The Bareback Years

It was snowing and blowing yesterday, so my young Warmblood True got the day off and I worked on a photo gift for my father.

This required sorting through 170 years worth of photographs: ancestors, family, friends, vacations, jobs, projects, horses and horses and oh so many horses.

Few were mine, but friends’ and trainers’ horses came my way often. I had completely forgotten some of them: an Appaloosa named Hobo still escapes my memory, but there we are jumping bareback over an ugly pile of brush and tires in the desert. I would have been about nine years old.

I had also forgotten that my earliest years of riding lesson horses and borrowed mounts—learning to post, identify canter leads, gallop, jump, spin, halt, ride trails—were almost exclusively bareback. The reason for that was purely financial. I didn’t own a saddle until I’d been riding daily for about five years.

I’m thankful for that, because the effects of riding bareback are still with me today. There is no better way to develop true harmony with a horse, not to mention good balance, independent aids, and super-strong equitation. Even today on established horses, I try to leave the saddle behind about once a week.

True is too green for much of this right now. He still shies, spins, bolts, and bucks at unexpected butterflies or noisy grains of sand, so he is only just beginning to learn that people sometimes ride without saddles. The first time we tried a few minutes of bareback, he seemed to dislike my clumsy effort to get on his back.

Yes, there was a time when I could vault gracefully from the ground in one smooth long arc onto the bare back of a 17-hand horse. That time has passed. Now, I stand on the mounting block clutching a handful of mane and drop one leg over the far side before adopting a seated position.

During my graceless mount, True wiggled a bit, swished his tail several times, and raised his head as if to object that I had forgotten his saddle. Once I was on, he walked around the arena very nicely, though he did seem stiff and perhaps puzzled at his missing tack. I did only as much as he was fairly comfortable trying and stopped on a good note after about ten minutes. (This first trial occurred at the end of a full ride. I wanted to give True his first bareback experience when he wasn’t rarin’ to go!)

The second time, True accepted my effort to climb on as if having resigned himself to a certain level of human incompetence. He walked and jogged obediently, responded to my aids well, and already seemed a little less curious about the lost saddle.

We’ll continue to practice a little at a time, interspersed with his usual training sessions, building gradually to bareback posting trots, cantering, and low jumps. High bareback jumps were my forte at age 20, but not now. True has a nice wide back that will bring many a comfy walk-trot-canter as he and I get older.

Young horses often expect strict parameters in aids, because they’ve usually been ridden by only one person and have come to believe that her quirks are the norm. But in reality, one rider’s touch is different from the next, and green beans often show surprise or confusion with a new rider’s aids.

My leg reaches all the way down True’s side, for example, so he is a little perturbed by a rider whose leg is much shorter than mine and presses him in a different location.

These quirks are amplified when the saddle is removed. Suddenly, the horse can feel the rider’s aids much more clearly. We sometimes use this to our advantage in training. For example, to teach established horses lateral movements, riding bareback allows horse and rider to feel each other’s bodies clearly.

As I sort through all those bareback photographs on so many different horses, I’m struck by the scarcity of such practice nowadays, especially in a rider’s early years. Liability has a lot of people worried about bareback riding—and for good reason.

Riding without a saddle means falling a lot more often; that’s just the nature of the game. It definitely imparts more danger to an enterprise that is already risky. But bareback is a great way to really learn to ride, not to mention build confidence in your skill.

To reduce the risk of injuries, please take precautions before hopping on without a saddle. Don’t try bareback riding until you can walk, trot, canter, and gallop in a saddle with confidence. Ride on deep sand that will cushion your falls, because there will definitely be falls. Learn new maneuvers with a saddle first, then try easy versions of them without. Use a bareback pad with a handhold that you can grab in the event of an emergency.

Remember that bones bend a little when we’re young, but snap like dry kindling when we’re older… so consider your age. Be sure to start on a quiet horse who has been taught how to be ridden bareback. And of course, always ride with a helmet—saddled or not!

When you’ve got the details worked out, climb on. Start slow and increase difficulty gradually. Eventually, you will be able to do everything bareback that you currently do with a saddle—and your riding will be much improved.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep you posted on True’s bareback progress.

Related reading:

Janet Jones will present “Brain to Brain: Cross-Species Communication between Horses and Riders” at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Florida, on March 14, 2024. Come to the talk and enjoy the international Winter Spectacular Hunter/Jumper Horse Show too. Learn more and reserve your tickets at https://janet-jones.com/product/janet-jones-ticket-sales.