Running The One You Brung

So here my takeaway from this winter:

Always own a horse that you can ride.

When I think about my own horsey history and about The Horsey World In General, what I notice is that there seems to be correlation between contentment, resilience, flexibility and owning a horse that you can and do ride – maybe not always well, but safely, happily, comfortably – with a minimum of help and supervision.

(Assuming of course that riding one’s horse is a thing that one wants to do!  Not everyone does, so in those cases, substitute “that you can handle” instead.)

I feel honestly weird about saying this (and about doing it, at least for now, and I will probably blog on that topic at some point in future) because I am a long-time lesson evangelist, right?  I believe that good instruction is tippy-tops on the list of Ways To Get Better, right up there with “keep showing up” and “find workable balance between ego and humility.”  (And yes, absolutely the corollary to this is, Put in the work and get the help to learn to ride the horse you have.  This is a function, not a set of absolutes.)

But I am so, so glad that, when I started weighing my logistics and priorities this winter, I was able to work on that stuff – which was complicated enough! – without ever for two seconds having to worry about whether I’d be okay alone for a while with my horse.

This is partly because I've owned him for over a decade and we've spent a lot of time together, and had a lot of help getting us to where we are now.

But it was also true in the first months that I had him when I took him home to trainerless backyard barn situation for my six-week trimester break, and then when I took him home again for the next summer and decided to keep him there.  He was very green; I was very stupid; we did eventually seek some instruction, and there were things I wanted us to do that would take much more time and much more help to achieve.  But he was small enough and good-minded enough and just broke enough, and I rode just well enough, that we could muddle through on our own in the meantimes when we had to.  I had bought enough horse to challenge me -- and challenge me he did, and I had some bad experiences on some other horses shortly after buying him that set us considerably back, which was unfortunate -- but I hadn't bought more horse than I could ride.

Which turned out to be really, really important when it came time to strike out on our own.

I will have other horses at some point in future.  They will probably be young green horses.  I am hoping they will be fancy horses.  I have every intention of enlisting the best help I can find to guide me in bringing 'em up and bringing 'em along (and I have every intention, too, of enlisting help with Tucker again when the time feels right).  I still believe in all of that.  But yeah, I hope I will keep this in mind when I go shopping: Buy only horses that I can ride -- safely, happily, productive -- on my own no matter what.

I wasn't thinking about that when I bought Tucker.  I just got lucky, was all.  But it is a straight-arrow line from that piece of luck to having as many choices and freedoms and opportunities as we do now.

So that's pretty cool.

Pic by Flatlandsfoto and used with permission.  A good day.