In my lifetime, I have ridden a number of horses bridleless.
Most of those rides took place in enclosed arenas or pastures, but one time, I went on an entire trail ride without a single piece of tack. Here's the story of that day.
I spent four of my teenage summers working on the horse staff of a local day camp.
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| Baby, Pat, Navajo, Coconut and Snickers at McAlisters, 1985 |
I spent two glorious school years riding the undesirables.
For both of those years, Pat was one of "my" horses.
He was an older gelding, about fourteen hands tall, with crooked legs and an unwilling attitude.
His claim to fame was being the slowest horse on the ride, the one who progressively got further and further away from the group, until suddenly, he decided it was time to catch up. He did this with alarming speed and an occasional buck thrown in for good measure. He lost a lot of campers that way.
I wasn't a particularly good rider, but I was brave, determined and good at hanging on. Pat was no problem for me.
In fact, he was low key one of my favorites. I rode him a lot, both during the off-season...
and at camp.We had a few extra horses the last summer I worked at the camp, which meant every day, someone - or more usually, a couple someones - got the day off. The staff took turns nominating horses for that honor, which, in fact, wasn't an honor at all. Instead, it was a case of, "Whose ugly mug would I like to not look at today?"
For me, the answer was always Mac or Lucky. For some of my coworkers, the choice was often Pat.
As much as Pat didn't like to work, he also didn't like being left behind. On one occasion, he managed to slip through the gate and walk with the herd up the hill to the picket line. He parked his naked self as if he was tied and stood there all morning, never moving even as rides came and left.
By lunchtime, I started speculating.
"What would happen if someone got on him like that?" I asked. "Do you think he'd just fall into line and go follow the group?"
"I'm going to find out!" Laura exclaimed. "I'm taking him on the next ride!"
"It was my idea first! I said indignantly. "I'm doing it!"
As it turned out, the next ride was a long one. We followed the road to the park,
rode up along the ridge...
and came home through the arroyo.
Pat walked along steadily at the back of the pack, mostly keeping up and never stepping out of line. After a while, Laura and I started asking him for a little more. Using our weight, we steered him off the trail off and back on to the trail. We also asked for a little bit of speed. He didn't love it, but he did it.
We were jubilant.
It was the best and most triumphant camp ride ever, at least until our boss found out. Then we learned that our amazing display of horsemanship was officially viewed as an extreme lapse of judgment. Go figure.
As much as I hope to someday have a horse I can ride bridleless, I strongly suspect I will never again go on a double bareback, no tack trail ride. How lucky I was to have that experience. Thank you, Pat!
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