More challenging is overcoming the rider’s fear. This fear has two major causes: Fear of physical harm and fear of failure.  Often riders exhibit both (Who amongst us hasn’t?).  There are many verbal and nonverbal tip-offs to this fear.  We will leave the nonverbal tip-offs to the experts.  Here is a list of verbal tip-offs we often hear:

1. My horse was abused by its last owner.
2.   My horse is a rescue horse.
3.  Today, I think I will just hand walk him through the clinic.
4. He hasn’t been out for the last 3 months.
5.  I know he seems calm, but he can blow up at any moment.
6. She doesn’t like water.
7. She isn’t good around other horses.
8. I can feel that he wants to buck. 

We often hear several of these from a single rider. We give these riders a lot of credit for coming to the beach in the first place.  More importantly, every one of us has been in their shoes at one time or another  We have learned that these are the riders who are going to be over the moon at the day’s end; the greater their fear, the happier they are after what we refer to as a successful “beaching”.  

Of course the largest contribution to alleviating fear in the rider comes from the experienced horses calming the guest’s horses.  A calm horse calms the rider.  On the other hand, a fearful rider can unsettle a horse so we need to deal with both issues.  One of our riders told us that he was 60 years old and had no interest in falling.  He said he would not “cowboy up.”  We told him that this was just the attitude we wanted, and in fact tell all our guests at the beginning that they can stop at any time, and if we think the situation is unsafe we will be the ones to ask them to stop.  To date neither a guest nor a guide has requested a stop. 

We also explain that the ride has a number of stages, and we do not proceed to the next stage until we and the guests think they are ready.  During the occasional sticking point we reinforce general principles of horsemanship.  Often, all we need to do is to remind the rider to look where they want to go.  Some riders need to be reminded to breath.  One of our fearful guests already knew this and was singing a Broadway song at the top of her lungs as we went down the ramp.  We thought that was great and it worked!  

A technique that seems to be underutilized by many of our guests is the one rein turn.  This can be especially challenging for a rider who is most comfortable neck reining.  When their horse is turning its head to escape, we instruct the rider to reach down and pull on the opposite rein to get the horse facing in the direction wanted.  Occasionally we need to instruct riders to release pressure because the horse is seriously considering doing what is asked of it.  All this is important, but our greatest tool is simply telling the rider that they and their horse can and will get past a balk.  So far they all have.  What about our guest who did not want to cowboy up?  He proclaimed as he rode down the ramp that “the man from Snowy River has nothing on me”. 

The neat thing is that it rarely takes more than 30 minutes to beach.  After that time the riders gets to bask in their achievement and ride down the beautiful beach.  To reinforce their success we often ask riders to ride up the ramp alone, turn their horse around and come down by themselves.  We want the rider to know that they can indeed “beach” by themselves and to gain the confidence to keep expanding their enjoyment of trail riding. 

Coastal Horseback Adventures was formed to more widely offer the opportunity for riders to push the envelope of their trail riding in a safe and supportive environment.  We have added a day of riding in the Redwoods to our package.  During this excursion, riders will get to do water crossings and wooden bridge crossing in a pristine Redwood Forest.