Equine Discussion & Support Thread

[Luckeh_Is_Random]

I wanted to create a thread specifically for those who ride horses, own a horse, or are involved with horses in any way.
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A little background info on myself:

I've been riding since I was 9 years old. I began at a little 9-horse lesson barn so it wasn't like, intense. But I learned basic riding there, the simple walk, trot, canter, and some jumping.

I had a bad fall off one of their ponies when the siblings of another girl who was riding spooked the pony I was riding, and I broke my arm in two places. It took a few months for me to get fully comfortable with flatwork again.

It hit me that I wanted to switch barns because I felt like even before my fall, I wasn't getting much out of that barn anymore. I rarely cantered or jumped there, if I was lucky I got to do a crossrail or two, but I knew they weren't teaching me what I needed.

So after looking at a nice hunter/jumper barn, I am now taking lessons there. It took some begging but my parents gave in.

I also went to a camp that summer, hoping to perfect my jumping while doing other camp stuff, but I realised I still had major confidence issues, so I was moved to a w/t/c lesson.

But when I came home and now a few months later, my confidence is as high as ever and I'm one of the best riders in my lesson. I'mcurrently riding a few different horses, mainly a bayp ony mare named Rose, who I love. Lots. xD

I'm hoping to compete this summer in a few hunter classes.
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So, what's your story and what are you doing now with horses?

[Bratterratt]

Ok. I've been on a horse ever since I could walk. Mostly just with my mom, though. When I turned three, started being ponied by my mom and enjoyed it immensely! I rode a little pony named "Pony", original I know, and he was my all time favorite ride! One day, when I was three or four, my mom thought it would be fun to let go of Pony while I was on him and see how I handled myself. Well, Pony was usually such a mellow pony, but that day he decided to bolt as soon as my mom let go of the lead. He took off on his short little legs and ran and ran! My mom finally caught him, and somehow I managed to stay on! I was done riding for the day though... lol...

When I turned 6 I was old enough to ride by myself and I started western riding. When I turned eight I grew to English Riding and that is what I ride now.

I currently own an almost 2 year old American Paint Horse. She is such a sweet heart, I got her last year right after my b-day in June. She is currently still getting used to the saddle, I like to take my time. I'll move on to the bit soon...

I take English Riding lessons at an Equestrian Center close to where I live. I ride a Quarter Horse named "Cherish". She is spunky and I have had a few close calls with her. I'm learning the basic jumping and halter class stuff, so I can compete with my 2 year old this year in 4-H.

I have only fallen off a horse ONCE in my life, even in all of the years I've ridden. I have been bucked and reared so many times, I can't even count, but only fallen off once. It was pretty funny actually. The horse I was riding "Molly" decided to take a quick detour up this steep hill. Going up so sudden kinda unseated me, and I was almost back in the saddle when she decided that she wanted to go back down. She turned on her haunches and lept back down the hill. I did a somersault over her neck and landed on my feet, still holding the reins! My knees where shaking so bad! But I was lucky and not hurt. So I got back on and kept riding, though I can't say I really wanted to!

Ok. That's a little of my horse experiences...

Bratterratt

[Cecelia]

I have been involved with horses for 7 years now. I started taking western lessons 7 years ago because I was the typical crazy horse girl. You know the one where everybody thinks its just a phase etc...... I learned to ride on a pony named Comet and then I moved up to a horse Brownie.I rode for 2 years before I went to my first show. It was just a fun show not sanctioned or anything but Brownie and I had a good time. I was very dissapointed when the last 4 classes got cancelled because of the lightning.I got to ride in two Western Pleasure classes. In the first one I did pretty well and then realized that my foot was out of the stirrup. I searched desperately for the stirrup until I realized that it had fallen off on the other side of the arena.Always remember to tighten your tack properly. lol I rode just for fun for two more years without traveling out to any shows other than the shows my instructor used to hold. I was starting to work with Brownie in English riding which I immensely enjoyed when I fell in love with a mare named Penny. I still love Brownie but I really wanted to work with Penny. I continued working with her up until this year. We showed with an association and did pretty well. Penny is so moody but great fun to work with. I miss being around her and all the other horses. I know one day that I want to have horses but money is pretty slim with the expense of moving and everything so I will have to wait until I am out of the house and can afford it myself. Thats pretty far in the future though.

