PopTart came into my life in September of 2019. I hadn't owned a horse since I sold my mare, Polly, in 2008 before moving to Oklahoma. I had ridden a handful of times here and there over that time, but not enough to gain new skills or even keep the ones I have sharpened. And over the course of those years from 2007 to 2017 I was in a relationship that robbed me of the majority of my confidence. Especially with horses.
After being told for years that I needed to give up my barrel racing dreams because I "didn't ride well anyway" and "wouldn't know how to ride a nice horse to save my life" among other worse sentiments wore down my confidence in myself and my abilities, despite having ridden since before I could walk and having horses my entire life.
I had won everything local that could possibly be won, and I'd worked with multiple trainers learning everything I could from them. I'd read every book, magazine, and website I could find to help me evolve into a better horse person and rider.
And when I got PopTart, we'd been riding some horses for a few months until that wasn't enough. I needed my own horse again. On the test ride, I took her out on trails and never thought twice about not being able to ride her. She is a lot of horse, but she's not a crazy untrained idiot.
After bringing her home, my confidence sank. Every time I was tacking up I would just hear all the negative things about me and my riding permeating my brain. This continued for awhile, and as I worked on preparing her to run barrels I found that I was deathly afraid to go fast on her. This continued to get worse and worse.
I rode her for the last time in March of 2022.
Over that time I took to riding my senior gelding who I felt safe with. But unfortunately his time came due to age and cancer. Of course I had stopped riding him long before that.
Then the other day I was out lunging PopTart because if I'm not riding she still needs to be in shape, and I thought ya know what? I'm going to ride her. I took her to get tacked up, and then I realized that I needed new billet straps and latigo. Since I'd already made the decision I threw on the bareback pad, climbed onto the fender well of the trailer, and hopped on her back.
It went beautifully.
She pranced around for a bit then settled into a walk. The ride was delightfully uneventful despite the fact that my stomach continually threatened to purge itself of the chocolate milk that I drank right before heading out to work horses.
We are back on a nice schedule of slow riding as she's almost six months pregnant, but I do hope that this builds my confidence. I don't want to spend 10 years building my confidence up even though that's the amount of time it took to break it down.
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