Last year my wife and I went over to a friends house and scoped out a potential horse for my wife and maybe myself. My wife has been around horses and owned horses most of her life. I have been around horses, just never rode any of them. Unless you count sitting on the horse while someone leads it around. I have taken care of horses, maintained pastures and volunteered at local events doing horse rides for kids with my friends.
Last summer I weighed about 390 lbs and was a very big person. Evidently the horse could handle the weight of myself as a rider, but I was still worried of breaking its back or something. Our friend that owned the horse weight about 90 lbs and was very small. My wife weight about 260 lbs at the time.
So we went out there, on a nice day, and the horse was brought around for my wife to get on. She did and rode it around the pasture, without any issues. Then it came time for me to jump up onto the horse. NOOO, don’t worry I would not literally jump up on the horse. I instead used stares to go up to the side of the horse and proceeded to put my put into the stirrups. The 90 lbs lady went to the other side to hold the other stirrup so the saddle does not slip off.
The saddle was pretty old, had rough spots on the leather including some obvious wear and tear. Kinda looked like that belt that just had enough and its on its last thread and now you must trust your pants to it and hope you don’t have an embarrassing moment.
As I observed the saddles condition, noticed my counter weight on the other side and how far I was up on the stares, my analytical mind kicked into gear and started to calculate the odds of me breaking the saddle, falling to the ground and either just have a bruised ass or a horse panic at my fall and stomp the hell out of me. The odds were not in my favor. Anxiety kicked in and I was like “I don’t think so, and maybe later”. Attempt number one was a failure for the day. However my allergies were going overboard and I was sneezing up a storm. Forgot to mention my crazy allergies to horses, hay and dust. Rashes breaking out and so on. The good thing was that I was able to finish the afternoon off by teaching the mutual friend how to shoot a gun. She was having problems with foxes and other predators killing her animals on the farm.
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