I came to getting bitten by the horse bug through quite an atypical route. I am based in London, but my family stems from the East Midlands - proper Quorn Country to be precise, & I'll deftly defend the hunt from all who dare speak ill of it - ancestors were horse breeders on my maternal side, so an early memory of mine from when I was 4 hails from a family tradition that the first-born always gets an introductory riding lesson whether they ask for it or not, & a man isn't really a man until he's had a son who's sat in the saddle. It didn't really go anywhere from there - equestrianism was a girls' pastime where I was growing up, although I never really understood why.
Fast-forward a decade & a half, & as a bored teenager I decide to take up trainspotting, but I soon give up as don't find it challenging enough - it's always the same few EMUs passing by my house, so I reinvent it by finding a list of the names of police horses that the Daily Telegraph had published a couple of years prior, printing it out, putting it on a clipboard & going up to mounted police officers to ask the names of their mounts. I even do some research: cover-to-cover reading of Horseback Riding for Dummies to familiarise myself with what they do, although I can't observe what they're doing because Mounted are so subtle, & it only results in me adopting such americanisms as "hunt seat". This nevertheless blossoms into the source of the majority of my friendships to date (or it feels more like one big friendship in a sense I can only liken to the Holy Trinity - one friend in a couple dozen persons). Last year, after 5 years knowing them, they persuaded me that I was ready to take the reins up myself: in my own words "it seems to me that there are two types of bad rider - those who lack confidence & those who lack patience - and I dare say I don't think I'm one of either".
The second reason I enrolled in a riding school in April last year was because I have come to correlate the late decline in the quality of leadership western civilisation enjoys with the end of it being necessary for anyone seeking positions of leadership to also be an equestrian. Horses teach the rider, among other things, the difference between punishment & revenge and that between work & drudgery. I wanted to test my hypothesis, & so far I have not come across any reason to doubt my view. Horses are great teachers of leadership because they live as though the world were still dangerous.
The atypical beginnings of my equestrian career mean that I am accustomed to most of the things that stereotypically faze new riders, like being around big horses & the fear of falling off (the police have an elegant solution to that: they tell you that everyone falls off eventually & to stop worrying about the inevitable. I will forever regard myself as a novice until the day I first fall off). On the other hand, I can't bear a lot of yard gossip culture, particularly those who think they always know best: y'know, when people talk of accidents in which a helmet did nothing to protect them, or in which they weren't wearing a helmet but were fine, they're not giving reasons why they don't wear a helmet, what they're actually doing is getting defensive because you're berating them over something which ultimately doesn't affect you. It has nothing to do with you whether somebody else wears a helmet or not, so it's not worth bitching each-other about. For reference, I wear a helmet. I see the actors on TV & would like to let my hair out like they do, but I also know that they probably practise with helmets, so I would like to gain more experience first. My first fall seems like a reasonable minimum benchmark, then I'll see how I take it from there.
I am also a fan of fellow East Midlander the jouster Jason Kingsley CBE (in-case you haven't heard, he got promoted last month) & would one day like to try out a lot of the unconventional stuff he does in the saddle. As for big horses, I've quickly reached the shouting "I've ridden bigger horses than that" stage of my career that pony clubbers get to when they're about 10 or so. I look good on big horses too, but I won't complain about riding a pony because to ride is a privilege; it won't do good to begrudge this horse because I'd rather be on that.
Anyway, that's 1½ hours I've just spent trying to note down & explain all the ways in which my relationship with horses is unconventional, & I've barely scratched the surface.
(I'm in California).
