I was visiting a friend, a good horseman and trainer, that I have known for a few years and have always got along with very well. We share a similar philosophy about horsemanship and know a lot of the same people.

As we sat in his living room sipping tea on a 40 deg C (104F) day it took hardly any time at all before we started talking about our experiences training horses. My friend is a pretty smart fellow and I wanted his opinion on something that I feel I have never really understood or got a good explanation about from other people.

I asked him, “When you start a horse under saddle, do you get on it bareback for the first ride or two?”

He said that he usually laid over their back without a saddle while they stood still and he petted them but didn’t ride them until they were comfortably carrying a saddle. It seemed my friend’s approach and mine were similar.

I’ve started a lot of horses and I’ve watched a lot of horses starting from visiting other trainers. Probably more often than not the trainer rides the horse without a saddle on the first ride.

I have always been curious about this. I have even asked a few of them, why?

The answer has always been that they believe it is easier for a horse to deal with a rider for the first time without the extra weight and restriction of the saddle. One fellow even told me that he felt that if the horse bucked and he came off, he didn’t want the horse to be scared by the stirrups bumping its sides.

None of this has ever felt like a good explanation.

This is what I believe.

My concern about riding bareback is that if a horse does get a fright and feels the need to buck, bolt, or rear, a rider has a much better chance of staying with the horse if sitting in a saddle, with a night latch, than without. The risk of a rider hitting the dirt and scaring a horse even further when riding bareback is much greater. I believe there is a bigger risk of damaging a horse’s confidence about having a rider for the first time when there is no saddle to help keep the rider mounted.

I have even seen this for myself with a rider coming off a saddle-less horse after it stumbled and scared the hair off it. The horse would not let the rider close enough to remount. There was considerable damage to the horse’s confidence.

I know there are riders who can sit just about any contortion a horse does even without a saddle. And I know a rider can fall off even with a saddle for security. But the majority of riders (even good ones) are more easily separated from a horse when there is no saddle to support their loss of balance than when they ride in a saddle. There is no question that a saddle makes riders more secure.

I don’t understand why a person would not want to get a horse comfortable with wearing a saddle first. Teach it to accept the stirrups flapping and bumping the horse’s sides, the added weight on its back, and the smell of dead animal hide before having the first ride. It has to learn to be okay with it someday, so why not do it first?

I see no advantage for the first ride to be saddle-less. I can’t see how a horse is ahead by doing this. Yet, I can see (and have seen) how it can go badly with some horses when a rider falls off an unsaddled horse. I also don’t know why riding with a saddle at the start would cause any problems. How might it make it harder for a horse or slow up the training process? In a nutshell, I don’t see any advantage in having the first ride bareback or disadvantage with having it with a saddle.

I believe there is no problem with what any friend described as laying across a horse and petting it. In fact, I do this a lot myself and consider it an excellent idea before throwing a leg over and riding. But riding a horse bareback and directing it at a time when it is completely unsure and worried about the idiot on its back, seems unnecessary and maybe even a bad idea in some instances.

I guess it is about risk management. It is just riskier to have the first ride bareback than it is with a saddle, in my opinion. Yet, I’m sure many disagree.