January 18, 2012

Milestone

Everyone!  Contender and I reached an important milestone on Monday!

I jumped onto his bare back from the ground*!

Not-very-impressive obligatory pony vs. human height comparison photo from last August.

Being aaaaaaaaalmost 5'1 with a 6" vertical (It's bad.  Very very bad.), this is a huge achievement and something I've never been able to do with any horse before.  I have a hard time getting on some horses even with stirrups.  It's an outrage that those of us with short legs must also deal with our stirrups being so much further from the ground.

That is all.

Stay tuned for pony videos tomorrow!

*With a little bit of hanging on his mane, kneeing him in the flank, and scrambling my way up like a spider monkey.  (Amazing that he spooks at stupid things, but stands like a statue for ridiculous stuff like that.)


5 comments:

  1. I did that once on my 13.3 hand Arab. It is a great feeling. Then the holistic horse vet told us that mounting from the ground causes a torque on their back. Talk about making me feel bad. So now we always make sure we have a mounting block.

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  2. Oh, of course, I do always use a mounting block even on smalls for just that reason, and I make sure to mount lightly and not place any significant pulling forces anywhere on his back. But in this case we were cooling down and I stripped his tack and impulsively hopped on to walk around for a few minutes.

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  3. I wish I could just hop on bareback, but my horses are too big to do that. My brothers made us a special mounting block tall enough to just swing over their backs, except the 16h draftx. Your tiny and in shape so I know he had no issues. No critisism intended. Vaulters do it all the time, so have fun. Did you get video of that mounting :)

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  4. Cool! I like your bracketed description: pulling mane/knees/spider monkey! :-)

    I could probably jump on my pony bareback as a kid, but just barely. I had this tall, lean athletic friend that could gracefully get on her 15.3 horse bareback. It made me so mad! lol

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  5. That is so exciting!! you need to be really flexible to be able to do that!! i have never been able to and i forsee not being able to anytime soon unless i grow a foot lol!! What an accomplishment!

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