I think this is the phrase I use most when new riders or prospective riders ask me questions about the sport.
Which saddle?
Boots or shoes?
Hackamore or bit?
Electrolyte or not?
Supplement or no?
In fact, I always get a bit of a giggle when advice gets handed out to new riders and those with the strongest opinions about what you MUST do are often the individuals with very few miles or very few years in the sport.
It seems those of us who have been around for a while have had our idealism trodden on a bit by our reality.
In the end, the only opinion that matters, truly, is that of my horses.
And they routinely like to change the rules.
Heavyweight riders should not ride in treeless saddles.
Please, someone, explain the biomechanics of this one to my horses. I prefer, and not just a little bit, riding in a treed dressage saddle, and we are sticklers for having them fitted and re-flocked and tweaked and adjusted (at no small expense) every year.
Why is it then, that some of them routinely and others of them occasionally, say “yes, please!” to the beaten up, old, once-chewed-on-during-an-overnight-stall-escape-episode notoriously-inappropriate-for-heavier-riders Bob Marshall Treeless Saddle which makes me equitate in a manner that brings on shame and horror?
All season long, I fought Ace on this one. He went “fine” in his Albion saddle, which had been fitted and re-flocked in June, no soreness to speak of. But when I swapped to the treeless, his shoulder got just a wee bit freer, his back came up just a tiny bit sooner, he sat just a little bit better going up and down hill and despite episodes of me being tossed about like an oversized Weeble ragdoll when he was on a mad tear in a pack of horses, never so much as a turned hair.
Go ahead, Ace, I’ll give you a cookie if you tell me why.
You cannot do dressage with a hackamore
For years I’ve confessed to my purist dressage queen friends that I routinely schooled dressage, both in the arena and on trail, in a hackamore.
Yeah, sure, a bit in the mouth provides a cog in the circle of aids, but couldn’t we just move that cog to the nose area? My horses sure didn’t seem to care, and as long as my hands were light and the hackamore more an equivalent to a snaffle — something they felt they could accept with some contact — than a bicycle chain curb bit, it all pretty much feels the same to me.
Video proof that it can be done and at a far higher level than what I do:
[youtube id=”A5XUq56P_I0″ width=”700″ height=”390″ fullwidth=”yes”]
Uta Graf & Le Noir
You need to train with a heart rate monitor
When I was single, I had a VCR that blinked 12:00 for 12 months of the year.
I can barely operate a computer. Ask the lucky individual who set up this website for me. He used to have hair.
When people speak to me about apps for my iPhone, I change the subject. I am pleased as punch to be able to answer my phone, pick up a voice mail, text and receive/send email. Oh, and I discovered how to use it as an alarm clock. This is enough, really.
Likewise I’ve used a GPS, but forget how to use it between rides, and once had to call my husband when lost out on a trail to have him tell me how to use it to get back to camp. See above, iPhone use.
Heart rate monitors are just outside my window of technological comfort. Sure, I’ve tried them. Between broken terminals and bad connections, I tried to figure out how I’d ridden a dead horse for several miles and then just stuffed it away in a toolbox somewhere.
I have the world’s oldest and cheapest stethoscope hanging beside the crossties in my barn. I use that. Somehow we get by. I certainly don’t have anything against heart rate monitors; I just realize the limits of my skills and my ability to get distracted by a gadget with a digital readout.
My friend Rachel rode Ned in a 100 a few years ago, and she’s a fan of the HRM as a tool, so used it for the entire ride. It was Ned’s sixth 100 I think and his ninth year of competition. She said his heart rate in that 100 miles never went above 120.
I guess I’m doing okay without it.
One of the challenges to being new in our sport is to pick and choose what advice you’ll take, who you will trust with assisting on critical decisions and how many ideas you’ll try.
I’m a big fan of the KISS principle. Keep it simple, silly.
If it ain’t broke, don’t work so hard to fix it.
Whatever works.
And in the end, it is your horse who ultimately decides each of those things.
Just listen.