HOW TO GET ON A HORSE FOR BEGINNERS

Today I'm going to be talking about how to mount your horse safely and correctly. We mount our horses every day that we ride and we want to be doing it in a way that's safe for us and easy for them. So I'm going to be using a mounting block throughout this session because it's the healthiest for my horse's back, but stay tuned to the end of this video and I'm going to give you a tip for mounting your horse from the ground. So there's three areas that I'm going to be covering as we go to mount our horse and I'm lined up to my block here. The first one is holding your rein and mane. So how I like to do this is I take my rein like this, I take my pointer finger, run it down and just hold on to the mane just like this with my fist facing up. Now one of the common, a couple common mistakes that I can I see with people getting on their horse in this area is that they can have one rein really long like this and if your horse were going to walk forward you step in that and end up in an accident. And the other common mistake I see is that the rein is just completely slack and if you go to get on your horse like this he can, if he does decide to leave it's going to take you a long time to gather that rein, you could end up falling off or having an injury. So you want to make sure that you've got your rein organized and you're holding that rein and mane. So the second area is where to stand to get on and I like to be able to stay nice and close to my horse. So I'm taking my left foot, I'm going to put my toe facing my horse's nose, keep my hip close to him and this way if he goes to move or you know too quickly I can just easily slip my foot out and set it back down again. The common mistake that I see in this is that people you know I've seen people go to mount like this with their knee facing the saddle and if the horse were to go to move here you could end up being you know falling backward. So you're much more stable in this position. So number three is getting on. Now the to get on the horse you want to be setting the middle of your hand your palm right in the middle of your saddle and you're going to be pushing up like this and swinging your leg over so you're bearing some weight down with your right hand. The common mistake that I see with this is that I've seen people go to pull themselves up into the saddle so grabbing the back of the candle like this and pulling up to swing that leg over. You can see that's a little harder for me to get my leg over and I'm also putting a lot of pressure on the horse's back. So instead I want to think about just pressing down, swinging over in one smooth soft motion that's easy on my horse's back. Now that we know how to mount our horse using a mounting block let's talk about how to mount from the ground. This is a great skill to have if you're out on trail and there's no mounting block around and you need to be able to get on your horse. So the first tip is this does take more strength than getting on from a block so you want to make sure that you have the strength to be able to do it. If not you know you can practice being able even just taking your mounting block and stepping up and down on it. Parfait's a little bored here with me. Just stepping up and down like that on the block is a really good way to help start strengthening up your leg for doing this. So to do this we're going to do it in the same way that we did with the mounting block. Another tip for you if you are riding in an English saddle and you're having trouble getting your foot up into the stirrup, you can drop your stirrups down like that. When I go to get on him I'm going to hold on to my main here. I'm going to be using my left hand to help pull me up a little bit. So I'm going to hop up, push up like that and then if Murphy goes to leave I'm just going to walk him up and stop him. Good boy. All right and then once you're up there you can adjust your leather. So I hope this helps you if you are just starting to be able to mount your horse and I hope these tips make it easier and safer for you. I hope you keep enjoying your horses over this next week and I'll see you in the next video.