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A proper dismount involves taking both feet out of the stirrups, leaning forward while rotating one leg back and slipping off of the animal gracefully. Get yourself off of a horse quickly and seamlessly with help from a riding instructor in this series on horseback riding.
Hello, my name's Lisa, I'm an instructor here at Enterprise Farms, and I'm going to be demonstrating how to do a proper dismount. And now that both of your feet are out of your stirrups, go ahead and just, you just lean forward, lift your right leg up and over, and land. You want to land facing the horse. And then, make sure to run up your irons. Basically, what we're doing is you grab the top part of this loop, you take the stirrup iron, and you run it up. And then, you take what the excess leather, stirrup leather, and you tuck it in like that. And, what that does is it basically keeps the iron from hitting the horse in the abdomen or in the barrel while you're walking, and makes it more comfortable. And, make sure to run up both of your irons, of course. And, let's see, and then you take the reigns over the horse's head, and lead them as if you were, as if kind of like you're leading them with a lead rope. Other than that, some common mistakes with dismounting. As I mentioned before, make sure both of your feet are out of the irons. If your horse does spook, the reason why you want to land close to them is that if they step a little bit, you're out of range of kicking or anything like that. And, to make sure you keep a hold on your horse's reigns, because they might not necessarily understand what's going on, and sometimes horses do want to walk off right when you jump off. So, make sure you keep a good hold of your horse. And, that is how you properly dismount a horse.
