Real Life Riding

1

So, I just realized (while I’m sitting here at work trying to figure out what it is I should be doing that’s work related) that I don’t really know what you guys that ride IRL do. 

So, for the first 5 or 6 years I was riding I did mostly gymkhana type stuff (pole bending, barrel racing, ride-a-buck) at little local fun day shows.  My mom wouldn’t let me go fast though, so it was sorta hard to win trotting on a pony. :slight_smile:  Then I started taking lessons in hunters and pretty much stuck straight with that through high school.  I got to do a little bit of jumpers on my TB (we tried eventing twice, but he was convinced that if there wasn’t a ring the jumps were going to eat him, stupid horse).  Next horse was an OTTB, so she was exlusively hunters while I had her.  Once I got up here at grad school I got to take eventing lessons for a year and that was awesome.  I definately like dressage (even if Shanthi thinks it’s boring  :stuck_out_tongue:).  I’m hoping to keep up with eventing type stuff when I get time/money to ride again.  Right now I’m surviving on trail rides/ring work with the ancient horses we use in the therapeutic riding program I volunteer at.

What do the rest of you guys do?  I know some of you are lucky enough to get to actually work with real racehorses. :wink:

2

I don’t actually work with any real racehorse but my riding instructor does have a grandson of Alydar. He’s got back problems though so nobody can ride him. He’s a beautiful chestnut gelding. I’ve forgotten what his registered name is but he’s sired by a son of Alydar.

3

I usualy go around and work horses for stables, whatever the horses are trained in, I try to ride lol.  If I can’t do it, I’ll take some lessons, but I can do some saddleseat, some H/J, and alot of western.  Once I worked with some racehorses, but mainly it was just nursing them through fractured legs and overwork.
I actualy just went out and bought a new snaffle bit, a lady I used to board with moved to a new stables and the manager has a billion lesson horses that have terrible manners and need to be worked :stuck_out_tongue:  I always get the bad horses

4

I’ve owned two different horses for about 2 years each. I evented and did dressage. I then took a 2 year break and have just started dressage lessons again.

I absolutely love dressage. I don’t find it boring at all. Even if you just call it flatwork, solid dressage basics are the key to being really sucessful at any discipline with horses, well at least for english.

5

I never said it was boring, I just said it was hard as hell.  :wink:  When it “clicks”, it’s great…until then, it’s really tough.

I’ve grew up doing hunter stuff, and in high school I swapped to jumpers.  In college I fiddled with eventing with my OTT mare before she died, and then worked on raising a baby (who has apparently decided to be less bratty now that she’s 4).  Now I’m working with an OTT TB to do jumpers/eventing.  :slight_smile:

Other things I want to try: Pole bending, barrel racing, driving/combined driving, vaulting

6

lol, Yah it’s definitely can make you want to scream sometimes.

Oooh. I’ve always wanted try barrel racing too, and I’ve also always wanted to try cutting. Bring out the cowgirl in me  :smiley:

7

Pole bending is fun. :slight_smile:  It’s crazy, because you don’t really think about it, but if you do it right you actually end up doing flying changes like every other stride while you bend around the poles (or at least, you can).  Barrel racing was also fun, but I never got into it as much for some reason.

8

Every other stride lead changes?  Tell that to the super fast horse I’ve ridden a few times in poles, two strides would have me 1/2 way across the arena!  You have to push him over every half stride, just about.  Haha.  I don’t do much pole weaving (am better at pole bending, cause my horse thinks it is better to run to the end of the arena first) or barrel racing, or key race, or jumping figure eight anymore… come to think of it, I don’t do many games at all, especially now that I sold my game horse  :wink:.

My main horse is an amazing 28 year old Quarter Horse, old school foundation lines, healthy as a… well, horse?

I do mostly all-around pleasure riding.  On any given day at a show, I will do Showmanship, Western Pleasure, Western Horsemanship, Hunt Seat/English Pleasure, Hunt Seat/English Equitation, various other flat hunter classes, bareback horsemanship, trail, maybe western riding if we feel like doing flying lead changes that day (oh, and we are amazing at egg and spoon!). 

I have dabbled in Dressage on my pleasure horse, and we could have probably done the lowest levels, but there isn’t any dressage shows or trainers around here.  My old game horse was pretty into jumping and really fun to ride English, (and when he was really mad, he would do the dressage trot in place thing, haha) but I never had any formal schooling in jumping, so it was just going over hay bales and like, 2 foot jumps I constructed using stacks of buckets and wooden poles in my yard. 

