Hello Jessica,
I am a 39 year old mother of four who just took up riding 6 years ago. In that time I have sporadic riding lessons with a not so great
instructor. I have since moved and started riding at a stable down the road from me. It is a hunter/jumper facility that buys thoroughbreds off the track in New York and retrains them. The riding instructor there is quite young but very knowledgeable. I am not interested in jumping but love flat work and would love to learn dressage.
Here is my problem, I have been taking lessons (once a week) since February and I have had some scary experiences. Two similarly aged women ride with me and each of them has had a bad fall during a lesson. The last fall put the women under the horse with a hoof hitting her cheek and just missing crushing her back. I have not been back to ride there since witnessing that injury. I know it is not the instructors fault, the horse tripped in the middle of cantering, but I am nervous nevertheless. The majority of students are young girls who show and board their horses there or very experienced adults who have owned horses for ever.
I cannot afford to injure myself. Should I look for a tamer facility? I have done my lessons on two different horses, the first a 7 year old gelding who managed to scare the pants off me and the second a twenty-something 17H gelding who bites when you groom him. I really love riding but do not want to deal with the constant fear of severely hurting myself. Am I riding at the wrong facility? It is less than a mile from my house and that makes it convenient but at what cost. Any words of wisdom you could offer.
Thank you,
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer!
It sounds as though the convenient location of this barn may be the most appealing thing about it.
Part of the problem may be the age and experience level of your instructor.
She may well be a wonderful young rider -- and she may have years of riding experience. But you say that she IS very young, and it's unlikely that someone so young has had enough teaching experience to be a really good instructor. She may also not have many teaching skills! This doesn't take away from her ability AS A RIDER -- riding and teaching are very different, and there's often little or no overlap. It takes time, effort and experience to create a good teacher even when the basic talent is there! That's why young instructors need to work under supervision for a few years, and serve as apprentices to good teachers who can teach them TEACHING skills.
There's another point to consider: Young instructors, even certified ones (and I would hope that your young dressage instructor is ARICP-certified, USDF-certified, or both), are NOT necessarily good instructors for adult beginners. Young instructors have limited experience and limited knowledge of the adult world, and they simply aren't in a position to understand the physical, mental, and emotional issues that adult beginner riders need to deal with on an everyday basis. It's difficult for someone in her early twenties to understand the concerns of someone in her forties or fifties or sixties, particularly as those concerns relate to physical, mental, and emotional FEAR. A very young girl who has been riding since she was a small child is simply not going to be able to understand what goes on in the mind of an adult beginner who is the mother of four children.
I would suggest that you look for a facility that offers slow, steady school-horses that will allow you to relax and learn. I think that you should also find a facility offering instruction aimed at adult beginner riders. Suitable horses and appropriate instruction will go a long way toward helping you learn and feel more secure.
Having said that, however, I do need to point out something else: ACCIDENTS HAPPEN. Lessons shouldn't involve riders hitting the ground on a regular basis, but horses DO trip, riders DO become unbalanced, and every once in a while, someone is going to come off a horse, even in a lesson. There are a lot of things you can do to help ensure that you aren't hurt: You can purchase and wear proper headgear and footgear. You can take lessons in falling off (emergency dismount lessons on horseback, and fall-tuck-and-roll lessons at a martial arts or gymnastics studio) -- this can be very useful, as it teaches you to keep thinking and DO something when you fall off. It's important to know how to -- and how not to -- fall off. You can try to ensure your safety by taking lessons taught by a good, experienced instructor, at a good barn, on steady, reliable schoolhorses. You can work at home to increase your fitness and flexibility -- walking, for instance, is easy and inexpensive, and it's a wonderful exercise for riders.
All of those things are under your control to some degree. But there is no way to guarantee that you'll never fall off, and there is no way to guarantee that you'll never get hurt when you DO fall off. Every once in a while, someone will ask me if I can guarantee that their child will never fall off a horse. I say "Yes -- I can, provided that YOU first guarantee that your child will never get ON a horse." That's truly the only way you can be absolutely sure that you'll never fall off.
You can't learn if you can't relax, and you can't relax if you are constantly frightened. Try to find a quieter facility that's more suited to your needs, and if it adds twenty miles to the distance between your house and the barn, so be it. If you can find a place where you're able to relax and learn, you won't mind the longer drive.
Jessica
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