I keep reading the title of this thread as “A Day in the Life of a Henchperson”. Carry on.
Is it possible to learn to ride/handle a horse after the age of forty, or is there a body of common horse-knowledge that you have to grow up with?
Is there a certain minimum level of physical fitness needed to ride a horse?
Are smaller horses easier to ride?
I can see that, if gas became really expensive and rural people started to return to riding horses, there’s be a whole category of unfamiliar accidents and mishaps to get (re)-used to…
Absolutely. I have a class of adult beginners, all in their 40s+. A good teacher will help you will all you need to know to get started. Taking care of the horse from the ground up is not expected of beginner adults! And lest you think that horses are some mystical creatures you can’t understand once you’ve passed the age of 5 (like a click language, LOL) – I grew up in Brooklyn, neither of my parents know anything about horses. There are books. There are knowledgable people to answer questions. etc. etc. I wouldn’t recommend just going out and buying a horse and assuming you’ll “learn as you go” though. (And ESPECIALLY never buy an untrained horse thinking you’ll “learn together.” = recipe for disaster)
Yes, but you work up to it. The hardest part for older riders is usually flexiblility and what I call “the mental game” – adult riders second-guess themselves and have less confidence than children of equal knowledge/ability. You should not be grossly obese (horses do have a weight limit) but neither must you be a lithe, willowy sort of person.
Well they’re certainly easier to get onto! However, not necessarily. In my experience the Small ponies (this is a height category not a general term) are usually the most evil. Draft-cross horses (partly draft horse) have extremely gentle dispositions as a rule while being larger than average. A good lesson barn should have a variety of horses and ponies suited to the beginner. The right temperment is more important than the height.
A horse stepped on my foot this past Friday. I was wearing flip-flops at the time (bad idea, and I knew better.) After I was stepped on, I went to my car to get my boots. Pointless by then. In that short amount of time, I had swelling almost the size of a goose-egg on the right side of my right foot–which made putting on any kind of footwear, including the flip-flop I had just taken off irrelevant.
But at least nothing was broken. Monday, though, I had the neatest bruise: All my toes were completely purple, and I had a purple line along the right side of my foot. buy now it’s starting to fade quickly. It’s still a little sore and swollen where he made contact, but that’s about it.
One summer my father & I rode up Warm Springs Creek, off the Lochsa river in Idaho, up into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. We stopped for a lunch break on our third day, and my father took a minute to look at one of our mules hooves – she had been favoring one of her rear legs a bit.
Bubbles (the mule – don’t ask) did have a sore hoof, and dad apparently found the sore spot. She kicked him right in the forehead. He was so (uncharacteristically) mad that he picked up a rock and threw it right into her forehead.
They both went down, and all I could think of was what the hell was I going to do if either of them was seriously hurt. We were two days from the nearest civilization, with some rough country to travel through.
Fortunately, they both just had headaches the rest of the day. We all had a good scare though, and my dad & I had a long discussion about what to do in case of various accidents. Bubbles turned into not only a decent pack mule, but dad broke her to ride, and she was a respectable riding mule.
One of my best friends had a roommate in college who lived for her horse. She couldn’t wait to get back home during the summer so that she could ride. One day she went out for a ride and her parents were worried when the horse came back to the barn without her. The had a right to be because she was laying dead at the edge of the field with a hoof print to the forehead. The horse didn’t seem to be too concerned about the situation though.
I grew up with horses and my wife and daughter have one each now. I don’t think all the great debaters in the world can ever convince me that they are smart. They only look that way because they hang around cows and sheep. They serve pretty well as a human controlled biological machine with limited autonomy but that is about it. Stare deep in those eyes sometime and tell me what you see.
My daughter’s horse is a pony named Chrissy (my daughter is only 3). On day, my wife went into the barn with some apples to feed Chrissy. My daughter was feeding them to her when my wife bent down to pick something up. Chrissy leaned over at bit my wife’s lower lip and yanked. It was the most gruesome non-threatening injury I have ever seen. Her lip swelled way up and looked like black and blue ground beef. I have no idea why Chrissy did that.
My SIL’s horse turned into a runaway with my on it about 8 years ago. I couldn’t do anything to get him to stop and he started running over a hill and was about to hit woods. I pulled back hard, he bucked and full gallop, and my saddle cut lose with my foot caught in the stirrup. Thankfully my sneaker came off after I was drug just a little ways.
See my previous comment about the smallest ponies being the most evil :D. We have a shetland in the barn, doesn’t even come up to my waist (I’m 5’2"), and it takes two people to restrain her to give her a shot. You kind of have to get her into a headlock, like steer wrasslin’. She knocked my old vet clear over one time. Eeeevil, I tell you.
The truth is some horses should never be fed treats by hand because it encourages them to bite. VERY few horses are truly “kid-safe” and in my experience, the majority of these are NOT small ponies. They are usually very aged (25+) mixed breed small horses or large ponies, often with Quarter horse or Appaloosa in there somewhere.
