Hey everyone! Today I wanted to give a quick update on my riding experience thus far. I’ve had five lessons now and so far I really enjoy this new hobby of mine.

So far I’ve only ridden on a western saddle. I actually really want to ride English but I’ve been too shy to ask. Now I’m much more comfortable with my instructor so I think that I’ll ask next time. I have a really far off goal of jumping in the future so I really want to switch soon.

I’ve also only ridden one horse, Sapphire, who is pictured above. Our horse-rider relationship is indifferent/slightly annoyed on my end and I’m fairly certain that she hated me up until the last two lessons when I started bringing carrots for her. She has a habit of not listening to me, particularly when 1) I ask her to trot 2) I ask her to walk backwards and 3) when I want her to turn right and she wants to turn left. We’re working on it though and I think she’s starting to trust me a bit more.

In terms of what I’ve learned so far, it’s essentially only how to walk and trot. I still bounce quite a bit in the saddle while trotting so I’m working on that before I can go faster. I was allowed to walk Sapphire around the farm area behind the barn by myself at my last lesson so that was pretty exciting. It was actually after my lesson so I got another half hour of walking around with her. I had a great time. She was maybe not so thrilled and went veryyyyyyy slow. Oh I’ve also learned where the poop buckets are and how to get off the horse without the step stool. And to walk faster than the horse when leading her back to her stall or she’ll step on me. Just a bunch of random knowledge!

My instructor is pretty good I guess. I don’t really have anything to compare her to. While she’s very nice I feel like she doesn’t give as much feedback as she could but she also might not want to overwhelm me with information that I’ll forget. Also I have trouble finding her before my lessons and she oftentimes forgets I’m going to be there for a lesson, even if we talked two days before to set it up. She’s nice though so I don’t really mind for now.

So that’s my riding experience so far! I’m still continuing my weekly lessons and I can see myself sticking to this hobby. It is not very expensive right now, as I really just have to pay for my weekly lessons and carrots but I know if I start riding more I’ll eventually want to lease a horse and have all the costs that are a result of that. If you have any tips or advice I’d love to hear it! Or even to know what your hobby is. Feel free to leave it in the comments below!

Thanks for reading!