I was complaining to C. about my lack of progress in mounted archery, and she said “Look, just come to practice on Sunday. Ride whatever lesson horse is available, but just keep yourself in regular practice.”

I told her “Look, if you’re just going to give me simple, logical solutions to my problems, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you.”

While this was, in fact, excellent advice, I don’t want to ride the lesson horses. Nothing against them – I’ve had some truly lovely rides on Calida, and Ava enjoys violence so much we call her the Murder Pony. But I have two horses, and damn it, I want to do mounted archery on my horses.

So. Sunday morning, I saddled up Griffy. If I’m going to have an anxiety attack, I at least want to be closer to the ground.

It turned out there were only 3 of us at practice – myself, Levi’s mom, and Faye’s mom (I’m doing horse names because the initials are going to get confusing and I know people by their horses half the time anyway.) This worked out great as I feel pretty comfortable with them, and it was less pressure on us.

I always walk my horse for a lap around the arena in each direction before I get on. I started this habit at our last place, because we rode in a big pasture and I wanted to double check for any new hazards that had popped up (uneven ground, holes, dog poo, etc.) We don’t have to worry about those in an arena, but there are different challenges – another horse, a barrel that has been there the whole time but is suddenly scary (looking at you, Talos) or something in the distance that might need to be intently stared at. We had extra time so we walked down the lane a couple of times. I’ve been working on making the lane a relaxing stroll for Griffy, because he was starting to do a keyed up power walk down it, probably feeding off my own anxiety.

I started this book called “Riding Fear Free” and one of the things it talks about is that if you are afraid of something, powering through and pushing past your comfort zone does not in fact make you less fearful. It makes it worse. What you need to do is create a series of small, positive experiences that build your confidence and supplant the negative experiences in your mind. So let’s say you fall off your horse – jumping right back on is not necessarily the way to go. Even if all you feel comfortable doing is just getting your horse out & brushing them, then do that. Maybe one day you put on the saddle. Then the bridle. Lead them to the mounting block, then put them away. Etc. etc. until eventually you’ve built up enough positive experiences to where you’re no longer feeling scared.

To that note, I decided I was only going to do what I felt comfortable with, and not push further. The first 3 times, we just walked down the lane. I didn’t drop the reins until the 3rd time, when I felt we had both relaxed enough.

One thing he struggles with a bit is the other horses in the arena…he’s not used to shared space, because I’m the only idiot that rides at 6:15 am. He’s also still adjusting to being at a huge property where there are horses coming in & out that he doesn’t know. So when Faye rode up behind us, he had a bit of reaction – nothing serious, just kind of an “OMG” moment. I let him graze to calm down, and on the walk back he kept pinning his ears at the other horses. I couldn’t help but laugh because neither of them had the slightest interest in interacting with him – their attitude was basically “Fine, be a dick. We don’t care.”

After 3 walks, C. asked if I wanted her to walk next to us and shoot. I was feeling pretty good about our relaxation level, so I said yes. We did that twice, and he was fine. After that someone suggested we switch to something new. C. asked if I wanted to shoot an arrow first and I declined. This was a big thing – normally I would have felt pressured to get at least one shooting run. But I was feeling really good about our progress, we were still relaxed, and I decided that we could move on and not feel bad about what we did.

Especially since the next thing we did was spear work!

I’ve been wanting to try this on Griffy for while. He used to be a jousting horse, so I figured it would be either no big deal, or some deep-seated PTSD would surface. Thankfully it was the former and he did absolutely great!!!

I asked C. to show him a spear while I was still mounted. I was prepared to get off, but he didn’t seem particularly worried. He flicked an ear back at me, I told him he was a good boy and let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding, and he decided this was another dumb thing I was getting him into and it was fine. She handed me the spear, and off we went.

The goal was to throw the spear into a box with a target on it

I’ve spent a lot of time desensitizing Griffy to things being thrown off of him. If things go south in mounted archery you have to be ready to ditch your bow and any arrows you’re holding, and that action has to not make things worse. So I’ve done a lot of tossing things off his back, and he’s pretty relaxed about it.

The first two times C. had to hand me the spear, but after that he was comfortable enough with it so that I could just ride by and grab it.

Anyway, after a few spear runs we called it. Some people stayed for more spear work but he had done so well, and it had been 50 minutes at that point – a long time for him, even though all we did was walk, and I wanted to end on a positive note. He got all the cookies in the world for being the best war Haflinger.

Overall I’m pleased that we were able to do it at our own pace and I’m refusing to entertain any other thoughts. However long it takes for us to get comfortable doing this is however long we’ll keep doing it. He’ll probably get there long before I do, but that’s why he’s the best boy.