Fear is something I see every day. Not so much in myself (more on that in a sec), but as a teacher of amateur people, many of whom either aren’t young or started riding as adults or both. It’s been a companion of mine throughout my teaching career, and it was one I didn’t really understand in the beginning.

Flash back to about age 26: I was on a client horse, a normally quiet and civilized one. I was in my indoor, and I closed my leg and my seat at the same time to close him up a bit. Instead of doing that, he stood straight up on his hind legs. I did not fall off. He landed, I drove on, and he never did it again. But for the first time in my life, when I looked at his belly button in my arena mirror, I was flooded with fear.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!