I rode Maz bareback!

Hey everyone!

I rode Maz again, and I’m really proud of both of us! First Sophie showed me how to make all the horses’ feed. Currently the horses (Zion, Maz, Max and Ellie) are on pellets during the winter just to keep them plump while the grass is short, but from Summer to the next winter they are just fed hay and grass. There was a bit of turmoil when the horses got all excited – Zion needed to go into the round pen to be fed while Ellie and Maz got ridden, but Max joined Zion and there was lots of whinnies and pacing. Maz was in the stable tied up, but he was being cheeky and I ended up giving him his hard feed while I groomed him. Since spring is almost/now here, the horses are shedding, and it was CRAZY how much fuzz came off Maz’s bay coat! My dandy brush was covered in a thick layer of hair and when I scraped it off it just fell to the sand in one clump! Jenna let me use her new shedding brush, and OMG it was sooo satasfying when all the hair was swept off his coat. He also had rain scald from getting wet and not drying properly, but Jenna’s brush took care of that nicely, saving me lots of hard scrubbing. Maz was a little cheeky with the head-tossing, but he calmed down once I was firm with him. It’s a little scary being firm with a horse that’s so much bigger than you, but I do have to learn to tell them off and show confidence or they’ll learn naughty tricks. Maz wasn’t bad, and he calmed once I took away his feed bucket 🙂 Then I tacked him up and led him out of the stable to mount. I did the worst ground-mount I have ever done – usually I can just spring up and hop on, but today I was squirming like a worm and honestly, I couldn’t see his face, but I’m sure Maz was less than impressed with that one 😅 Anyway, we started warming up and something I’m finding difficult is getting Maz to bend with my leg. I’m certain it’s my problem, not his, because he’s been trained and ridden by Sophie and Jenna, but yeah, that’s what I’m trying to fix currently. I open my inside rein asking him to turn, and he turns his head but continues walking sideways like a half pass 😆Maz would make the best Dressage horse – almost every lesson we pull a fancy move without knowing it and Sophie’s like ‘wow, you just did a half pass! Fancyyy!‘ and Maz always looks chuffed with himself and I have no idea what I just did heh heh. Sophie showed me how to get him to ‘bend’ around my leg and take the corner instead of walking off in the other direction, and that was by opening my inside rein less and tapping my inside leg repetativly. It worked! We started taking our corners much nicer. Then we did laps of trot, and once he was supple and warmed up I practised moderating his trot again. The way it works is I ask him into a trot of any kind (it doesn’t really matter) and then if I want him to speed up I rise much quicker than I normally do and post lightly, giving him a little kick if he doesn’t pick up on my change in rising. I have to keep a firm preassure on the reins so Maz doesn’t think I’m asking for canter when I squeeze his sides; I’m just asking for a quicker trot. Then to slow him down I sit further back in the saddle, and rise deeper. Sophie challenged me to get a trot almost as slow as a walk without stopping the trot, and it was definatly hard! But we did it, like the awesome team we are 😁 Something I forgot to mention at the start was that Maz’s bridle is broken or something, so I rode him in a hackamore which is a bitless bridle. For the first half it was fine, but as soon as we started cantering he got very headstrong and it was very hard to hold him back! Unknowingly, I rode his spicy canter pretty well, Sophie said. I sat back, deep and had a hard preassure on the reins. We came around the corner and I turned him down the center sharply so he had to slow to a trot and I put all my weight in my outside leg so I wouldn’t slip off the side. I was a bit out of breath after our canter practise because both times he had a lot of spice and power in him…then we did some small jumps, and the first few were bad but only because I didn’t get him to lock onto the jump. He needs a little kick before the jump and then he flies over it, and I have to look UP not at his ears. Then I asked Sophie if I could ride him bareback, and she said of course, so I rode him back to the stable and took off his saddle. He’s quite bony, so in the future I’ll probably ride him with a bareback pad…but it was still really fun! He was all excited without the saddle on and I had to use a neck rope during the trot and have quite a tight hold on the reins. I didn’t slip very much at all on him which I was surprised about because on my first time riding Ellie bareback I had many times where I felt myself sliding off to one side. Maz and I did a little crossbar bareback! It wasn’t very big at all, more like an elevated trot pole, but he still leapt over it like a jump, and it was awesome! Again I didn’t get any pictures of this lesson, but hopefully next time there will be some 🙂 I’m really happy I rode him bareback, even if it was a little uncomfortable, and I’m so happy we did a jump! What’s even more impressive to me is that I rode him at a trot and little jump without a saddle but also without a bridle! I did have the hackamore bridle, but it’s really a tighter-fitting halter with reins. When I think of it like that I get all fizzy because it’s one of my dreams to ride with little gear like the Wilson Sisters in their Showtym Adventures books. I’d love to keep practising bareback, and of course, with a saddle and bridle too. Thanks for reading! Stella