Teaching My Daughter to Ride

Over 10 years after I bought a pony to teach my future children how to ride, he is finally teaching my first child.

To be fair to him, I bought him as a yearling, and he was in no way ready to be ridden by children. He needed years to grow up, go through training, put on his big pony pants, and be a respectable equine citizen.

And then he spent a few years doing nothing, because I was having my litter of children.

I was actually worried that he wasn’t going to be able to be the pony I wanted him to be. He went to a lease home for about a year to be a lesson pony, and they were happy with him there. But then their needs changed, and they sent him back. I sent him out to my trainer at the time for an evaluation, as I wasn’t sure what he’d been doing, and I had another family interested in leasing him.

My trainer thought he was awful.

image of a pony in darkness with the light shinning on him — The “Naughty” Pony winning photography awards.

She couldn’t catch him in the field. Then he broke away from her in the crossties and ran around her farm. She was having trouble handling on him on the ground. She said she would not consider him safe for a child. But, she did say he was pretty good to ride, so I guess there’s that.

It was confusing because everyone else thought he was suitable for kids. His first trainer thought he’d be a perfect kid’s pony. Everyone who rode him at my house thought he was gentle. The lease home loved him. So what happened?

I just had my twins when this all happened, so I wasn’t in any condition to figure it out. I just brought him home, and he existed.

The nice thing about horses is that, if needed, they can just exist. You can go through major life changes, need some time, and the horse will just continue to exist. If you board, sure, that’s expensive, and of course you still need to take care of them, but they don’t care if they aren’t being worked. They’ll just live their horse lives, basking in the glory of being alive. They really don’t care if they are on a break.

Of course, you might care because your bank account is slowly draining and you aren’t even getting anything fun out of it.

A few weeks ago, my daughter asked me if she could ride Pony. She’s 5 years old now, which is a suitable age to start riding. I had been delaying doing anything primarily because it wasn’t in my routine to bring her out to ride. It’s so easy to fall into a routine, and once you’re in it, its way too much work to change it.

It wasn’t new for her to ask. She’d been asking for years, but I had plenty of excuses. I have no suitable tack for Pony. Who would watch the boys? She’s not strong enough yet. I don’t have time. They weren’t made up excuses, they were all very true. But I could have still done something.

So when she asked this time, I decided I was going to do it. I basically decided on a whim one day, before I was going down to feed the horses. I invited everyone along. We went down. Everyone behaved themselves. I put a halter on Pony, found a helmet, and led Bridgette around bareback. She just grabbed mane and held on, and she loved it.

She wanted to keep riding. I fashioned together a Frankenstein set of pony tack. A bridle was created from attaching old reins to a halter. I had an old cheap kid’s saddle, but I was sure it would be too big for her. I ordered a new synthetic saddle online, which I’m now going to send back, so she started using the old saddle.

The whole set up is gross and weird, but it works. I don’t want to invest in new tack if she doesn’t stick with it.

But – I hope she does keep up with it. I want to invest in something nice for her. I want her to be enthused about having a saddle pad collection, or matching her outfit to her pony’s. Teaching her to ride is almost as good as riding myself. Her lessons are now my favorite part of the day. I hadn’t even realized how much I would love sharing horses with her.

Being out there makes we want to be out there even more. It’s made me realize how much I’ve been missing. Plus I need to clean up my arena, it’s become filled with weeds.

Since I’ve also been working with Pony near daily, I haven’t noticed any of the behaviors that my trainer was complaining about. I don’t find him difficult to handle. He was head shy for two days, and now he’s not. He was living his best feral life, but he’s quickly come back to being civilized. Check out the video I made of yesterday’s ride, and tell me that’s not a pony meant to be teaching kids to ride.