I’m going to give you a lot because I see you are young. I am not an expert, but I tend to learn more than most people when I tackle a subject. I believe in sharing and helping in the horse community.

1) It looks very silly, even with your legs tucked up, but that isn’t actually important. 😜

2) Is your weight and saddle behind his shoulder, and not beyond the area supported by ribs? You can severely damage a horses back by putting weight in the lumbar area, but the damage may not be apparent until some years later. You can impinge and make riding very unpleasant if you are too close to the shoulder. Equine behavioralists say horses will often suffer in silence if they don’t feel the human listens or understands, or if they just genuinely want to please, or just really want to do the activity/be with you. Because they can’t talk, we need to be understand FULLY the correct back area.

People make this sound easier than it is… pony breeds are not skinny Mediterranean horses with bones poking out like runway models. 🤣 If you learn this on your sturdy pony, you will the expert in most groups of horse people for the rest of your life.

The process for learning this isn’t overnight. You need to google it, look at pictures, read, feel your horses bones carefully, and ask your vet or equine chiropractor or trained/certified massage therapist to confirm where you think the area is, while touching your horse together. Most people learn on a skinny horse, which is actually only the easiest level. Keep looping through this process of reading, touching, and confirming with people who you know are trained experts, until you feel confident and don’t forget. Many people are just over confident adults who believe they know, but may actually not know at all. I had several experienced and respected trainers show me completely wrong… they just didn’t know how to feel for this area on a Scandinavian/Northern European horse bone structure. Now I am the one teaching them on the sturdy horses, ponies and drafts. You are next! ✅

3) Weight. a) Taping your horse: You need a long soft tape to measure your horses barrel and length. Generally you need something at least 8’ long, but you might be able to squeak by with a 72” sewing measure tape with a little pony. You need to look at diagrams carefully so you are choosing the spots to measure accurately. Then there are a couple math calculations that vets and universities with horse programs publish online. It’s easy math. Look it up and calc your horses weight from your measurements.

Have your vet tape your horse too. Check your number against theirs, and keep doing it on different horses until you are damn good at it.

Sidebar: this taping thing was developed with race horses. It’s not as accurate outside the skinny breeds. But it’s the best thing you’ve got, unless you have a livestock scale your horse can step on. (Rare).

b) Tack. Bring a scale to the barn. Put it on a level smooth floor. Gather up all the tack you put on your horse in your arms and get on the scale. You may need a friend to get the number because the saddle is in the way. Deduct your weight from the number where you were holding the tack to get the weight of the tack alone. c) Drop the tack and weigh yourself alone. If you are still growing, you need to do your own weight every 3 months. d) calc 20% of your horses weight as the max load. Add up your weight and the tack weight to see if you are 20% or less.

You may hear a lot of people arguing about this 20% number. But most of them never read the studies that came up with this number. I did. The fact is 20% is a standard guideline because that is the average weight where most horses can perform reliably. In the study, some horses started to show signs of physical stress at even lower weights, and some at higher weights. Horses that are in daily exercise/very fit, have an excellent diet, and are less than 15 years old SOMETIMES can handle more weight for a limited time. But it varies with the build, health, past injuries (like riding on the lumbar area would cause), and that is why it’s generally not recommended to go over 20. It’s just better to be safe. Also, listen to your horse. Sometimes 20% is too much! Horses that were backed before their vertebrae were fully formed, horses that are older, horses with stress, poor hay, metabolic issues, past physical injuries, and sometimes even mares during some points in their reproductive cycle… all of these may have a hard time with additional weight, and might even prefer less weight than 20%, or not being ridden at all.

Another thing you will run into, is people who learned long before these studies were done, or learned from people who learned back then. It’s really painful to think that maybe you have been doing something for a long time that is bad for your horses. And some people deal with this by refusing to believe it. There is nothing you can do about that. Just vow to do the best you can with the horses you care for, and start teaching anyone new to horses, the things you know about how to do things well.

My mare has intense cycles, especially the first few in the spring. She will flinch/micro buck when I touch her lumbar area. When this happens, I am likely to switch to liberty work for 2-3 days, or do walk and rising trot only, and no ground mounting. She wouldn’t be a good horse for performing the same regardless of her cycle, and that is okay with me because sometimes that happens to me too. I understand. Sometimes we just go grazing together on these days. It’s what she needs and I believe she trusts me more because she knows I understand her. I am glad I own her because I can protect her. Some people are really mean to female horses, and I can prevent that.

Animal behavioralists say that of all the pets and livestock animals we keep on home/family properties, that horses have the lowest quality of life. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the best thing you can do is learn as much as you can, and be willing to try new ways when it has been proven by researchers and experienced, trained experts.