Why does it matter if my horse stands still while mounting? There aren’t any ribbons handed out at the mounting block. So, who cares if we let our horses walk away or wiggle around while we’re climbing aboard? If my horse walks through my hands, backs away from the mounting block or swings his hip into my outside leg, isn’t he more likely to do that inside the ring?
Like a horse creeping away from the mounting block, his rider still adjusting her stirrups, as we creep into another year, adjusting and re-adjusting, pandemic life is taking its toll. “Whoa, how did we get here?” In the middle of our I DON’T KNOW, we long for things to get back to ‘normal”. But was life before lockdowns really normal? I mean, life as it ought to be?
Mounting style doesn’t affect the judge’s horse show score card or influence a barrel run time – no wonder riders don’t devote time to standing still while mounting . Until it starts to become a bigger problem. So before things escalate to “Butch Cassidy mount-on-the-fly” style, sneak some mounting block training into each riding session. Training in one area of horsemanship spills into others.