This was my first ride post-recovery from breaking two vertebrae 7 months after Penny bucked me off.
Before I get in the saddle, I place my hand on Penny’s smooth, golden cheek and whisper a prayer for us.
Lord, please help us work together well today and connect the way good partners should. And keep us both calm and safe. Amen.
Standing on the mounting block with a tangle of knots in my gut, I remind myself to breathe before swinging onto Penny’s back.
I sit still for several seconds as Penny adjusts to my weight. Then I reach down to stroke her neck and praise her.
Good girl.
We start at an easy walk, then I pull on the reins to bring her nose to my right shin and she yields. We walk on, then repeat the move to my left shin. This is the basics of the one rein stop, a horse version of an emergency brake.
As we work our way along the panels of our round pen, I blow out my breath while lightly bringing my lips together, imitating the sound of a horse relaxing.
We go through several maneuvers at a walk, making circles in both directions, backing up, yielding her hindquarters, and side passing.
A while back, I tried trotting during a ride without doing any groundwork first. After trotting a few steps, she got super nervous, backing up and wheeling around without me asking. And she wouldn’t settle down. That made ME super nervous, and I executed our one-rein stop until she quit moving. Then we finished the ride at a walk.
Now, for the foreseeable future, I won’t get on her without doing groundwork first.
I got on her the very next day, after groundwork, of course, and it went fine.
After getting bucked off in December 2024 and cracking two vertebrae, I bought a padded vest to protect my neck, back and ribs in case of a fall.
Recovery mode
Getting back in the saddle after a serious injury is an exercise of faith. For the first time ever, Penny bucked me off in December 2024. I fractured my C7 (last vertebra in the neck) and the T2 (second vertebra from the top of the back). Fortunately, I was wearing my helmet, as I always do, no matter what. You can read all the gory details in this post, if you’re interested.
Horses can be complicated. They know what we are feeling better than we know it ourselves. But for me as a newbie owner, I struggle to figure out why she’s behaving oddly. Does she have a bit of a limp or is she moving slow because of the heat?
Why is she whinnying at the cattle today when she usually just ignores them? What caused her to flinch at the beginning of our ride?
There’s so much I don’t know as we work to get back into the rhythm of riding. We’re doing something together most days, even if it’s just a little groundwork.
To improve my skills and our teamwork, Penny and I started taking lessons together from a skilled, experienced instructor who lives nearby. I load Penny in the trailer, and we drive up the road to have our lesson in my instructor’s arena. Last month, Penny spent five days at her facility for “boot camp” to improve Penny’s responsiveness to the rider’s cues.
We’re both learning and growing while I’m still dealing with the fear of falling off.
I started taking lessons last summer with an excellent instructor who lives just up the road from Plum Prairie Ranch.
Horse crazy
Anyway, God created me as a horse-crazy little girl. I fell in love with their shiny coats and flowing manes, their graceful and powerful movements, the way they nicker and flap their lips when they sigh.
My walls were covered in horse posters. I had a sketchbook full of horse drawings and a collection of Breyer horse figurines that I used to play with my friend whose father built her a little stable.
I loved the two years I went to Girl Scout Camp at Rancho Del Chaparral in northern New Mexico because I got to ride horses EVERY DAY. That, to me, was livin’ the dream!
That ride was always the highlight of my day, stroking the warm neck of my horse, the creak of saddle leather and clip-clop of hooves, the smell of hay and Ponderosa pines.
As a city dweller, I couldn’t afford to own a horse. Horses are expensive. Over the years as I grew up and raised three daughters, I went on a few trail rides but mostly put that dream aside.
But my husband knew my life-long love of horses, and once we had our sights set on moving to our 30-acre Plum Prairie Ranch, he urged me to start my real horsemanship journey.
I took lessons for 18 months before becoming a horse owner. You can read more about my horse shopping saga in:
- Horse Shopping Day 1
- The Quest to Find a Well Broke Horse
- The End of the Trail for Horse Shopping… Finally
Riding Penny in October 2022 on the day I decided to purchase her.
Beyond the comfort zone
A few years ago, I read a Facebook post from Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy (or WHOA, love it!) that started out like this:
Ask more of yourself and your wild horse.
It’s normal to want to be comfortable. To try to avoid rocking the boat. To not want to provoke any disagreements or to back out of them when they do occur. There’s only one issue: That’s not how progress happens and it’s not how you or your horse will ever reach your potential.
Wow! This post hit me right between the eyes. And it’s true not just about training Mustangs, but about life. In the rough places, I need to overcome my desire to retreat into the comfortable familiar and persevere in adversity, confronting problems with equal parts patience and determination.
Horses don’t hide their emotions. Horses will tune in to your body language even better than you do with yourself. The way they learn is through pressure and release, getting them to take on a new step in a process, then letting them relax when they do the right thing.
We will become better partners if we gradually push beyond our comfort zones. One trainer that I like says 80 percent of your time with your horse should be practicing skills they already have, and 20 percent should be expanding their boundaries.
That’s why I introduced several objects to her groundwork sessions, like a thick PVC pipe to step over and a tarp to walk across.
Penny doesn’t care if she stands on a tarp while eating yummy grass.
God calls us to action
Because I’m frequently wrestling with my fear of falling off, it’s easy to rationalize not riding. The lack of progress leads to getting bogged down in discouragement.
Last year, my Ladies’ Bible Study group studied John Ortberg’s “If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat.”
In the book, he writes:
Taking action is very powerful. The reason many people become paralyzed in discouragement is because they fail to devote the time or energy to understand what was involved in the failure in the first place, and then they fail to take action toward change. They wait for some outside force or person to rescue them when God is calling them to action. In any arena where you are concerned about failure, the single most destructive thing you can do is nothing.
That’s why I’m focused on taking short, frequent rides as a way to rebuild my confidence and strengthen my bond with Penny.
And in a broader sense in my life, I’m reminded that God will often call me out of my comfort zone.
Following Christ requires that I choose faith over fear. One of the most frequent commands in the Bible is to not be afraid but to trust God.
There are 365 verses that command us to “fear not,” that’s one for every day of the year!
Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. – Isaiah 41:10
Faith means going where God leads despite fear. It also applies to discouragement. Faith calls me to persevere and choose to focus on God’s promises instead of my feelings.
Where has God placed you and what are your passions? He wants to use you wherever you are and in whatever you do to help others find His love and grace.
And this isn’t just about the big things. It’s more about showing up daily in the small things.
How can you choose to trust God and take a step of faith today?
A selfie of me and Penny, we’re learning together to be better partners.