Were horses genetically designed to carry a rider? Sure they are strong but carrying 200 pounds on your back for hours on end has to put a strain somewhere. Do horses suffer from back or joint fatigue from carrying a person or a pack for an extended period? Are there horse chiropractors for such situations?
Horses weren’t originally designed to carry a rider, but the ones we’ve been selectively breeding for 5000 years sure are.
Horses do get tired, like any other animal does, and they do age, but in the course of normal usage a healthy riding horse has no problem at all bearing the weight of a human.
A horse weighs a lot. A person is a pretty small percentage of the horse’s weight, really. In fact, this stable’s information sheet on riding lessons states:
I could carry 30-35 pounds around on my back for quite a while, as long as it wasn’t all bouncy and wriggling. Horses, too, are “happier” with good riders; I’m sure they’re easier to carry.
So 200 is pushing it, especially for “hours on end” as you propose. Of course, some horses are bigger and stronger than others.
That is why Clydesdales are predicted to be the #1 pleasure riding horse in the U.S. by 2015.
Yes there are equine chiropractors, as well as equine acupuncturists. Horses can develop “ouchy” backs, but saddle fit is probably more important than the weight of the rider, as long as we aren’t talking about someone tremendously heavy. (Would you rather Horses have differently shaped backs, and a saddle that is comfortable for one may not be for the next. Horses that have problems usually have the in their legs or feet.
A badly fitting saddle, a bunched up numnah (saddle pad), an inexperiences rider who’s never been taught how to sit properly [on a horse], an experienced rider who can’t “carry” themself properly can all cause problems.
It doesn’t hurt the horse just to have someone sitting on them. You sit on the horse’s “upper torso” which is stronger than it’s lumbar area - which is why you shouldn’t ride in pairs (one behind the other) as that will damage the horse’s back.
“Good” rider’s know how to distribute their weight evenly - I can - and for several years rode [including jumping] a horse who used to struggle to carry someone who was at least 2 stone (28lbs) lighter than me…
I used to work at a horse farm. After the horses were “green broke” I would ride them until they were fully broken and comfortable with a rider.
I didn’t understand it completely, (I wasn’t an expert by any means-- I just enjoyed riding the horsies) but he told me that you have to wait until a horse is a certain age or you’ll damage its back by putting a rider on them. He chose me because I’m light and small-- good for younger horses. He put me on horses which were old enough to ride, but that it was best to start them out with a lighter load “just to be sure.”
How does this work?
Get a camel!
That horse under Wilford Brimley in the commercial on TV didn’t look happy. Sorry, I can’t find a cite.
That horse under Wilford Brimley in the commercial on TV didn’t look happy. :eek: Sorry, I can’t find a cite.
No, the horses back is certainly not hurt.
Not if the horse is in proper condition, wearing a correctly-fitted saddle, and with a rider who knows what they are doing.
There is a sport called endurance riding, where horse & rider go on a long ride, sometimes over several days and different terrains, and the team with the fastest overall time wins. (Rather like a Tour de France, but on horseback (and without drugs).)
Rides of 25-50 miles per day are common, some go up to 75 miles or more per day. And many of them go on for 2, 3 or more days in succession. And there will be official ‘pit stops’ along the way, where officials/veterinarians will check the horses’ temperature and heart & respiratory rate – any horse outside the limits will be pulled from the race, either temporarily or permanantly.
See http://www.aerc.org/ for the website of the American Endurance Ride Conferance.
To kill men effectively you used spears. So that your riders weren’t knocked off their horses you braced them with seats and leg hooks. If you wanted horses that could take the redirected force of the hits you needed to breed them and house and feed them.
This chain of necessity was the basis for the entire chivalric system.
Horses do get sore backs, from several causes, as other posters have already mentioned. This webpage gives a good overview of causes and treatments.
My own Thoroughbred has had back problems, both primary from impingement of the dorsal spinous processes (“kissing spines”) and secondary to hock arthritis. Fortunately, injections of corticosteroids resolved the imflammatory reactions and relieved his pain. From time to time over the coming years he’ll need shots again, since the underlying pathology can be palliated but not cured.
For most of the hundreds of years that horses were used in war, ‘leg hooks’ (I presume you mean stirrups) had not been invented yet.* But they were still able to kill men with spears, and pretty effectively.
In fact, even saddles were not used thru much of this time. The major advantage of horse-mounted calvary thru most of history was that the horses could get the troops to the battle location faster, fresher (less tired) and could carry more supplies.
- A ‘real-time video’ of this is available in the Bayeux Tapestry, where it depicts the 1066 conquest of England by the Normans. The Tapestry shows the Normans riding on horses with stirrups, while the English riders did not have any stirrups. This technological advantage may be a partial reason the Normans won the battle of Hastings.
Is that a recently discovered condition, or is it just becoming more common these days? I’d never heard of it 20 years ago, but it seems to be cropping up more and more…
Presumably the same way it works (or doesn’t work, depending on how you feel about alternative medicine) on people. I really don’t know anything about it besides that it exists.
My WAG is that it’s no more common than before but is better understood and diagnosed as medical science in general has advanced. There are diagnostic modalities in use in veterinary medicine today that were unknown, or only employed in human medical care, a couple of decades ago.
Another WAG: That more horse owners (and vets?) are willing to look deeper than traditional answers to problems with horses such as: “Oh, he’s cold-backed, he always needs a warmup before you can tighten the girth.” Well, yeh he is, but why? A cold back isn’t a single, simple condition; it’s a symptom that something’s going on, in the back, or in the hindquarters, or in the joints, or in the musculature, or… And now we have better tools to investigate what’s going on.
Dunno if you’ve heard of a fellow named Jack Meagher, the father of modern equine massage therapy. He’s dead now, but a decade ago I watched him work on my horse, and others. He could massage the muscle spasms out of a horse that appeared lame, say, in its left front and reveal that the source of the problem was, say, in the right rear, and that the horse’s apparent lameness came from compensating for the underlying problem.
Some more information from Cherry Hill’s online newsletter:
Yeah I’d say it was more knowledge these days, I often wonder about a horse I knew who was “cold backed” he lay down and rolled (almost onto me) when I sat on him one time :eek: another time when someone was tightening his girth he went ballistic and literally threw himself flat on his side (on grass) - this horse was 18hh and being used in a riding school… I think that needed some investigation
Not heard of him, but have heard of these mysterious “back people” who can cure a horse just by digging their thumb into the right spot on a horse… fascinating stuff!
tries to figure out what size horse I’d need…