Anyways thats the short version of my horse story.

Cecelia~thellamallady~

[rockyBalboa]

I have been riding since I was 7. A loooong time ago, haha. How I got started with horses was that i was going through that "phase" that Cecelia mentioned. My dad used to get his hair cut by a woman who owned a few horses. so he told her about how crazy i was about them. She offered to give me riding lessons, and it grew from there. I rode on a buckskin quarter horse/appaloosa named Sundance (Sunny for short). We went through the motions together, through thick and thin. We did barrel racing, poles, and the like in various gymkhanas (spelling?) and competitions, which i placed first in the majority of them =). When i was around age 10, my wonderful riding teacher decided to move to Canada. I was very angry, but to my consolation, she decided to leave me with Sunny. My first real horse! anyway, we rode together for a few more years, until she got very old. She developed arthritis and couldn't go faster than a walk. I was forced to sell her, but I felt better in that her buyers were a small family of disabled girls who had always dreamed of a "slow" horse to ride around the yard on and to care for. I miss her very much, and haven't ridden as often as i should since this incident, but am planning to get back in the saddle much more and buy myself a ranch soon where I can have my own horses again and start breeding my AKC pups again.

Holy crow..I basically wrote a novel!... sorry..

[Queso]

I've been riding since I was 5 or 6, so for about 12 years. My parents thought that my horse crazyness was just a phase and decided to try and get me to shut up by letting me take weekly lessons. Looking back, it wasn't a very good lesson barn but I still managed to learn a lot, mainly by experimenting on my own while the "trainer" talked on her cell. I leased a bratty little shetland named Sunny for a summer there when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I remember teaching myself how to ride bareback on her (that little brat is probably the reason I have such a good seat now lol) and spending time brushing her and letting her graze. It was at that barn I fell in love with my first Tb/Warmblood type horse, his name was Romeo. I never got to ride him but I remember being captivated by him, I would sit outside his stall and just watch him for hours. I think he's the reason I love big bays so much.

In 4th grade I had to take a break from riding because my dad got laid off and my mom wanted me to try playing soccer. Being cut off from horses pretty much drove me insane and made me even more horse crazy. Since I couldn't ride I began to draw them constantly. Then in 5th grade I started taking lessons again, this time at a nice eventing barn. This was a barn filled with big beatiful tb's and warmbloods, it was heaven on earth to me. I remember being amazed at how good the trainer was. Within mabey 4 lessons she took my crummy self taught form and transformed it into classic and correct equitation. Under her instruction I began to take the fast track to becoming a correct, patient, and sucessful horsewomen. She helped give me confidence and while teaching me all of the skills I needed to do eventing. She was a very strict and oldschool trainer, she called herself my "postion Nazi." If you missed a diagonal you had to get off and do pushups or do laps of no stirrup work. lol The main thing I took away from her though was what it really means to train a horse, and how to do it in a way that is kind and fair. After riding with her for a year or so I began to half lease (paid for by doing barn chores) one of her more difficult lesson horses, Dan.

