LEARNING TO HORSE RIDE AS AN ADULT

My Story – How I Learnt To Ride As An Adult

By Zoe Smith

Every time someone asks me ‘What age did you start riding?’, I feel my stomach flip. The thing is, I didn’t learn to ride until I was an adult. There, I said it. And now I find myself scrambling to explain, to make excuses for the fact that I wasn’t riding before I could walk, that I don’t have tales of childhood ponies and a wall of pony club rosettes to show off. After all, I’m editor of Intelligent Horsemanship magazine! I’ve completed my Monty Roberts Introductory Certificate of Horsemanship, attended clinics and lessons with a host of incredible trainers, and had the chance to interview legends like the late Tim Stockdale and Clare Balding. I’ve ridden, trained and competed dozens of horses over the years, and I’m proud of everything I’ve learnt and achieved along the way (even if I’m still constantly humbled by how much there is left to learn!). But despite all that, there’s still a part of me wondering whether you’ll judge me for my lack of experience or question whether I have the right to write about horses and horsemanship when my life with horses adds up to little over a decade. Sadly, for some reason, this is still a question asked of riders all the time, as if it’s the only mark of your equestrian knowledge.

It’s taken me a long time to realise that it’s not the length of time that you have been doing something that counts – it’s the quality of that time. My years with horses may have been limited, but my passion has been all-consuming and I feel like the lessons I’ve learnt along the way have just as much value as those I would have learnt at Pony Club.

Early Encounters

The truth is horses did have a fleeting role in my childhood. I took lessons for a year or two, learning to ride on a motley crew of riding school ponies. But I was the kid who would arrive early to brush every pony and then burst into tears when it was time to get on. I was painfully shy, scared to make a fool of myself around the other kids, and terrified of falling. My parents knew nothing about horses and so had few words of comfort, plus it was an expensive hobby even for a kid who didn’t spend most of her time crying. And so, my riding lessons stopped before I could master sitting to the canter (after all, it’s hard to sit still and relax when you keep bursting into tears every time your pony goes faster than a walk!) and my love of horses was redirected to role-playing with my collection of My Little Ponies instead.

But it turns out, some things are just meant to be…

A Journey Begins

In my early twenties, I lost my job in the London music industry when the studio I worked at was sold, and, in an attempt to figure out whether this was really what I was supposed to do with my life, I bought a backpack and set off to travel solo around South America. I was supposed to be gone for six months, but in the end my escapades turned into years of living, working, and travelling over different continents, during which time I started a whole new career as a travel writer, learnt new languages, and undertook that age-old journey of ‘finding myself’. It was during one late-night, admittedly half-drunken conversation with a fellow traveller that the question came up ‘what’s the one thing you always wanted to do?’. I didn’t hesitate: ‘learn to ride a horse!’ And so, my passion for horses caught back up with me and I decided it was better late than never. I headed off to Australia on a working holiday visa and figured that this was as close as I’d get to fulfilling my Wild West cowboy (girl) fantasies. I started volunteering on horse ranches in outback Australia and soon picked up the basics – thankfully, at 25 years old, I no longer burst into tears every time my nerves took hold (I am still prone, however, to the odd bout of pre-competition tears, so this didn’t completely go away!). I then lucked out by landing a job mustering goats on horseback. Each morning, I’d wake up at 5am, pack my breakfast into my saddle bag, and set out with the ranch’s border collie and a herd of 100 or so goats and kids. My task was basically to keep the goats away from the roads, ensure they didn’t get up to any trouble while grazing on public land, and then bring them all safely back in before the blistering midday sun started beating down. Having somewhat exaggerated my riding experience (which was more ‘capable of staying on’ than anything else), I was assigned a hardy little quarter horse mare, Bubba. She was a retired polo cross and reining horse who, thankfully, knew how to herd goats, because I clearly had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. During the three months I spent at the farm, this mare taught me to ride through trial and error. Mostly error. I would wait until the goats settled, then spend my time trying to canter circles or sit to the trot out along long stretches of dusty outback plains. For the first few days, I clung to the saddle horn in desperation as my attempts to steer or stop wielded unintended results like spins and sliding stops. After one very spirited attempt to canter, I found myself bucked off and spitting dust while Bubba looked down on me with a look of pure exasperation (using the reins to balance myself while cantering was a definite no in her book!).

Finally, I swallowed my pride and asked the ranch owner to teach me to ride. “Bubba knows what to do, that’s why I gave you her,” she told me. “You just need to learn to sit quietly and stay out of her way.” Despite the pitfalls (and actual falls), I credit that ranch owner and Bubba with teaching me how to ride and by the time I left the ranch, I was decent enough to pick up a string of other horse-related jobs, including exercising endurance Arabs at another Australian farm and later, working as a trail ride leader at a private farm in New Zealand, where I stayed for around 8 months. It was years later before I even set foot in an arena or took a proper riding lesson, but this early training formed the foundation of everything I’ve learnt since. It turns out sitting quietly and staying out of the horse’s way is pretty good advice across the board. Incidentally, it was this same ranch owner who lent me a copy of Monty Roberts’ book “The Man Who Listens to Horses”. I devoured it in a weekend and came back to her with a million questions. As always, she encouraged me to figure it out for myself. She pointed me in the direction of one of their youngest horses, a gorgeous 2-year-old quarter horse, Roxy, and told me go put “my new horse whispering skills to the test” and try and catch her. I used Monty’s approach and retreat techniques (or at least my own far clumsier version of them), and after about an hour, she finally let me put the headcollar on. It was with Roxy that I later experienced my first ever Join-Up® (again, my version of a Join-Up® because I still hadn’t had any proper training by this point) in their round pen. The moment I felt the warmth of her nose nuzzling the back of my hand, I was hooked. Best of all, Roxy didn’t care one bit that I hadn’t grown up around horses; all she cared about was that I’d mastered her language (ok, definitely not ‘mastered’, but in that euphoric moment of connection, it at least felt that way!).