Horse Trail Chicks

Look how tall I can be, mum!

So you want to ride a 17 hand trail horse…

Hope you enjoy eating leaves and poking your eyes on sticks!

Just kidding.. mostly.

My horse, Prophet, is a pretty big dude. He’s often mistaken for some sort of warmblood and someone at an event even asked if he was a draft cross. He’s 17 solid hands of awesome. This is pretty great when we are galloping, jumping, covering ground, or intimidating small children (and adults). However, sometimes it is less great. I have found that there are two main things about trail riding that are a bit more challenging with a tall horse.  

I am considering this look for my trail riding attire (with a helmet, of course).

The first thing is getting really familiar with getting hit in the face repeatedly with branches and spider webs. I have been hit with maples, oaks, aspens, birch… pretty much the whole forest. I have been poked in the eye more times than I can count. I really need to invest in some safety goggles.

The second thing that is more challenging with a tall horse is getting back on when you need to dismount during a ride. As I mentioned in previous posts, I ride English. I normally ride in my close contact jumping saddle with stirrups that are fairly short. That’s a really long way to climb aboard the Prophet Express.

I have found that even though these things will add some challenges to your trail riding, they can also ramp up your riding skills.

In order to avoid getting hit in the face so much (which is not something I actually enjoy), I have learned to balance really well while ducking and hanging off of my horse’s neck. I can do it even at a trot or canter now. This has definitely helped my balance for things like jumping and dressage and abrupt changes of direction (like when said 17 hand horse spooks at a suspicious looking tree stump at a canter). I have also gotten good at riding with one hand while using the other hand to protect my facial real estate. I think this has helped me to use my aids more independently and, again, helped my seat get stronger. If the rest of my body can stay balanced while I am flailing about with one arm batting away branches and spider webs, that must be a good thing. It also has helped Prophet to learn to keep going even when I am not in a perfect position. He trusts that I will hang on and has no trouble bushwhacking through some areas where I can’t even see where we are going let alone help him steer.

Sometimes when you’re trail riding you will need to dismount. It’s inevitable, whether it’s a scheduled rest for riders and horses or to open a gate or pick up a dropped shoe, whip, phone, sunglasses, or bridle. Yes, bridle. Sometimes when your horse, who has a large melanoma on the side of his head, shakes his noggin really violently to get a bug off, your whole bridle comes right off and you’re left holding the reins of a very ineffectual bridle. This has happened more than once. The getting down is the easy part. The getting back up.. not so much. Prophet has learned to stand still really well in ditches, by weirdly shaped rocks that it turns out are actually slippery even though they don’t look it, along picnic tables, near tree stumps with his head in a shrubbery, when his mum slips on an unexpectedly slippery rock and crashes into his side and then uses him to get back up on the slippery rock and then finally eventually get a foot in the stirrup, and by fences. He doesn’t seem to mind me scrambling my way into the saddle and just waits for me to get myself together before getting on with things. For a horse who wouldn’t even stand at the mounting block in the indoor arena when I first started riding him, this is pretty huge! Patience was never one of Prophet’s many wonderful qualities, but slowly he has become more and more willing to wait around for mum to figure herself out. He’s always ready to go.

How it feels trying to climb up onto Prophet sometimes

Really, I have no complaints about my trail partner. He’s the best horse I could have ever asked for, all 17 hands of him.

Happy trails!

Kerrie