My Riding Story
I first realized my love of riding when I was around 10 years old when my parents first enrolled me in a one week summer camp. At the camp we would spend an hour a day riding the horses and learning how to steer, walk, halt, and trot. I went to this camp for three summers straight but then became too old to return. After the last summer I went to the camp my parents managed to scrounge up enough money to enter me in some basic western riding lessons, again just doing the basics. After that my older brother had just finished high school and was enrolling in college so all of my parents money was focused on that and they could no longer afford to pay for lessons for me. I didn’t ride for almost two years when a friend of my mom who owns a couple horses asked my mom if I would like to come and help exercise her horses. It was here I got my first taste of English riding, I was re-taught the basics, learned to post, and even started doing some crossrails and cavaletti’s. Unfortunately the horse I was riding got hurt one day and as he’s in his late 20’s he doesn’t heal as quickly as he used to. They then set out to look for a new horse for me to ride. They found Roxy and I began to ride her between 2-3 times a week sometimes more. Unfortunately Roxy was not the easiest horse to ride, my confidence dropped drastically, she was never trained to jump and even now, two years since she was bought she won’t even jump a 2 foot jump. I was too scared to even canter her. I started getting bored with what I was doing and felt like if I ever wanted to do more, or regain some confidence I would have to start taking lessons. But what could I do? My parents couldn’t afford to pay for lessons. One day my dad brought me to a barn that a friend of my family’s son owned, I saw it and I fell in love. I was determined that I was going to find a way to ride there and take lessons. Summer of 2008 we convinced the owner of the barn to let me volunteer there for a week and help with there summer camp. I didn’t get to ride but I got to spend time with the horses, got to know all the people at the barn and learned probably about as much as the campers did! After that I was even more determined that I was going to take lessons there. So that fall I started to hand out resumes and sure enough I finally got me a job, and October 2008 I started taking lessons! My time riding at my mom’s friends turned out to help a lot I already knew most of the basics and I was placed in a group that was already cantering and jumping, which I had barely done in the past. It started off rocky but I soon got used to cantering and jumping like the rest of the group! This video is where I’m at now, and I’m so looking forward to learning a lot more and am improving every lesson. As a 17 almost 18 year old girl I am finally able to do what I’ve been dreaming of doing for ages.
