Horse and Rider Together as One

This is for anyone who likes horses and is a follow-up (of sorts) to yesterday's post on the Song of Songs. . .

Here is a link to an impressive video: Stacy Westfall (now a professional horse trainer), in 2006, riding a Quarter Horse mare named Roxy in a competition ride while bareback AND bridleless.
(Video link here)
[note: the video cannot be embedded; it is a Windows Media File]

As someone who rode horses when I was younger (my little sister still is a horse person--she has three of them), what is most impressive is that Stacy is riding not only bareback (which isn't that big of a deal)--but without a bridle. She has nothing in her hands to control the horse's head. The technical sort of pattern riding she does in the video without a bridle is very impressive. It takes years for a horse and rider to get really good at this sort of riding with a saddle and bridle. But bareback and bridleless both? Wow.

This video is sort-of a follow-up on that portion of yesterday's Song of Songs post (chapter 1, v 9) that has to do with an analogy to a chariot horse because it provides a good example of an excellent horse and rider that have become one. They work as a single unit. This is the sort of bond that is possible between a horse and a human person that I alluded to in my remarks on Scripture.

update: Below is a You Tube video of Turkish mounted riders shooting bows and arrows (and some sort of spears at the end). Horsemanship came from the East and spread from there to Western Europe. Traditions of horsemanship in the East (such as Turkey, Tibet, Mongolia) have very ancient roots.