9

I’ve got to do minimal dressage, but it is hard to find any good instructors here.  A little jumping, but really just the racehorses.  I ponied at the track before I started riding races, so I can ride western, but no showing in any discipline. Just the TBs for me. ;D

My pony horse I used at the track was an ex-jumper.  He got silly so we got him cheap and he was a paint, but he could switch leads every other stride, and not just on accident.  :wink:

10

Yup, mostly into the QH hunters.  I just can’t get enough, though, before that I had a couple horses who were AHSA hunter/jumpers.  But now I wouldn’t trade anything for all my QH exprience.  If any of you are into QH’s my last one who I sold a few years ago now lives in Florida and won Reserve Champion at the Youth World Show in Hunter Under Saddle and last year got Top 10 in the Am. Hunter Under Saddle and top 15 in Senior HUS at the Open World Show.  Also, ented up finishing up 2nd in the nation in the Youth HUS.  I sold him before I got to do anything big with him just got a few circut championships but I’m def most proud of him and he’s so has a personality to match his athletic ability.  I miss him a lot.  Oh, his show name is TellaTall Detail if anyone wants to check him out.  :slight_smile:

11

I mainly do Jumpers with my mare.  I also have evented her up through training level.  My TB who is usually lame but for 3-4 months he stays sound enough to race a few times.  I have also evented him to the Novice level.  My old pony who my sister now uses I did jumpers with her and some gymkhana things.

I also work with racehorses, and I absolutley love it!  I am going to a steeplechase camp at the end of July and I can’t wait!!!  I am also going to work for Tom Voss who was the country’s best steeplechase trainer 2 or 3 years ago. Does anyone else work with racehorses???

~Monica

12

I have been riding since I was 6 years old showing POA’s through my senior year in high school. We did all the events with our POA’s=Hunters,Western, Games, Costume, Showmanship,Driving and etc… Now that I am too old to show POA’s, I went with my mom’s love and that is Morgan Horses. I have been showing them since I was a freshman in college and now that I have graduated am looking forward to doing that this summer until I get a FT job in the fall. We show Class A mostly in the Hunter Pleasure ring and sport horse stuff with our 16 hand morgans.They are total loves. We also drive them too.

13

Well I guess we need someone here to sorta balance things out! Other than being older than  ;D most of you  ;D I’m born and raised in the city. Did some farm work growing up as Mom and Dad were both from the farm and most of the relatives are still there. No riding… just farm work…lol. Glad they moved to the city! After High School, parents of a classmate got me into going to the races. Both Thoroughbred and Harness racing. Not being able to see my way clear to make a living on betting on the horses I thought it might be a good to train and or work with them somehow! On my summer holidays at my first job I went on a circuit to the “Good” tracks and then back home. I stopped at the breeding farm the the most prominent breeder of Standardbred horses in Western Canada at the time just to see his operation and some of the sires I was reading about in the Race Programs. Foolishly I told him that if he ever needed someone that was as green as the grass the horses were eating, but was willing to learn, to give me a call. I stopped at the 2 tracks I talked about previously and had a grand time watching Superior Harness racing and then Thoroughbred racing at the next track. Gone about a week and a half and went home and forgot about what I had said.
Lo and behold some 2 months later I get a call from this man wanting me to come and work for him. To make a longer story shorter I accepted and spent the next 3 years at that breeding/training farm and another and some time at the race track in Edmonton AB. Then I got children and married in that order and found I couldn’t/didn’t want to make that my life’s work. Just no money etc. I got out and became a Plumber/pipefitter for the next 20+ years. Only occasionally did I go back and visit those roots because my work always was taking me out of town. Not conducive to getting back into it in some form. I’ve been behind a desk at a fabrication shop now for 14+ months and loving every minute of it. It also has allowed me get back in touch with one of the Breeding/ Racing farms I worked for way back when. It’s only 20 minutes from where I live.
Needless to say this simulation fills part of the need to get back into it and I’m looking at getting back into the Breeding end of things and offering advice(with computer programs) on who to breed to what in the harness racing area in Western Canada. It’s always been a passion of mine, the charting pedigrees and surmising … what if…
I’ve trained harness horses down to 2:10 and can only guess that is something like being on the back of a thoroughbred going at full tilt etc. Somewhat scary until you’ve done it enough times… :astonished: Oh by the way… the lasttime I was on a horse bare back was the last time I fell off and ended up in bed for almost a week with a very discombobulated body… that was over 20 years ago and i don’t see me doin’ it anytime soon!!!

