It is a fantastic day here in Alabama.  The sky is very blue, white puffy clouds pass overhead, a breeze is blowing, the perfect day for a ride.  Kaylee, my daughter, was up with the chickens and waiting by my bed this morning ready to get to the barn and get saddled up.  I don’t see that kind of enthusiasm from her on weekdays at this hour of the day.

We had to make an early ride or none at all.  Our days are so packed with responsibilities its tough to find saddle time.  In recent years I’ve not made enough time for the recharging of  batteries and have decided it’s long past time for that to change.  So, off we went.  It wasn’t a long ride.  Just a two hour treck around the neighborhood and back home.  Sebi and Mick even seemed to enjoy themselves.

You never know what might happen when you take these little rides with horses.  They sometimes have a way of taking a trivial occurence and turning it into a heart-thudding, see-your-life-flash-before-your-eyes, mini-adventure.  At least that’s been the usual experience with Sebi.

Several years ago my husband Mark and I rounded up our horses, joined several of our friends and went on a day ride through several open cotton fields and other scenic spaces.  We were all chatting merrily and enjoying the outdoors.  It was a day very similar to today (made me think of it on our ride earlier) with the whole blue skys and light breeze thing happening.

We came upon a little fenced-in lot housing a little horse and a pig.  Horses are herd animals and do much better with a pasture buddy of some sort, in this case the buddy was a pig.  We all stopped to see the horse, comment briefly on the pig and just take a little break.  Should have been an ordinary moment that would pass quickly from memory, except Sebi was there.

It seems Sebi didn’t appreciate the mundaness of a pig.  He saw the pig, his attention was riveted, he reared straight up, pivoted, landed facing the opposite direction, and launched forward…only there was a fence there.  Fortunately for me, still on his back, he didn’t continue the forward motion.  Instead he wheeled this direction, then that direction, frantically trying to get away from the pig. A pig.  My horse was terrified of a pig.  It wasn’t even a very big pig.

Of course this drew a symphony of laughter from my friends, yes, my dear husband laughed too-maybe the loudest   I like to think they made sure I was okay before they started laughing.  Once I recovered from the shock of going from fully relaxed to that state I mentioned earlier with my life flashing before my eyes I laughed too, a bit of a jittery laugh at first but a laugh never the less.

I really think the perspectives of those with sound mounts who don’t flip out at the most ordinary things are vastly different from those of us with horses like Sebi. Sebi was well seasoned when this little incident took place, he’d seen a pig before, he’d seen other horses before but surprise, he exploded as though it was his first time outside.  Maybe that’s why the Western saddle attachment I mentioned in my earlier post.  Having a lot of places to hold on in case of emergency just seems to make a lot of sense.

I’ve never really ridden any horse but Sebi for any mentionable length of time.  We both have some less than stellar skills and habits because of this.  Nobody there to teach one or the other any different .  Both being beginners when we met, we’ve evolved into a synchronicity that usually works well for us.  I can usually feel the tension, even when it’s subtle, building before he reacts to something and take evasive actions. As we see with the pig story, it doesn’t always work that way.  Maybe he wasn’t paying attention and was just surprised to see a pig.

I don’t think of pigs as scary.  There was a fence between us and the pig.  There were a pretty large number of other horses all around him that didn’t think the pig was scary.  So why did Sebi try to run for his and my lives?  I’ll never know and I don’t think I’ll ever get the opportunity to forget since the story is brought up again every time we see a pig and there’s always laughter.

For all the years I’ve owned Sebi I’ve had the same saddle.  A Western saddle that I bought just months after I bought him back in 1986.  Both the horse and I were and still are amateurs.  I had never owned a horse before and Sebi hadn’t really had much experience being owned.  He’d been left on a pasture to starve until I came along so the combination of zero experience on both sides was a dangerous one.

As a family we collectively have two additional saddles, both of these are Western too.  When you’re not much of an expert rider all that leather and places to hold on seems to add an element of security.  I shyed away from English for a couple of reasons. First my riding is limited to trail riding strictly for pleasure and second it just didn’t look like you had much there to help keep you on the horse if something unplanned happened, like the horse under the saddle bucking, spooking and shying unexpectedly.

In the early days something unplanned seemed to happen with fair regularity when I was on the trail with Sebastian.  If something startled him it was almost a matter of course he would put his head down and buck for just a few seconds in response.  Once he nearly pulled my arm off as I was leading him through the hallway of the barn.  Someone moved a trashcan from the left side to the right side and the unexpected presence of the can in a new spot scared Sebi enough to produce a sudden backward retreat that caught me off guard.

A wide variety of these kinds of experiences produced a response from me that I’m sure isn’t recommended in any textbook or training program.  I adopted a firm policy of “if I find something that works never change it” strategy that 20+ years later has resulted in my using the same saddle, same bridle, same bit, well… you get the idea.  For a brief period of maybe two or three years I did ride often enough that the horse settled down substantially and I got comfortable enough to actually ride frequently with just a bareback pad (it was the kind with stirrups and a small nylon handle where the horn would be on a saddle).  Sometimes I even rode without the bareback pad.

When my children came along I wasn’t able to ride as often so some of the not so pleasant behavior from Sebi returned and had me again clinging to my old western saddle for security.  That routine has continued over the years as life has gotten in the way of much riding.  I have made a firm promise to ride more often.  I made an impulse purchase this past weekend brought about primarily due to a brief experience last summer on a borrowed English saddle and as a result of this renewed vow to get back to trail riding.

On the 4th of July last year I was invited by a neighbor of mine (you’ll be hearing more about her later – her name is Sandy) to come as near as I could to dressing like a Colonial soldier and riding my horse around The American Village during their 4th of July festivities that day.  Let the kids pet the horses, add to the Colonial atmosphere there, etc.  I couldn’t very well show up with a Western saddle so Sandy let me borrow an English saddle of hers.  I loved it.  It gets blazing hot here in the summer, especially July and August, and having a lighter saddle that was easy to manage was a welcome treat.

This past weekend my husband Mark and I attended Bluegrass & Burgers, a fund raising event held annually at The Spirit of Hope Youth Ranch (something else you’ll hear me talking about a lot if you come back often enough).  They had a room set up where you could pick out some leftover tack in exchange for a donation.  Among the many offerings were a selection of several English saddles.  The prices were just too good to ignore, so I bought one.  As I was leaving, Missy Cox, the trainer out there at the Ranch explained the saddle I now own belonged to a former Olympic gold medalist and this was the very saddle he used during that win.  Since I was on my way out I didn’t get a chance to absorb those details but don’t worry, I’ll be revisiting that topic with Missy as soon as I see her again and will share what I find out.

I have a new, old saddle I’ll be testing out soon.  You’ll have to come back and hear how it works out.