A place for horse related questions

[Overread]

My question is this. Why do they always smell so horsey?

Because a horse is a horse of course.

 

[Vertigo]

@Cathbad Slightly puzzled - to me horse paces in order of speed are walk, trot, canter, gallop. Do you call what I call a canter a trot?
What I call a trot is hard work whether rising in the stirrups or being bounced up and down.



Incidentally when horse transport was common, premium for horses with a nice smooth gate that were comfortable to ride. Prancing steeds were for boy racers.

I'm no expert but I seem to remember reading somewhere that trotting is a very European thing, that Americans tend to go through the trot and into canter in just a few paces and that even when they do trot they don't do a rising trot. I think a rising trot is a bit harder to do with longer stirrup I also believe the Americans use. Strangely when I did do a little horse riding many years ago I always struggled with the rising trot but found the sitting (?) trot much easier; I just had to relax and sort of absorb the horse's rise in my back sort of thing...

 

[Cathbad]

Do you call what I call a canter a trot?
What I call a trot is hard work whether rising in the stirrups or being bounced up and down.

A canter is a smoother ride than a trot, though not as smooth as a gallop. I wouldn't say a trot is "hard work", unless you mean hard on the bum!

 

[Cathbad]

I just had to relax and sort of absorb the horse's rise in my back sort of thing...

You're a tough man!

Like you said, I move out of the trot as quickly as possible.

 

[Montero]

By hard work I meant the rising trot when you are lifting your bum off the saddle in time with the horse.
This

the trot starts about half way through the film.

And my understanding was that it was supposed to be easier on the horse, so that it can travel for longer distances. That's just from distant memory.
The sitting trot was something that was a small part of an occasional lesson, but the rising trot was a chunky part of every lesson.

 

[Cathbad]

By hard work I meant the rising trot when you are lifting your bum off the saddle in time with the horse.
This

the trot starts about half way through the film.

I had a neighbor try to teach me English style riding. I did not enjoy it.

Went straight back to Western.

 

[Montero]

Suspect I'd have got on a lot better in a western saddle.

Later remember that rising trot also known as "posting" - found this article How to Post While Trotting on a Horse
Various interesting details I wasn't taught (or forgot) about how it affects the horse's stride and how by posting you can get the horse to lengthen its stride.
(Mind you, it is also possible that any riding school pony ridden every hour by kids with not much skill probably had its own routine and would have ignored anything fancy, categorising it as one of those blasted kids mucking around again,. )

 

[Cathbad]

Riding stable horses are notoriously ornery.

 

[Montero]

Well, they probably don't have the best life - lots of different riders, some incompetent, same routine day in day out........

 

[Cathbad]

And the people who work there are usually not real horse people.

 

[Montero]

Erm - I'm curious - what is your definition of real horse people......?

 

[Overread]

Riding stables are like anything else; you'll get good ones and bad ones. Some will be those who have a deep understanding of horses, others will know how to ride and how to pass it on but won't be fantastic. Also its important to realise that when it comes to working with animals you can go quite a long way even if you can't "understand" the animals all that well. And, of course, if you don't understand you can't pass that onto others.

But like I said there's good and bad out there; and with animals there's a so many competing theories and ideas and concepts that it would drive you mad to understand them all.

 

[Cathbad]

Riding stables are like anything else; you'll get good ones and bad ones. Some will be those who have a deep understanding of horses, others will know how to ride and how to pass it on but won't be fantastic. Also its important to realise that when it comes to working with animals you can go quite a long way even if you can't "understand" the animals all that well. And, of course, if you don't understand you can't pass that onto others.

But like I said there's good and bad out there; and with animals there's a so many competing theories and ideas and concepts that it would drive you mad to understand them all.

You maybe right, but I haven't personally seen a good one.

 

[Cathbad]

Erm - I'm curious - what is your definition of real horse people......?

I was born around horses. Our "neighbors" (quotation marks because our nearest was nearly a mile away) all had horses.

When a horse went down with cholic, everyone came to help. When they got together, the main topic of conversation was horse-related: the newest medicines; feeding possibilities; training methods, whatever.

