Kids learning how to ride horses
We were lucky to have an instructor that allowed little kids to ride horses. Not that many instructors are experienced with little kids and often they allow kids only above a certain age like eight or nine-year-olds. Our instructor was ok with a three-year-old and that was the age for our youngest at the time. For the very young ones, it’s more of a trial, but the way our instructor, Giulia, was handling the kids, I don’t think there will be many kids that will struggle with it.
(barring the kid just doesn’t want to go on that day – it happened to our kid, too. Just be prepared for it, just in case. The last thing you want to turn in to is a yelling at the kid and the child ends up having a bad experience that he or she wouldn’t want to try it again.)
We received a little break since it was four of them and we decided to give horseback riding lessons for our kids a try.
I told kids to put their regular shoes on – not slippers – and told them we are going somewhere that they’ll like and it was going to be a surprise. When I revealed they will be taking horseback riding lessons, to our surprise, our 11-year-old was really excited. I thought it was going to be the six-year-old daughter that will be jumping off the seat, but it was our 11-year-old boy that was literally jumping out of his seat.
The experience was something that is hard to explain unless you try. Kids were learning how to brush the horses, take gunks out of the horseshoe, feed them treats, get to know the horses and taking care of them. Also, to take them out on a walk and trying different moves on the horses as well as learning how to have horses do different moves. Learning how to communicate with the majestic creatures and learning how to control this beast that is easily 10 times bigger than they are is an experience out of this world.
We are looking forward to taking them back for more training as well as having them go on a trail walk with the horses along the North Shore of Oahu.
