Lesson 2: Basic Rider Equipment for Safe Riding
This section includes descriptions of basic protective gear for both children and adults, as well as the types of clothing needed to be comfortable while learning to ride in all sorts of weather. It also covers other items the beginning rider may want to acquire in order to have it when she or he needs it.
Why we wear what we wear
Cowboys wear jeans and pointy-toed boots with a relatively high heel for a reason. The jeans protect their legs from the hard leather of a western saddle and from the bushes and brambles and tumbleweed they might encounter out on a ride. The boot heels help keep their feet properly placed in the wide, leather-covered western stirrups. The pointy toes can be useful on or off the horse for kicking either horses or cattle.
Most people have jeans in their closet; many have western boots purchased as fashion items. No one questions this riding attire.
But many question why English/hunt seat riders wear tall boots and breeches, or short boots and jodhpurs. And some beginners at hunt seat erroneously think that they can wear anything rough and ready, and learn to ride.
Perhaps. But they won’t learn to ride well. While I don’t advocate using equipment as a substitute for good skills, improper equipment can keep you from getting those skills. It is true that a fully experienced rider should be able to hop on an English-trained horse bareback wearing shorts and sneakers—and a helmet!—and get the job done. And they can. But they had proper equipment to get to that place of consummate skill and knowledge and balance.
So, as they might have said in 1890, let’s hear no more whining about the necessity of acquiring the proper equipment.
