08/23/2026
I enjoy keeping my sister on her toes, always guessing… good thing Aubrey Boyer is a skilled horsewoman and knows how to help her calm down.
Yesterday, I got the privilege of working through what I like to call the .1% ride.
We know that no horse is 100% perfect all of the time, just like we as humans aren’t. Whether it be an extremely desensitized “been there done that” kids horse, or a 6 million dollar performance horse that is trained to the 9s. They may be 99.9% perfect most of the time, but there will always be that 0.1% where they may spook, startle, or misstep. Those instances don’t get talked about nearly enough but are so important to see and normalize. We as riders can sometimes forget that at the end of the day, no matter how well a horse is trained, horses are prey animals whose flight instinct is what has helped them survive for thousands of years. Yes, we can breed a little bit of the “predator” instinct into the tough little cow ponies, but we won’t soon be breeding the flight instinct out of them, or any other horse, completely.
Sadie is one of those near perfect horses. She and I have been working on building her muscle and endurance so she is ready for when her mom can get back out on the trails with her. She is a consistent, calm, and confident horse, and that has been reflected in every single ride. However, as we drew near the end of our session yesterday, one of those 0.1% instances happened.
At some point during our ride, her sweet donkey brother (Sergeant Pepper) got replaced with a scary black and grey creature. Sadie was certain this creature was going to eat us, so she used all of the gifts nature gave her (Dragon Breaths, snorts, and flight) in order to keep herself safe. At first, we tried to work through it under saddle but after some time this method proved no longer productive in learning, especially considering that we were on gravel (no use in risking needlessly tearing up our hooves for the sake of “riding it out”). We went back to the basics of “dealing with scary things” on the ground. This allowed me to redirect the pressure in a way she could better understand and manage while her flight instinct was activated. Once she calmed down to a level that she could better retain and respond to the information I was giving her, we stepped back in the saddle and worked through the rest of her uncertainty until we were back to walking calmly on a loose rein. Going back to something she knew well on the ground gave her the tools to reach that calm state under saddle much quicker than if I would have tried to push her through an extremely overwhelming situation under saddle alone.
In a shocking turn of events, Sergeant Pepper was under the scary grey and black creature the whole time! Who knew? Not us🤷🏼♀️
*videos in the comments*
