I debated for a while before starting this blog. Like I need another blog to update, right? But more and more – since I discovered Google Reader, in fact – I find myself coming across horse-related things that I want to archive for myself, because they’re neat or interesting or whatever.

As for myself… I have no horse at the present time. I took lessons for close to 15 years, and then, over the last six years, haven’t been out to a barn more than a handful of times.

Part of it’s money. Lessons are expensive!

The rest is a confidence issue I’ve been struggling with.

Every fall I’ve ever had – and I’ve had three or four – has been at the canter, and the only time I’ve ever been bucked with was at the canter. I never got a really good, solid foundation at the canter from my first instructor, and because I could canter, I don’t think any of the instructors that came after ever really realized that I was missing that foundation.

Guess what I have issues with? Yeah. Cantering.

Somewhere after the second fall, my confidence just shattered. I couldn’t canter. After a while, I couldn’t trot. The horse couldn’t do anything at all weird, or I’d lose it. At my worst point, I couldn’t even sit on a horse that was doing nothing more than standing still and kicking at flies without bursting into tears.

It took easily 5 years, from that worst point, for me to get back to where I can canter at all. I learned a little driving. I spent a lot of time working in the barn. Eventually, the fact that I was in college and these little barely-teenagers that had just barely been born when I was starting lessons were doing better on horseback than I got to me, and I actually shifted back into making progress.

At the point I’m at now, I can walk-trot all bloody day. (Well, could. Me and “in shape” aren’t friends right now…) I can do basic lateral work (leg yields, turn on forehand, turn on haunches). I’ve never been specifically taught how to get a horse on the bit, but I know the theory. I can handle weird things the horse does – heck, I survived a horse laying down to scratch its belly with nothing more than a rather bemused moment of, “What do I do now?” when that kind of thing would have freaked me out before.

And I can canter. If I’m riding by myself and I have the time to psych myself into it – a long side of the arena, at least, and depending on how I feel that day, maybe a lap or two of the arena. Or if there’s a scrawny teenager riding with me, and they want us to canter together, I can do it then.

The place I can’t canter? In a lesson. I completely and totally freeze up, and if I do manage to ask for the canter, I hold too tight to the reins and the horse pretty much just stops. I’m tired of walking and trotting. I want to canter. But I can’t do it if someone tells me to. Grr.

As such, I feel like where I am now mentally is the same place as a green horse that has 60 or 90 days of training: I know the basics, and now I just need some miles.

But where the heck am I supposed to get those miles? I don’t own a horse, and what I really need to do is get on and ride. I can’t afford a horse – I’ve got this mental budget worked up, and there’s just no way on earth for the foreseeable future. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to lease a horse right now, either.

Mostly, I’m just waiting. I’ve got an eye out for opportunities to ride, as always. It’s just a matter of finding one I can take.