The Broken Rider

When you're around horses for a long time, you eventually find yourself in a place where you can cope with a less well-adjusted or even downright damaged horse. You learn how to take a nervous, reactive or insecure horse and make it feel better so that it copes better with the pressure of everyday life.

You might decide that the best thing for that horse is to tip it out into a paddock with minimal interference and let it slowly recover from whatever trauma caused its issues. You might need to accept that the best thing for a broken horse is a life where human interaction is rare. Or you might try to build the horse's confidence with small, frequent interactions that build a new foundation of trust over the ruins of his previous dealings with humans.

We've all got our own ways of working with these damaged horses. But what is a rider to do when they are the one who is broken?

I've pretty much always been a nervous rider. My teen years saw me left unsupervised with unsuitable ponies and I hit the deck hard and often. I didn't know how to fit a saddle, let alone read a horse or manage its stress levels. I was often scared, frustrated and desperate to be better, but I didn't really know where to turn.

By sheer force of will, I kept up with my friends, rode all sorts of horses and ponies, and developed a skerrick of skill and knowledge. I was still afraid often, and intimidated by my friends who were much braver than I was, but I pushed through. I somehow became the girl who could help local kids with their difficult horses. I got on some pretty troubled animals and lived to tell the tale. But I always felt relief when I dismounted voluntarily.

Fast forward 30-odd years and I'm trying to get back into riding after a 10 year break, still scarred by the muscle memory of the times when things went badly. The pony who would stumble to his knees if I didn't hold him together in trot. The one who would rear and rear in the Pony Club lineup. The horse who spooked at a duck and went from trotting in one direction to cantering the opposite direction in the space of her own body length. When a first trot turned into a twisting buck that sent me flying head first through the air as though I had been shot out of a cannon. Only now I'm not a flexible lightweight teenager, I'm a fragile middle-aged woman with worn joints who bruises easily.

More than that, I'm a heart patient with metal in my chest and a battery-powered heart whose doctors would prefer I didn't do anything quite so dangerous.

Your brain's first priority is to protect your body, because it can't live without it. So when my brain thinks about getting on a horse it tells my body that we are in danger. And when my nervous system responds to that danger, it feels pretty awful. And then my brain has trouble keeping things under control.

My biggest fear is that my fear will upset my horse and that I will create a situation that is literally fear reinforcing itself. I have been able to get around this by riding horses that I deem to be trustworthy. Horses who are in their job of school horse because their owner knows they are not going to hurt their rider. Horses who are ridden by bigger sooks than me on a regular basis. They just look like regular horses, but once I've ridden them a few times they become 'safe'.

That's easy to do in a riding school setting under the supervision of a skilled instructor. It's way harder to do when it's just you and the horse, at home.

I've been loaned a pony who has years of experience doing all kinds of things. He's not a beauty, but he's incredibly kind. Yesterday I tried my saddle on him and decided that I would just sit on him for a moment.

I don't know what I expected, but he was incredibly calm. There were a couple of minor misunderstandings about where I wanted him to move, but for a moment I thought 'ponies like this DO exist'. I imagined myself riding him without fear. I imagined trusting him without a second thought, doing things and going places that once seemed impossible. I don't think those thoughts came from me.

Maybe this is the pony who can get me going again. That feels like a lot to put on him, but if we take things slowly maybe I can saddle up and hop on without the adrenaline rush, the shaky hands, the shallow breathing. I can remember the trustworthy ponies who never spooked on a trail ride, who looked after me through pre-competition nerves, who took me over drop fences on the cross country course with my eyes closed, who cantered through a mob of kangaroos without so much as blinking.

If I am going to ride properly again I need to tap into those feelings of trust, and have a little confidence in my own ability.