Bareback on Gypsy

I had a cool "play" day with Gypsy yesterday. Nothing specifically planned, I just went out to the pasture to visit them all. I've been pretty lazy lately... enjoying time alone with a book now that the kids have started school!! The horses were all just lazing around; some grazing, some dozing. Gypsy came up to me with a nice positive look on her face (usually she ignores me or leaves), so I gave her lots of rubs and scratches. Then I decided to try jumping on her bareback. I've tried this before (last year I think), where you get your horse to lower their head and jump on to their neck, then swing over and onto their back from there. Last year it was a comedy of errors, but after MANY attempts and thankfully lots of patience from Gypsy, I did manage to jump on.

Luckily, AGAIN, Gypsy was in a patient mood yesterday, and lo and behold I managed to jump on. I just sat there laying on her neck for a while giving her lots of love. I didn't have a halter or anything on her, so I was completely at her mercy. She was inclined to just hang there with me.

So after rubbing her all over, leaning over her neck, then laying on her back, I decided to see if I could move her front or back with my heel (porcupine game). On the ground when I use my finger tips on her side, she moves away from me. But when I'm on her back, the same signal with my heel she generally interprets as "go forward" even if it's only one leg instead of two. I worked on this a fair bit when riding her before, but I always had the bridle to correct her with. Yesterday I didn't have any of that. Anyway, she went forward. I held my heel at her girth until she turned in the right direction. I'm sure it wasn't in response to my leg, just a random turn, but I released when she turned. I did this several times over and a couple times I'm sure she turned in response to my leg!! Very cool!! :-)

After a while all the other horses started to get bothered by me riding Gypsy through them and they eventually left and trotted out of the field and up to the waterer. Gypsy followed and I got off her at the waterer to let her get a drink.

While she was busy with that I decided to try the same thing with Skittles. I've never jumped on her bareback before, but wanted to see if she'd stand for that. Again, no halter or any restraints. She did pretty well actually. She lowered her head when I asked and let me jump up on her neck a few times, but I never managed to quite get up high enough to swing up on to her back. Then she'd had enough and left. I followed her until she turned back to me and then I gave her a hug and kiss, a few rubs, and walked away.

Gypsy was following me around at this point, so I decided to give it another try. This time every time I tried to jump up, I'd get almost there and then she'd lower her head to the ground! Hmmm, I'm going to have to work on a signal to get her to raise her head to help me out once I'm on her neck... how do you separate the cue to lower her head (putting pressure on her crest) from the cue to raise her head (because me pushing on her neck is also pressure on her crest/neck!)? Maybe the halter would help.... maybe next time. In the meantime I'm going to have to work on my vertical so Gypsy doesn't get so beat up!