Often I am asked to lecture at educational meetings sponsored by Purina and one of my topics is, “Why God wants us to ride horses.” In this lecture I attempt to explain in a logical fashion that, due to its biomechanics, the horse is the ideal animal to ride. The more I think about the seat and how our body fits quite nicely on the horse’s back and our balance allows us to have arms and legs available to communicate with the horse, the more I believe that this argument works also with the rider’s biomechanics.

    It has only been a little over a hundred years ago that everybody rode, and most people rode well. Just like today, everybody drives a car, and most of us handle our vehicles with a great deal of skill. We enter heavy traffic with confidence, we shift gears without much thought, and our mind is involved with negotiating traffic, not the handling of the car. It all just happens so naturally and after just a few lessons with Dad on a dead end street and a short course in high school it is official and we are declared competent to drive a car. That is how the process went with horses except grandpa did not have to wait until he was a teenager to learn to ride and did not need a license since horses do not tend to run into people.

     Then why is it so difficult to learn to ride? Let us continue with the comparison of driving cars. You have been in cars all your life ever since before you were born so you do not fear them and you are very confident that they will take you safely where you are going. You spent a great deal of your time in the car observing your dad driving with incredible skill and listening to Mom giving him driving lessons. When your car was parked in the driveway, you sat in the driver’s seat handling the steering wheel pretending you were going somewhere. You were observing and playfully acting out what you had observed. The feelings of speeding up, slowing down, and turning were old hat. All this experience had reduced your fear and when you took the controls for the first time, you were confident that you could do it. When Dad let you drive, he was very careful to explain every detail of starting, stopping, and turning to you because after all it was his car and he was also in it in case you crashed.

    This is pretty much the way Grandpa learned to ride. He would sit with Dad on a horse to go somewhere. He would listen to conversations about horses and riders. He would sit on a saddle and pretend to ride. Finally, he would secretly crawl on old Blue and ride him around the corral. Then Dad would tack old Blue up, lift his son into the saddle, and lead the horse around for a while before he turned him loose. Do you see the similarities in both situations? In both cases the students had grown up with their car or horse. They felt very confident and had practice dry runs. They were also taught by highly motivated instructors.

     Compare these situations with most beginner riders today and add three more learning blockers to it. One is that we not only want to drive, we want to run the Daytona 500. Our students also do not just want to be competent on old Blue, they want to win blue ribbons. That adds performance stress and inhibits learning. Secondly, most of us just are not as familiar with our bodies as people used to be when they grew up with physical play and labor. Unfortunately most children grow up “movement deficient” and do not create in their mind a huge stockpile of memories about how to deal with balance problems. To vary an old adage to fit our situation let me say that what Little Johnny did not learn playfully, big John