Though I did know a 16 hh Thoroughbred mare, same grandsire as War Emblem (Hoist the Flag, and she was a dead ringer for him too) that came off the racetrack at 4 and at 5 was the easiest lesson “pony” in the barn! You had to carry a crop just to make her trot (and USE it, frequently). She went placidly in a bitless bridle.
Just goes to show, a good horse is never a bad color, a bad size, or a bad breed.
Hey now! My Firefly takes issue with that comment. She isn’t evil, just…strongly opinionated.
Firefly is 9 hands, or 36", tall at the shoulder. Sopping wet, she might be 250lbs. She hasn’t a mean streak in her, but she DOES have a very stubborn, very independent mind. She’s an American Miniature, which I often describe to others as the chihuahua of the equine world–and that she has the same kind of “little dog” attitude. Big horses are often vexed by her–is it a foal??–and then are shocked when the horse a quarter their size promptly pins her ears, spins on her hindquarters, and sends those hind hooves at their nose. She’s just telling them to back off, and my 15 hand (60" at shoulder), 900lb Arab is a wuss who immediately submits to her diminuative “master.”
Firefly and Ana are both very smart horses, but in different directions. Ana is eager to please and learns new tricks in minutes; when I school her on the ground or in the saddle, she puts up only the slightest fuss before tripping all over herself in apologetic behavior. Firefly, meanwhile, acts like she has no clue what you’re asking, when in truth, she’d rather DIE then let you have your way, at least at first asking. Properly motivated she’ll perform every bit as well, if not better. Problem is, Firefly doesn’t use her intellectual powers for good…she’ll sneak out of her stall, find her way into feed rooms, tack rooms, other horses’ stalls, etc. in search for the ever-ellusive Treat.
I’ve managed to avoid getting kicked; Ana is too much of a wuss, and Firefly, bossy as she is, is no kicker or biter of humans. I will say my fingernails are stained purple today from bathing my (whited-out grey) mare yesterday. I was tired of her being yellow and brown, so I whipped out the Quiksilver whitening shampoo. The stuff is dark purple, almost black purple, so it left its mark on me. Still, it did the trick; Ana is gleaming!
I used to ride when I was younger, but life has gotten in the way. I’ve been lucky in my falls, never been hurt more than bruises, and though i’ve been stepped on, I was never kicked or bitten.
I did witness a horrible kick, though, about 14 years ago.
I was in a riding lesson, a group of maybe 5-6 riders and horses. We were just going around the ring, and something in a corner spooked one of the horses, causing him to sidestep and kick out. Unfortunately, that sidestep put him perpendicular to another horse, coming around that same corner, and one leg kicked that horse and the other kicked the rider! The kicked horse spooked and bolted, but the rider was good enough to not panic and get him under control. Meanwhile everyone else is a little freaked, and the rider is calling out that everything is ok.
Then she looks down and sees her tibia poking out of a tear in her riding pants! It was snapped clean in half. She calmly gets down off her horse, hands him over to the instructor, walks out of the ring and collapses in a faint.
I don’t know how long she was in a cast (we moved away before she had it removed) but it was pretty scary to witness this when I was only about 11! The kicked horse was fine, though, I think just a bt of a scratch on his side.
That barn also had a stupid dog which was quite frequently in a cast due to her stupid habit of lying down outside the fence of the outdoor ring, but stretching her front legs out in front of her, often resulting in them being inside the ring! We learned to keep an eye out for that and avoid her, but she’d had both front legs stepped on more than once! She even had the leg stepped on once, while it was in a cast!! Dunno why the owners didn’t just tie her up when the ring was in use…although it was a pretty big and busy place, I guess they didn’t want her chained all the time.
Ruffian when are you due? Shouldn’t you be ready to pop soon?
With the gas prices going up, I’m trying to convince Mr. Reason for Living that taking the kids to school with a pony and cart would be very economical and FUN! (Except the whole bugs, weather, my ass hurts and I’m Bored! part of it.) but I’ve been having fun going through my Horsie and Pony reference books for the past few days and just dreaming about getting a nice horse.
My argument is that it is more enviromentally sound and we could stick it to the Oil Companies while keeping our money here stateside in Purina or something. ( Yanno, carts, buggies, surry’s and the like are all availabe on Ebay! Or my husband could just build one, which would then end up costing us $25K but it would be bitchin’!
Oh, and we’d have to fence in our acreage and either move some crap out of the barn for the horse or build some kind of protection, unless my future horse wants and can live in a 10 person tent. It’s a three season tent!
And there would be the coolness factor of pulling into the parking lot of school with a little trap. I would be an UberMom!!!
Just because I don’t know nuthin’ about driving a horse or a pair of horses doesn’t mean a gal can’t dream.
My cart liscense plate could be Yoder or something and my faithful steeds name would be Flash.
It’s a three season tent!
