h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I recently started riding lessons at a local riding school that does short lessons for disabled people. I had my fourth lesson today. I started with half-hour lessons and was pleased to manage about 45 minutes today. What's the point? For me, it's an attempt to improve fitness while doing something I've always wanted to do. Would I ever ride out on the roads? Maybe, but it's early days. I can control the horse at a walk round the riding school building, or round a field in a controlled environment. Doing anything more is some way in the future.

Horse riding is superb exercise; many a bad back has improved, just by hacking out at a walk.

I'm not sure if I would want to take a horse on the road in some parts, because many drivers can be so ing thoughtless. Yeah, honk your horn as you speed past, let's the that horse rear up like Trigger! Morans.

I live in ranch country, and there are horses all over the place, working horses. On Sundays a lot of locals meet up at an arena near here to compete and sharpen their roping skills.

> It doesn't really take the horse's needs into account, and feels unnatural.< OP

Does *any* horse riding take account of a horse's needs and be natural?

My limited understanding is that they have to be 'broken in' because in the wild they would be attacked by eg a big cat jumping on their backs to attack. Anything on a horse's back is going to feel like a nightmare until broken in.

But I love Stubb's paintings of them

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/210891/1/Horse-Attacked-By-A-Lion.jpg

Note I'm not fanatical about this stuff and enjoy the grand National and a flutter on it...but those are facts aren't they?

'breaking' or 'breaking in' a horse is quite an antiquated term nowadays. We'd call it 'training' if we didn't already have the rather violent connotations of a 'broken' horse in common use. Some cultures do 'break' their horses in but most nowadays have a more gentle system involving building trust and reducing fear. It makes for a far more reliable product at the end.

I can't honestly decide how I feel about riding them from a moral and 'natural' point of view. Half of me will happily agree that a person riding a horse is not a natural situation. The other half will go into a romantic whimsy about how the relationship can be so perfect and rewarding that it was an inevitability that one day a human would become such a good friend (that in itself is weird!) to a horse that they would decide to ride it or use it to strap things to for carrying and hauling. Horses are a bit like cats, to me. There's something about them that goes beyond the individual. Most of them *know* something we don't know.

Rationally, they are herd animals who naturally follow strong, calm leadership and have basic needs (safety, food and drink, reproduction) which allows us to easily satisfy them and guide them and invite them to do our bidding. Obviously with time, we domesticated them and made them reliant on us. But why is a horse different to a cow or a sheep? Even donkeys have more in common in their behaviour with cattle than with horses. They are domesticated but they don't look to bond with us, horses do seem to tend to want a closer relationship with us. Once I was dealing with some pigmy donkey foals (as cute as they sound, and a bit cuter again) and we were told, they are farm animals, not domestic animals like horses. they will behave differently and need to be treated differently. If you ask it to move, it will ignore you and will need a shove to get the message across. A horse, unless it is deaf or stubborn, will generally move or at least respond to a human when the human being indicates a wish to it, often vocally but perhaps with a light pressure on a rope or rein or a touch. Unless it is standing on your toe. In which case heaven and earth couldn't move it. Shouting and pushing certainly won't help.

Cheers for that info Robyn. But I hope the change to the word 'training' really does involve a change of substance....and not just wording.

I'm still getting over reading 'Black Beauty' as a child.

Ins ome place sit is, in others it isn't. The ideal among the enlightened is that a young horse will be handled regularly, alongside it's mother and peers by humans, with a minimum of fuss and bother so it learns to trust our intentions and also our ability to make safe decisions and be confident in them, and also to accept direction and so on.

The process starting at a few months and continuing on through visits from the vet, farriers, visitors, perhaps the odd trip out of the yard to show them different surroundings, reinforce the trust bonds etc.

If this is all done properly and with consistency, accepting the saddle, bridle, rider and instructions from on top instead of by the side should all be reasonably simple if done in small enough steps. Really the most difficult bit is them learning to rebalance and move slightly differently when being ridden. Much as we have to change our posture slightly when carrying a rucksack.

Except of course, we rush or they get scared or stubborn (horses have teenage phases too. Rebellion does set in, boundary testing etc.) or learn bad habits because we weren't smart enough to preempt how they would read a given situation...

I still adore Black Beauty by the way. I think every adult should read it again.

The worst training methods I know of occur among the vacqueros in some of the South American states. They don't give a fig whether the horse trusts them or not -- they want to break its will, which they proceed to do by pretty physical means.
http://www.goodhorsemanship.com.au/November2010/files/BIGg-66-1.jpg.jpg

pretty obvious the horse is not enjoying this new experience.

That's an old photo. Outside of the places where machismo reigns, horses are usually left alone till age 4, when they're considered finished with their growing, and then brought on gently. The obvious exception is the racing industry, and I use the term 'industry' advisedly, where most horses are ~finished~ by the age of 4.