Dan was, and still is, the love of my life. He taught me so much. Dan was part Appoloosa and he had the 'appy-tude' to to prove it. He was stubborn, stiff as a board, stopped only when he felt like it, and had a need for speed. He nearly killed several times, but something about him made me want to figure him out. I guess I'm as stubborn as he was, I couldn't stand not being able to ride him like I could other horses. And so I began really learning how to train a horse. I worked so hard to get him to understand my seat cues, how to soften and bend, how to simply take it easy on not race around all of the time. I didn't realise it at the time, but Dan taught me so much about how horses think and how to work with them intstead of against him. He also turned me into a speed demon Before Dan I was content to quietly trot around, but he showed me that life is more fun at a gallop. Dan showed me what it really ment to be bold and brave, he would jump anything for me. I leased him for over 2 years. By the end of our time together I had learned how to ride 'problem horses' and what it really means to trust your horse, and Dan had learned how to do dressage and how to stop. lol He still wouldn't do either for anyone else, but he would for me :] Unfortunalty then he had to be retired because of a suspected brain tumor, last I heard he was living happliy in a feild babysitting a blind horse. I still miss thim though, he was an amazing partner.

After Dan I leased a Trakener mare named Annie. I was really privelaged to be able to ride her, she was an old dressage school master. I learned how to do tempi changes and other movements on her, she was a wonderful teacher. I leased her for mabey a year. Then before my freshman year in hs, I moved to a different state. I was heartbroken to have to leave my wonderful trainer and all of my horsie friends, but my parents managed to bribe me away with the promise that I could finally get my own horse! I had been saving up my money since kindergarten and my parents promised to match it so I would be able to buy something nice that I could move up the levels with. Once we moved out here I searched for 6 months to find the perfect horse. I ended up getting my mare Winnie, who I adore. I'm lucky to have her, I would never be able to afford her if I had to buy her again. I've had her for 2 years now, I origionally planned on doing eventing with her like I had done with my old trainer, but I couldn't find any decient event trainers where I live now so i settled on doing hunter jumpers. I found an awesome h/j trainer who has helped me with Winnie's many issues (bucking, leaning on the bit, spooking ect. Her nicknames not 'the crazy red mare' for nothing lol) and helped me get used to the hunter jumper scene.

Last summer I was a working student at a training barn and trained a bunch of horses. I also broke my first horse ever, an arabian filly named Jasmine. That was a fun and interesting experiance. It was a great learning experiance for me, I got to ride tons of greenies and problem horses.

Winnie and I have done pretty well so far, this is my last year showing as a minor so I'm going to try and get in as much showing as I can afford. I'm planning on doing the Jr. jumpers this sumer (3'6-3'9 if I can remember correctly) with Winn and mabey riding some ponies for my trainer since this will be the last season I'll be able to.

Well I'll stop typing now, I've written your guys a novel! Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing lol

[MuteAppeal]

Ooh, I want to write a novel too!

If I could have magically turned into a horse I would have by now I never missed an opportunity to take a pony ride, and later trail rides, at local parks and when I got my first saddle (which I didn't have a horse to go with for almost two years) I put it on the post at the foot of my bed to ride it.

I never had much in the way of lessons. The only formal ones were when I was 10 and I took two walk/trot lessons a week at a trail riding barn for the summer. The best lesson I ever had was from the guy I bought my fourth horse from and was technically the test ride before the purchase. He use to work with my grandma when she showed horses and is a pleasure horse guru, if I knew him better I'd probably worship him fanatically. It lasted a total of thirty minutes and he crammed more knowledge in than I ever picked up in actual lessons.

Over the years I've fallen off three times, once with a saddle on, twice bareback. The first time was at 7 on one of those pony rides I lived for before I had a horse. A donkey tied nearby kicked the pony spooking it and I went head over heels into the dirt. Ended up with a split lip, and I still have the scar to prove it. According to my parents I developed a fear of horses for a couple years after that, I honesty can't remember, but if I did it obviously went away. The second time the horse wasn't even moving. I got a leg up and went up one side and right back down the other XD. Third time I was ridding bareback double with a friend, she started to slip and took me with her, She landed on top and knocked the wind right out of me while the horse looked at us like we were stupid.

