Bareback!

Last night, after driving an obscene amount of miles, I picked up my bridle from Matt.

It's absolutely lovely.

I wanted to dash home and make tamales (a guest post coming for Food Adventures Etc.) so I just wanted a quick ride to try out my new bridle and then go home to tamale madness.

This is how the evening went:

• Put the bridle on. Squeal to Matt on the phone how pretty it is.
• Decide to ride sans saddle. Practically dance over to the mounting block and hoist my soft squishy self, in tight jeans over her back.
• Call Matt AGAIN to squeal over how pretty the bridle looks from this angle.
• For *some* reason, at this moment (magic new bridle?) I feel capable of cantering bareback.
• I ask and she rushes and bucks.
• I grip and madly kiss and off we go!
• I realize I am not wearing a helmet.
• This is stupid. I'm cantering bareback, in the dark, in semi-muddy footing, for the first time in 8 years. Without a helmet.
• I take a moment to enjoy the breeze through my hair and feel my pony tail bounce.
• I dismount
• I call Matt AGAIN and talk so fast he probably didn't understand a word. Boiled down to me cantering for the first time bareback in YEARS and how happy I was etc etc etc.
• Put helmet on.
• Went back out and cantered for 10 minutes. OK - so at this point it was more of a handgallop. :)

I haven't gone above a trot on bareback in a very very long time. I had forgotten how much fun it was! Farley's rough trot, high wither, and rough canter departures have always dissuaded me from trying on her. Let's hear it for DRESSAGE! The last horse I galloped/cantered bareback was a standardbred. In fact, I don't think I've EVER galloped a horse bareback that was NOT a standardbred. One thing that was different on a small bodied horse was if I wasn't careful my feet would bump her front legs, NOT a problem I had with the big bodied standardbreds.

Farley's back muscles have REALLY improved. She still has a big wither, but at least there's not a pointy little back bone any more. Yeah, I had to grab mane a couple of times (getting old sucks) but I had a BLAST. Farley was a bit....hesitant. :) But I think she got the point of a speedy canter departure by the end. My weight was a bit more forward than it is in the saddle so there was a bit of...bucking...but we worked through it. :) What a BLAST. I LOVE this horse.