The folk in the frontier lands of Oklahoma don’t keep goldfish or hamsters like we do; they keep horses. Lots of them. Then again, they have a lot of space — you wouldn’t want to lose a hamster in 1,200 acres of ranch.

They also have big horse barns, and at the first one, our girls, Kiah, 12, and Imogen, 10, were understandably excited — not the best emotion to display around horses. Kenney Fields, professional cowboy, took charge immediately. “Now girls, don’t spook ’em.

Juss walk up to ’em real slow,” he said, real slow.

Within five minutes in the training corral, he had them two-up on Marada, “a real good quarter horse”, trotting round the ring. Wendy and I, legs hanging through perimeter rails, looked on, growing in confidence that our cowgirls were going to cope with the week’s riding after our slight experience issues (three of us scored 1 on Ranch America’s 1-4 riding skill scale).

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There’s no better setup than the Oklahoma plains for a spot of authentic horseback riding. Every few miles, you’ll find a ranch — we stopped at Tiger Mountain and Tatanka, deep in the belly of cowboy country.

“First up,” said Kenney, “we’re gonna learn neck reining” — a western style of riding where you hold the reins in one hand (presumably leaving the other hand to swing your hat) and move your arm horizontally above the horse’s neck, to the left or to the right.

These well-broken American horses were a breed apart from their British pony-trekking counterparts, which you generally have to kick-start. Marada and his four mates — Amigo, Frisco, Nova and Jim — needed only a click, or a “smooch”, as Kenney called it, and they were off, as responsive as a PlayStation joystick. Before hitting the trail, we did some horse-bonding — getting up close and personal with a grooming brush.

“When you walk round the back of the horse, stay close, with your hand on him as reassurance,” Kenney said. “If he kicks you, it’s bedder to be close, so’s he don’t get his kick away.” This didn’t sound reassuring, but the girls seemed obli­vious, as if brushing a cat.

Having been bucked from the first pony that I rode, 30 years ago, I thought that being in charge of a ton of quarter horse would be quite daunting for a 10- and a 12-year-old. But because they were riding such finely tuned animals, fear didn’t seem to play a part. Obviously, I didn’t tell them that, at 47.5mph, the horse comes a respectable sixth place in the “fastest land animal” stakes — or that it could bolt to any given horizon if someone nearby opened a can of Coke.

With Kiah and Immie still on the one horse, the first outing passed without incident. I could tell the girls wanted to scream with delight, but they had to make do with a muffled squeak: Kenney was all eyes and ears. An hour’s walk (and the odd inadvertent trot) later, we came back invigorated, knowing we had a week of riding ahead of us.

Those saddles were hard, though, and the bum ping pong had left some bruising. “Y’all learn to move with the horse,” Kenney said.

Back at the ranch — I’ve always wanted to say that — we all mucked in. Wendy and the girls made brownies with the chef, Rose, and medicine pouches with Moses and his wife, Anna, resident Native Americans. I did man stuff, herding and injecting cattle. I even got to drive the pick-up on a dusty road — a serious thrill for a closet cowboy. Each morning, we were greeted with “It’s a priddy day”.

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