Essential Horsemanship Skills: How to Handle and Ride Horses
What you'll learn
- Understand how to ride a horse at a walk, trot and canter safely and effectively.
- Tack up a horse and untack a horse.
- Feel comfortable and confident around horses.
- Approach, lead and move around a horse properly.
Requirements
- Access to a horse is very helpful for practice. You can still learn everything you need to without one through this course.
Description
Whether you are horse crazy or simply interested in learning a wonderful new sport, this course is the perfect introduction to horseback riding. It focuses on the fundamentals that apply to all riding, although taught mostly in the English style. By the end of the course, you will know how to safely catch and move around a horse; get a horse ready to ride; work at the walk, trot and canter; and take care of your horse once you are done. It includes many useful extras as well, such as how to tie a quick release knot for safely securing a horse on a lead rope.
Who this course is for:
- This course will walk beginners and newbies to horses step by step through all the basics you need to know to enjoy horses in a fun and safe way.
- This course is not for experienced riders.
Instructor
![Alexandra Mannerings](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.7 Instructor Rating
- 66 Reviews
- 210 Students
- 1 Course
I first fell in love with horses at the tender age of 7. A wonderful cast of equine teachers have helped me along the way: AJ, the small, black cannonball of a pony who taught me to love speed; Captain, the lanky chestnut who showed me just how much fun jumping really can be; and of course my own beloved Noah, my very own winged steed. Some people want a car when they turn sixteen--I had eyes for nothing but a copper-red firebolt of colt, who knew how to fly.
It's been over 16 years now, and Noah is mostly retired. But in our prime, we competed in three day eventing, a combined test of dressage, cross country and stadium jumping. We've also spent countless hours riding trails, messing around bareback, and playing horse tag and capture the flag.
When I wasn't riding horses or drawing horses or writing stories about horses, I managed to graduate summa cum laude from Emory University with a BSc in biology and earn a PhD from the University of Cambridge in England in Veterinary Science. While perhaps not quite as much fun, my human teachers taught me a tremendous amount, too.