[cdavins]

I saw this today and thought it was quite appropriate. While trying to find a barn I was comfortable at I have encountered this and puzzled at the attitude but shrugged it off because hey, they're the ones that are actually STUDYING a discipline... Hehe, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Opinions everyone?

**oh, yeah for the record I didn't write it, wish I had though!

"What is the toughest riding discipline of them all? Which is the most important, the most difficult, the most dangerous? I shall tell you: but first of all let me outline for you the dizzying array of skills necessary.

You need, above all, a sense of calmness and trust. Without that you won’t get anywhere. But you have to combine relaxation with a constant awareness of the considerable difficulties and dangers that surround you. You need to be able to sit in a way that fills the horse with confidence.

You need to master all the basic paces. Horse and rider both need to be relaxed at all of them, from halt to gallop. You need comfortable, instant lateral work, particularly off the right leg. You need calm, soft unfidgety hands. Your aim is to combine calmness and confidence with dynamic and forward-going movement at all paces.

You need your horse to cope with other horses, close by or at a distance. Your horse needs to be sociable when among strangers and friends yet happily independent when on his own. You need balance and control; but with a sense of freedom and adventure.

You need to trust your horse in extreme situations. You must allow your horse to be a wild animal and express himself with joy and abandon and yet you must be able to bring him back to civilisation with a touch, a shift in balance, a word.

But above all, you need to understand each other’s fears; each other’s limits, each other’s strengths and weaknesses. You need to deal with situations that terrify a horse but hold no danger to him; you must deal with situations that terrify you, without imparting your terror to your horse. You must be able to deal with potentially life-threatening situations and to do so with great frequency. You must deal with them in a way that is completely calm and relaxed, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

The reason you must bring out all these high skills in yourself and your horse is because everybody’s life depends on them. But then you must get used to the fact that your painfully acquired skills are held in low esteem – even despised in some quarters.

The discipline I am talking about is hacking. Nothing is more dangerous – yet more pleasurable – to human and horse alike. If you can hack out safely, alone or in company, you are a real rider!

If you can deal with such things as school buses, Volvo drivers, pheasants flying up at your feet, a long, long canter track, boy racers, fluttering paper bags, gloriously inviting gallops, pigs, cows, overhanging trees, fields of lunatic horses and the most scarey thing of all, the wheelie bin that wasn’t there yesterday, then you can count yourself a hacker. Or to put it another way, a very good rider indeed.

And yet, even if you are the master of all those things, your skills might be sneered at. So you apologise in advance – oh I just hack out. I’m just a happy hacker.

What? Only a master of the most testing and demanding and dangerous discipline in the horsey world, that’s all. You have to defer to obsessive show jumpers, dressage queens of either sex and showing people who prefer polishing horses to riding them – all these people are too precious to take their horse out for a merry hack and who think they’re better than you on that account.

Let’s not be snobbish back, however. Every way of enjoying your horse that doesn’t harm him is alright by me. So we won’t ask what’s so marvellous about going round and round in circles and why it is so superior to a great cantering blast up the hill, and we shan’t point out that while a square halt is hard, it’s far, far more difficult to get your horse to stand still while an articulated lorry goes past. Especially when it then stops and whistles its brakes at you.

So let’s make this Hacker’s Pride Month. Say it out loud; I hack and I’m proud! We won’t be snooty about it though. We won’t say, I know the real reason you won’t hack out. It’s not because you’re Anky von Grunsven and Bonfire come again. It’s because you are ever so slightly scared. And I’m not; so I hack.

No, we won’t say it. We’ll just think it very quietly when someone looks at you with condescension because you’ve been for a hack while they have spent an hour trying to establish a leg yield. I’ve got nothing against leg-yielding myself but I do have a great deal against snobbery.

No one will celebrate hackers for their skills of horsemanship, their mastery of fear, their overcoming of horsey temperament, so it is only right that we should do it for ourselves. Salute the hackers! d**n we’re good.

And if you have any doubts on that score, just ask our horses."
-phoenixbruka

[Kissitgoodbye]

I think just riding a horse PERIOD alone is a hard discpline. Later on in our riding career is when we are able to expanded our knowledge with riding.

We all first start off at the same phase. Stopping, turning, walk, trot and canter.

And we all struggled at the first. So would a learning to ride a horse be a discpline?

Its not till later on when we start trying to do NEW things on our horse, which could that be called specializing???

[cdavins]

True, just learning to ride properly IS a challenge (hehe, it took me forever to learn to post because I have no sense of rhythm) but then there is this question. Is just riding a sport? Is just hacking out a sport? It's physically and mentally challenging for both you and your horse so I think so but I had an argument with a huge athlete (non horsey of course) and he said that unless you competed it's not a sport. But when riding you're always competing against yesterdays record to be better and learn something new... right?

[Cara]

they're all the hardest discipline

[Quiggles]

Hacking....yep thats true..and it didn't even meantion all the crazy people in cars out on the roads who dont slow down or give way.

I think 100%that hacking is one of the most dangerous things you can do with a horse.

[prairienights]

Hmmm....eventing might be one of the most challenging. Since it's three disciplines which are all hard in themselves all rolled up into one. You can't just be good at one to compete, you have to be good at all three. That sounds hard to me, lol.

Cross country in itself looks terrifyingly challenging to me, lol. Galloping over crazy obstacles up and down hills and such? No thanks.

Dressage is difficult just because of the patience and skill and perfection involved. But then again, that could be said for most disciplines.

[Fire_Dawn]

Originally Posted by Cara

they're all the hardest discipline

Exactly! They're just hardest in different ways.

[Diva_Lady]

In my opinion Eventing is the hardest discipline of all.
Diva

[horsephotog]

Riding is simple . . . its' just not easy!

[denraydar]

These guys have guts of steel, they are tough as nails