Fear Of Riding

I will start out with, you are not alone in the feelings of anxiety attacks. Whether it was do to your horse spooking or whether it was do to your horse bucking and in both maybe you came off at the time one or the other of these happened while riding. An example of what happened to me and still sometimes happens is in the story I'm about to tell you and how I over come when the little anxiety monster rears its ugly head in my mind. I got up early one Saturday morning, about 6 of us were going to go riding, it was a beautiful day the sun was just coming up and the woods were waking up . We were all headed out horses were fresh and every one was talking and having fun . We started up the trail in to the woods and started up one of the hills to the trail above , Poco my horse was dancing a little and half way up the hill it became a full buck , I got him to stop but that scared me to death. I lost my watch and my horn bag so I had to get off , and when I did my legs were like rubber, my hands were shaking I didn't know if I could get back on or not , I walked him down the other hill just to regroup my self and said to the lead girl hold up a minute OK let me get him settled down , Well she ignored me and started up the trail and some of the rest of them started following her . Poco started dancing again and every time I went to get a foot in the stirrup he would step away from me ,I finely had to vault in to the saddle to get on. When we caught up one of the others told her about it and she ignored them . At that time was mad as a wet hen and for got about being scared, We came to another hill to go down and we had to wait our turn and he started pawing and shaking his head , the fear returned , hands were shaking to the point I didn't know if I was able to hold on to them let alone stay in the saddle from my legs shaking so bad. We started down the hill and by this time every one was well ahead of us and had turned around to watch us come down they had heard me tell pooch to settle down so they sat there and watched as we came down a bouncing, up would come his front end with every step he took as we got to the middle of the hill he got his head down and over drive kicked in for me , I don't like to jerk on the reins but I had to do something and fast or I was going to land in the tree tops above us. Poco was in a world of his own and didn't have his attention on me , I jerked the right rein and as I did I pulled with all my might to get his head back up , bingo I did it he didn't know what happened and stood on the hill with his head turned to ward me as if to say how did you know to do that to get me to stop. I went in to over drive the second he stopped and in a deep authoritative voice told him to walk on. His step was a little jerky but he was listening to me and walked on. One of the other girls said well I have to give it to you ,you are finely learning to control him I'm proud of you , oh my blood boiled I was mad and was ready to tell her where she could go and what she could do when she got there but I didn't have to because one of the other girls said ,I would like to see any of us act as fast as Connie did and get the results she did . Then she said to them I don't think any of us could do it especially on a hill the way she did. It was dropped from then on about Poco acting up . Down the trail we were riding through a meadow and all of them decided to canter I didn't want to I had seen holes when riding through there before on other outings I said some thing about it and before any one could answer me the owner of where we were keeping Poco came by me yelling to her horse He-haw haw as she was going by a chill went up my back I didn't want to canter because of the holes and so we started to trot and I was holding Poco back and all of a sudden he started to buck a rodeo buck legs flying up above my head , I could feel my self coming off , The girl be hind me yelled Connie hold on Connie hold on oh god let her hold on . It finely kicked in and I reached down and grabbed the saddle horn . As we were bucking across the meadow I finely started thinking I have to get him to stop I think I had a guardian angle riding on my shoulder , I let go of the saddle horn Yes I let go of it and reached down and pulled the right rein so his head almost touched my right knee . Got him to stop and Beth the girl behind me came up and said are you all right , I said I think I'm going to fall off. So I got off and said to poco what in the world did you think you were doing I'm so mad at you. they all told me that they gave me a 10 and wished they had pictures of it , I told them I'm glad you don't have pictures of it and I think I had better set down some where I'm shaking so bad. I knew then I had to do something and teach Poco to calm down with a cue , so I started working him on the head down cue until he got it 200 times in a row. We spent allot of time just the two of us in the arena working on calm down cues for him and then it dawned on me I also had to work on calm down cue for me too. Well while I was teaching Poco to drop his head on cue ,(why drop his head when he got up set is because a horse can't spook when his head is down below his withers) I started concentrating on a deep breath and concentrating on the head down cue. What I would do is when I ask him for the cue I would set deeper in the saddle as if giving the cue to stop him . It started working for both of us. The next thing I started doing was to teach him the cue of Walk ON when he would act like he was going to spook, I used this as a calm down cue for me also instead of getting up set , when I would start to think of him spooking or even bucking I would take a deep breath and concentrate on what we were doing , even if it was going down a road or walking by a spooky object that I knew he would spook at I would give him either cue and concentrate on that cue and on him and straight ahead where we were going and before I knew it we were both calm and pasted the scary object. I still get the anxiety attacks if I haven't rode for a while so when I saddle him I will set there for a while and make my body relax , and if I start to feel my self tense up I will whistle or hum a tune to relax. In doing so I relax my self but also relax him at the same time because he can feel me tense up so he will think some thing is out there to get him and cause him to react to it by bucking or spooking. The more we teach our selves to relax and concentrate on the ride its self the more we can concentrate having a great time with our horse. It is O.K. to be afraid and it takes time to over come the anxiety but once you admit to the fact that you are afraid and it is O.K. to be afraid then that is when the healing begins . We will always have a fear of riding but we can help our selves over come the fear when it pops up . this is something I started doing when not riding and it helped me so much over come the things I was afraid of , you might think that this is silly but in truth you will help your self over come fear and you can Cary that on to when you are riding. On a new moon I started to take a walk in the dark Ha Ha I'm not afraid of the dark , O.K. well how about on a night with no lights and taking a walk , and stopping and listening to all the sounds you can't see , your imagination can run wild and in return you get scared . O.K. the trick to this is analyze all the sounds you hear and in doing so you will start to listen for deferent sounds like a tree frog . the wind in the trees , a owl hooting . Take a flash light with you O.K. and if it gets to the place that you really just are not comfortable then turn it on and look around to get your bearings. Then turn it off and walk some more start listening for sounds you recognize and keep a mental note on all the sounds you can recognize it will be interesting at what you hear. Connie Beckner

 

               
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       Communacating with Horses
       Body Language of the Horse
       Useing the body language
       Understanding why the Horse Spooks
       Helping the Horse that Spooks
       Fear of Riding
       Telepathic Communacation
  Building trust back in the rescue horse
 How to teach your horse to open his mouth on command
 Behavior changes in your horse
 
This site was created by Connie Beckner
Email: flyinghooves@yahoo.com

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