and if the sheep would start to get near the border I had set out, he would very very slowly start moving till I would sit up, then he was off at a trot to herd them back where they belonged - I was more or less a passenger, enjoying the ride. He took that job very seriously!<<<
Yes, they do take the safety of a rider into consideration.
My Lady, was that way.
I got careless and didn’t check/tighten the cinch strap on the saddle the third time, got on and rode up up a mountain, with loose rocks, back down and went to the coral to let the Appaloosa out, so he could go with us, he was only 2 and not broken.
When I went to get off Lady at the gate, the saddle went underneath her belly.
I wasn’t hurt, but I also learned in a hurry why a Wyoming friend kept ragging at me for “just going for a ride and no one knew it or what direction I went”!!!
I tried to tell people that Lady was a trained show horse, and they would say “Uh Huh”, and think “she is just an old kids horse”.
On Sundays, I set them free and would while doing things in the house watch them and Lady was teaching the Apa to dance and keep to the program, I swore that I could hear music, she was so perfect.
In front of the mobile was the best flat land, so there is where she did her teaching.
When it came time to sell her, friends bought her and the older daughter had a friend who knew how to dance Lady and they said that Lady was fantastic to watch.
The first time that I let them out, they took off running, down the driveway and all I could do was watch and think “well they are gone now, that is the end of my horses”.
I knew the gate was open to my land, and it was several hundred feet away, the property line and old barbed wire fence was on the far side of a 200’ deep wash.
The horses ran to the fence line, stopped dead and turned around and raced back to me.
I think the weeks that they were penned up, they kept making bets on who would win the race.
Their corral was over an acre, it wasn’t a small pen.
I miss that good feeling of being on a horse and just ‘riding’.
>>>>Yes, they do take the safety of a rider into consideration.<<<<<<<<
They sure do... I could do anything with Dolly - the Percheron I rode to school in the first grade. I could walk between her legs pull her tail, anything and she knew that I was young and vulnerable so she was always careful.
She did have one quirk though - anytime I would go out to catch her, she would run off and hide - well, she always hid behind a tree that was about 4” in diameter and as big as a Percheron is, hiding behind that tree was ridiculous. She would peek around the trunk as though her whole back end was hidden.