out of my pocket...  It was stupid - too soon, too clumsy and without any help.  Luckily it was a good fall and I was able to get right back up, I'm not even sore this evening.

Luckily my friend Virginia showed up to see if I was OK and very generously offered to help out, so she held Starbuck while I gave it another try.  I still did it too fast, I should have lain across her back and "rubbed" her with my foot before I got all the way on, and she spooked a little, but I was able to stay on (no easy feat, I'm pretty proud of myself) and finally we ended up doing a little pony ride around the roundpen with Virginia's help for about 5 minutes.  She calmed down and in the end was perfectly fine with it, and since for now I want her to associate me riding bareback as being something easy and pleasant I decided to reward her by cutting it short, taking the bridle off and leading her to a particularly lush patch of grass to graze.

I have to say, it was the most amazing feeling.  She's so fit that it's really comfortable (albeit hard to stay on!) and I could feel every little muscle in her back moving and could tell she was really tuned into me too.  Today I was too nervous and tired (only got about 4 hours of sleep last night) to be able to relax and focus on it, but I think it's the kind of thing which could be almost meditative.  Definitely something I can't wait to do more of and I think it's what I really need to improve my balance and seat, as well as possibly our communication.

Anyhow here's the video, the most exciting moments are at about 3:25 and 6:35 :P