Beginner Lessons
I’ve had a couple new students start this week, and I always go “Back to Basics” with new folks. Many have riding backgrounds already, but I like to cover all the bases just so I make sure there are no gaps in understanding, and nothing I take for granted.
I’m always a little bit surprised when I teach these lessons. There’s so much experienced horse people do intuitively and when I have the opportunity to break it down I realize how huge the learning curve is for new students. Honestly it’s a daunting volume of information, before you even bother to get on the horse.
I remember in vivid detail my earliest riding lessons on a broad variety of horses in a little barn on a hill. I was 10 and OBSESSED with horses. My first lesson was a dream come true, total and complete heaven. I learned an incredible amount in that little barn, and thanks to the option of having lessons videoed, have my first-ever fall off a horse documented. I met my still best friend there, and 31 years later I’m still in contact with the folks who ran that program. It was a fabulous experience and I feel like I have that program to thank for my whole trajectory with horses.
What strikes me now, however, as a professional myself for the last 20 years, is what I didn’t learn there.
Let me say for starters that I understand WHY I didn’t learn some things there. Let’s be real, this is a tough business. Huge overhead, insane hours, 365 day a year responsibilities to the horses. Efficiency in this business is limited but also essential. This couple was trying to make a living and I get it.
When I arrived at the barn for my lessons I was assigned a horse, and it was already tacked up, ready to rock. Maybe it had been used in the previous lesson, maybe it was off for the previous hour, but it was ready to go. I was handed the reins and up I went. Happy to struggle around stirrupless (I mean there were literally no stirrups on the saddles, those were earned) on horses who knew much, much more than I did. I had zero clue about their feelings, their needs, their opinions of their lifestyle or what it might be like to be in lesson after lesson every afternoon. I didn’t know how to read their expressions, why we used the gear we used, or how my energy might impact their reactions. I might as well have been riding a bicycle.
In the summer there were optional camps...that’s when we learned how to groom, take a bridle apart and put it back together, and tack up. To be fair, that program moved and I was unable to continue with them after maybe a year or so, which means I wasn’t exactly advanced while I was there. But…
As I teach folks, and develop curriculum around my program, my goal is to offer a safe, complete lesson program that fills in the blanks. One that teaches what so many of us have learned simply by living with horses for years, and what so many people never really learn. I don’t expect to be able to teach everything, but I strive to help students become observant horse people who are able to make good decisions for their horses based on a broad base of education, with curriculum derived from evidence-based research. A curriculum built around the horses and their needs, more than the riders and theirs.
These introductory lessons always bring me back to earth. They are an excellent review of the basics and force me to put into words what I do all day intuitively. I love it. I love seeing the wide-eyed wonder of the student, and I love putting more horse-welfare based information into the world. It is an incredible honor to spend my life with these animals, and it is my duty to teach students to keep their needs front and center in the process. “Beginner” lessons might be beneath some instructors, but to me it’s where you lay a foundation, and nothing significant can be built without a broad and strong foundation.