First horse was a 20 year old AQH mare called Skip (renamed because I couldn't stand calling her Grandma like the last owner). She was something of a booster horse. We never got really close in the time I had her, she wasn't open to being friendly with anyone horse or human. I'd say she tolerated me more than anything. Eventually she had to be put down when the sarcoids she had all her life started spreading internally causing her pain.

Horse number two was and still is my dream horse though he may not be the prettiest, or best behaved. He came to me mostly by luck. The barn owner I board with had been looking for a personal riding horse for several months before my first was put down and He called a couple weeks after she was gone to ask if I trusted him to pick me out a horse. The guy is like a third grandpa to me so it was an unconditional yes. Turns out he had found a nice 15 year old QH gelding that had been unridden for the past five years along with the trail horse he was after. Two days later I saw him for the first time and thought he was a giant. He was 15.3 when my mare had barely cleared 14.2. This was the coming of Tom, my best buddy.

I had missed my first 4H show since Skip had gone down hill right before it and Tom wasn't registered with the club so he couldn't officially show, but the Fun Show was a week after I got him and the club leader was open about letting non-club horses come to it. So I was gungho about going and I found out that Tom's full name, Tom B Swift, really fits him. At the time there was no stopping him once he took off since he apparently had been taught rodeo style where they run in and straight out and I found that out for the first time the boy has speed when we entered the arena for the catalog race and he took off like someone lit his tail on fire before I could even get a heel near him. After that I convinced myself I never wanted to go that fast ever again and promptly turned around the next year to give the resident speed junky of 4H some competition since I'm such a hypocrite He's just as eclectic about how he likes to ride as I am and has done almost everything. He humors me when I play at english riding and quite likes jumping as proved by his overly enthusiastic first attempt that left me with a bruise for longer than I liked since I tried it in a western saddle, and he put up with a bid to try reining when I found out one of the club leaders was willing to show me how to teach a horse to spin. He can lay claim to being the undefeated champion of every western riding class he has ever entered, even beating out my fourth and more experienced horse the one year I showed them both together by sheer grace of the smoothest flying leads that I have no clue where he picked up. And I could brag on him like a dotting parent because he has no real bad faults to me so I'll spare you and just say that he outlasted horses number 3 and 4 and he's still with me and going strong at 23.

I might come back later with the dirt on the third and fourth horses if I haven't pickled your brains enough already.

[Fawn]

I used to ride all the time. I had my own horse, an egyptian arab. My coach was the biggest father figure in my whole life. By far the best time of my life too =)

2 weeks before prom, i was trying out a new horse at the barn. she had a blind spot in her right eye and the dog came running out of the bush. She spooked and reared, and fell over on top of me.

My pelvis was completely shattered. There were 9 whole fractures. Multiple, numerous hairline fractures, thank god no internal bleeding. I wont have kids. Im ridiculously lucky not to be paralyzed, never mind alive. It was a long, long time in hospital. Now that I'm taking my OFA3, i reolize even more how serious that was and how lucky I am. The horse also dislocated her pelivis, weird eh? My coach was crying while we waited the 10 minutes for the ambulance, and swore he'd shoot her next chance he got. It took a long time to persuade him not too.

It was a serious shift in my life. I got super depressed, not even being able to go to the bathroom alone. Actually I couldnt go to the bathroom at all for a few weeks. I was very stubborn, a few times the nurses caught me trying to walk to the washroom. I threw up the first time I tried to walk. It was nottt pretty. It bothered me for a longgg time when people talked all giddy and happy about horses. I got pretty spitefull, and determined to let everyone know that they wernt all candy and rainbows all the time.

I'm still more cautious when I ride now, but Ive been getting back in slowly. Because I actually broke it in the riding position, it hurts for a while. But other than that, I still really like to ride. Watching jumping a dressage still makes me cry They;re so beautiful, but HEAVY!

[koneko]

These are horses ive riddin so for

Rolly: Red roan quarter
BJ: Bay ponie/quarter
Willy: Bay quarter