There… somewhat balanced out!!! ::)

14

Well, my family owns a racehorse breeding farm. We have 10 broodmares, 2 stallions and 6 foals right now. We also have three racers (yearling, 2yo and 3yo) and my own personal horse, an exracer gelding, On the Edge of Reason (Edge). I ride him in jumping and dressage shows and just on the farm. I absolutley LOVE jumping; it’s such a thrill, and dressage is, as Shanti said, hard as hell, but it’s great. :slight_smile: I’ve been riding since I was 4 and been around horses my entire life. I used to own an Anglo-Arab stallion and a Thoroughbred mare but we just recently sold them both and bought Edge. Edge was no big racer and neither were most of the mares but they have good lines, along with both stallions. Our farms has woods with trails, rolling hills, airy stables with large stalls, large shaded paddocks, a galloping track and an arena for both dressage and jumping. So, that’s my life. :smiley:

15

Well, when I’m not breaking arms!.. I have a 2 year old AQHA that’s growing until 3 before I touch her with a saddle (she’s very babyish, though I have gotten on bareback). I enjoy dressage, was taking lessons for that before the broken arm. Boy is it tough! You literally have to “ride every step”… Jumping scares the geebes out of me, I don’t know why… something about having all six feet off the ground that just makes me incredibly nervous.  ???  I’m mainly a leisure rider, I don’t have the time or skill to show :wink: at least, that’s my excuse. I enjoy the ground training, that’s something I’m very good at, even if my butt looks bad in the saddle. I hate riding with ROO because she’s one of those people that just looks too damn good on a horse…  you know the type… all long legs. Rawr!  ;D

16

I grew up with almost no showing experience.

17

Daisy is TOO CUTE!!  :slight_smile:  Mae and Ginia are gorgeous, as always.  :wink:

18

Pretty ponies!

(On a random side note… one of my ponies had a foal by a Halflinger… so she had a half-halflinger baby. :slight_smile:)

19

Where to begin, I started riding at about 8 i guess, on rental horses in the Los Angeles basin. Rental horses in LA come in two types. 1) Nag, can’t go fast, just want to get back to the barn to ear or 2) insane, can’t holdstill, fast is better, who cares about the barn, the rider, the landscape, lets GO.
After my 2nd time at the rental barn, i got assigned to the catagory 2 horses. LOL. I remember one, Star, a big black gelding with a star ( imagine that, so creative). he’s the one i rode the most, and he liked to go fast. He had zero manners, but really, I had no idea what i was doing. I had never had a lesson or anything. I just loved horses. He was also the first horse to throw me, I got right back on.

When i was 12, we moved out of the city and finally were able to have horses. My Gramma bought 4 for us, a fleabitten grey called Gabby, who had box hooves but was never lame a day. An insane former parade horse, Joe, a pinto pony (14 hands even), that did not know how to walk. A persnikity pony, Gidget, and her foal Taffy. Taffy was the product of a big appaloosa stud jumping a fence and making friends with Gidget.

Definitly what you’d call a backyard rider, and my backyard horses. Over time, I inherited Joe, the insane pony. With effort i retaught him how to walk, but he liked to run best. He was my first gaming horse. We did it all. Pole bending, keyhole, Barrel racing, Rescue race, Flag race etc.

I had him until he was 20, and he was going strong when we sold him to a shorter girl ( i’m nearly 6foot) when i was 16. She had him for another 8 years or so, diong the same things, until he passed away. :frowning:

So after Joe can Doc, an hyper Sorrel stock type gelding that i gamed with until he developed health issues and had to be put down.

after Doc came Bonnie, my Appaloosa. This mare was by far my soulmate mare, we did barrel racing exclusively and did it well, holding the area record for the large pattern. Oddly she too was insane. I’m noticing a trend here.

I had bonnie until i moved from Michigan to california, i had to leave her behind with my dad.

Back in Michigan I ended up working on ranches rather than owning my own horses. I was the liveon, head trainer person for a very small Thoroughbred stud farm ( 1 stud, Hail Ribot, 5 mares all from South America). I enjoyed it though.I could ride the mares at my leisure on the farm ( 600 acres) and got to do all the ground breaking, halter breaking, driving with the babies.
I stayed with them until the switched from TB to Saddlebred. Then i moved on to Desert Winds, a Straight Egyptian Arabian ranch with over 70 head. I was in charge of ground breaking, ground driving, and drive training. I also got to help train them for cutting and reining, which was a blast, and a rush to ride!
At this time i also perchased my last horse, Kahassan. Who i kept until I became pregnant.
I sold him to a man that kept him for many years.

This is the highlights, there were other ranches i would do day work at, off and on, to help out with a particular horse and what not. For 6 months i took english lessons ( to date, my only lessons ever).

It’s safe to say I like to go fast, turn fast, jump high, anything that gets the adrenaline going when it comes to horses.

Okay, now i’m rambling and this is a book. So i’ll stop :slight_smile:

20

Thanks guys!  Would you believe that Daisy’s only 3 or 4?  She is going to be the lesson (read: glorified pony ride) pony.  Normally I’d balk at having kids riding such a young horse, but she’s incredibly sane.