Horses have been known to tease humans in a good-natured way. I have a lot of respect for the intelligence of horses, based on what my grandmother told me. She said that when she was a girl, every Sunday the family would ride into the mountains for an outing. She said that no one ever worried about getting lost on the way back, because the horses knew the way home.

If a human being loves a horse, I think the horse figures it out pretty quickly. I'm not sure how soon the human realizes that the horse loves him/her.

I've no idea Paul. Often quite quickly. The horse-mad dream about the day a horse returns the love and respect they hold...

When horses are used for industry, they do tend to be 'broken' more literally. They are basically put into the situation they have to learn to deal with and then left to deal with it. Then the rough edges, misunderstandings and bad habits are beaten out of them. This method also works.

Different horses should, really, be started at different ages due to the way the muscles and bones develop. Some horses aren't finished growing until nearer 6 or 7. Their body shape continues to change and this affects their balance and so on. Others are finished and ready at age three. It's usually fairly easy to judge by breed which will need perhaps breaking-in then turning away again for up to a year then refreshing, or riding casually for a couple of years and not starting any intensive training until puberty has passed.

Being a fan of the art of dressage and haute ecole, when done correctly, it saddens me when one of the most beautiful things you can ask a horse to do becomes mechanical and stiff due to being started too early so that as the body develops, the mind adjusts it to fit into a frame rather than being allowed to find the natural carriage and movement that they would have grown into.

Oooh... I'm being horse nerdy.

Bless you, Robin. You bring a level of knowledge and experience that I appreciate.

paul, it's 80% book learning and from discussion with people. When you've got the bug and don't have a horse you do the next best thing - learn more about it than anybody who actually has a horse has time for!

It's why I'm leaning towards equine physiotherapy long term I'll do it in the next ten years, preferably seven

I've heard it said that in the older days, people we're not so worried when some cart rider was drunk. They knew his horse would get him safely home anyway. A shame cars can't do that yet.

I am reading with great enjoyment a nice long web page in which is told the story of an Australian race horse who was turned from monster to saddle horse by the writer. He doesn't bill himself as a horse whisperer but he clearly knows what he's doing. Haven't read his about page yet, but he seems to be a university professor in the medical field. It is excellent reading.

http://www.goodhorsemanship.com.au/Story/story.html

Robyn, dressage is my first love, too. When I was studying for my BHSAI I dutifully did all the outside mengae and jumping stuff, but I was happiest just working with the horse, building up muscle communication and fluidity.

I love that it's becoming so much more acceptable again to be kind and to train and manage with kindness and understanding.

I'm just reading a rough translation of Xenophon's On horsemanship on wiki. I've only ever read the odd quote before and kept meaning to look up more. I need to get a proper translation It'll go with my Leonardo equine sketch obsession nicely

This is a link to a library copy of a proper translation into english from the ancient Greek.

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/90216#page/62/mode/1up

I'm rather enjoying it

>I love that it's becoming so much more acceptable again to be kind and to train and manage with kindness and understanding.<

I like the sound of that

I dug out my mother's copy of Black Beauty last night, (1940). It is wonderfully illustrated...but I'm not daring to read it again at present..

Ah, when I'm in the throes of PMT I need a good, clean cry. It's that or watership down for me

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that dressage doesn't have its place, and done well, it's a lovely thing. Jumping, I'm less sure about, because of the heights involved - landing from 2m up, with extra weight on their backs, is terrible for the horse's joints.

But it seems that the relationship to horses is often rather abstracted now - for a set amount of money, you get a horse (not necessarily the same one, so it's hard to build up a relationship) brought out for an hour. Already saddled, bridled, fed and groomed, so all you do is get on, do your thing, and then hand it back. And that's why I think some people tend to forget that a horse is more than a machine for carrying you around for an hour and then being stored in a box the other 23...

I agree, Mala, that is what most who can't afford to own get. Although a few good stables still let the kids run around as helpers, but you have to really want to spend time there and there's rarely a stables not full of bitching and backstabbing . Most people I know who own do not have land and don't keep their horses on their own, livery seems to be the modern way, and with full livery it's much the same as hiring your own horse from them, some places will tack up and groom for you. I think those bits are important to bonding.

I used to love untacking my horse at the end of my lesson, so I always used to try and get in either the last lesson before lunch or the last lesson of the day. I felt like I was really able to reward my horse for his hard work when I could untack him, give him a bit of a rub-down and leave him with a haynet and a bucket of water rather than handing him over to someone else or just tying him up in the yard. At the very least our instructor used to insist that we all dismounted, ran up our stirrups and loosened the girth, even if there was another lesson shortly after ours.