Horses move pretty well on their own. Add a rider and they have to carry us AND balance themselves. Add a rider who is crooked? And you start to see it reflected in your horse.
Some horses are more forgiving than others. My Trakehner, Kroni, was a horse who insisted that you ride him correctly. My trainers always joked with me that they knew exactly what I was doing wrong, because he showed them. I didn’t always appreciate being ratted out, but he did make me a better rider.
Freedom always makes me look good because he’s very sensitive and he’s tuned into the way I ride him. That doesn’t necessarily make me a good rider, just a consistent one. I’m lucky, too that he’s so balanced. It covers a lot of flaws.
Zelda is somewhere in between. She spent a good deal of our first few months together teaching me how she likes to be ridden. However, she has a tendency to get one sided, and that asymmetry shows up in how her saddle fits. Right now it’s slipping a bit to the right, which means 1) I need to be extra careful on how I balance, 2) I need to shim the saddle very slightly, and 3) I have to build up her right side so that she’s more symmetrical.
These nifty diagrams and explanations were posted by trainer Niall Quirk on his Facebook page.
And trying to be straight on a crooked horse is so challenging. I have a mare who has some back issues and she is a master at subtly pushing me to one side. I have to be very diligent and even ride in a position that sometimes feels wrong in order to be right. Riding is not easy.
That’s an understatement! It’s quite easy for my mare to become one sided. I haven’t been diligent enough this year at making her work evenly and it’s started to show again. Luckily I have a solution. Now I just need the weather to improve. We’ve had rain/snow continuously. It’s one of those years where I’d really like to have access to an indoor.