We were a tight-knit group, who helped each other as much as possible. When I was having problems keeping weight on my gal, they offered good advise. My boy had attitude problems, and everyone had suggestions (not that any of them helped with that - hah!).

What's a horse person? I couldn't begin to define it. You simply know.

 

[Overread]

It is true that there are far fewer knowledgeable people with a lifetimes experience of horses these days; mostly because many people don't grow up with them. It's a hobby/passtime that some come to, some far later in life. It's the same for a lot of other skills that were once commonplace that are now exotic or of less wide use.

Cattle/farming is also somewhat the same as we've shifted from many smaller to fewer bigger farms; though at least there you tend to still retain father to child passing on of the farm, even with tenant farmers its still retained. So you hold onto some semblance of structure there.

That said growing up with something isn't the same as being knowledgeable. Education plays a key part and its very very possible to work with something all your life and be pretty poorly educated in the subject; or to have a very singular approach.

 

[Montero]

The riding schools I went to were mostly staffed by pony mad teenaged girls, mucking out for free rides - they were certainly kind to the ponies.
The first stable where I received most of the training were run by a father daughter team - from pre-teen age I remember them as looking to be about 70 and 50....... He taught dressage and show jumping to the older/advanced class. She taught the beginners pre-teen class. The training she gave was not just riding posture and aids, but things like not holding out handfuls of grass as the horse can't select bits from it and where to pat a horse and where not.

 

[Cathbad]

I only visited a handful of riding stables (none of which were "schools"), and I wanted to say that, though I found the staff most unknowledgeable, I saw absolutely no signs of abuse.

Not far down the road from us was a bull-headed man who kept a few dozen horses. When we were looking for a new horse, my dad and I went over there (having seen a "Horses For Sale" sign). It was our first visit.

We bought a decrepit-looking species, because I wouldn't leave him there. We went home and immediately called the SPCA: Every one of his horses were scrawny, starving and unkempt. It took a few months, but the SPCA got those horses away from that ass.

FYI, the horse we bought (then called Mooch, but I changed it to Rusty) became one of the areas best cutting horses! He was an ornery cuss, and we fought each other constantly! And we were best friends. I used to have pictures of him when we bought him, and one taken two years later - absolutely striking difference. All it took was hard work, more stubbornness than he had, and love.

And I, at 16, just about jumped three of Rusty's former owner's employees, when I caught them feeding him cigarettes. "He likes them!" Probably good they backed off - for me.

 

[Montero]

Good for you.
Peppermints was what we were occasionally allowed to feed the ponies. No idea why they like them so much but they do.
And a friend on mine once had a cat that adored peppermint creams. She found this out the hard way - given a present of a box of peppermint creams, opens the box, takes one out, tabby blur leapt across in an arc taking peppermint cream out of her hand and was gone.

Further to previous regarding ignorance - book I read a while back from the library, someone who rescued donkeys. Owner of a donkey asked her to give it a home as she couldn't any longer. The donkey's hooves were in an appalling overgrown bent state. There were lumps of battenburg cake in the feed bucket.
When questioned about it the owner said "I get the seconds from the cake factory down the road."
"Donkeys aren't supposed to eat cake!"
"Yes they are, the man who delivered him said he ate cake." Meaning of course horse cake which is not the same thing at all.....

 

[SPoots]

Hey all, I have a quick question regarding horse drawn coaches. Specifically, how would one get it to stop? I would assume there are breaks, otherwise it will just plough into the back of the horse?
Would a coach be capable of a sharp break and an about turn?

I'll apologize for my ignorance here, unfortunately the closest I have come to a horse in recent years is a Tescos Beef lasagne.

 

[Cathbad]

The rigging is attached to the horses in such a manner that the speed of the wagon equals the speed of the horses. There are bars on either side, and it would be virtually impossible for the carriage to "plough into the back of the horse".

A sharp turn is dangerous for several reasons, and probably not possible (I've never tried it). Turn-abouts are made by a sweeping circle. If a single horse, I suppose reverse would work...

The only brake is used to ensure the carriage doesn't roll while stopped.