First horse/pony.........how old were you?

I'm still not there yet
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! I am 37 and started riding when I was 7 and have been ever since, I helped at the local stables and helped with a number of horses since then. My Mum and Dad aren't horsey and simply couldn't afford it but that didn't stop me coming up with enterprising money making schemes and writing pleading letters to my Dad that I would leave on my Dad's pillow when I went to bed
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! Every Birthday and Christmas I convinced myself that my surprise would becoming - always destined to be disappointed. Hopefully hubby will cave in soon (blimey it's like being a kid again) and this will be the year.
 
I was 22 when I finally got a pony of my very very own! Had had shares and loans from the age of 6 but despite my begging (and my hand drawn plans of how we could convert the garage into a stable and tack room) I was never allowed my very own
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But it was definately worth the wait
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Started riding at 7, having been desperate to ride since I could talk, at a local riding school but had no chance of a pony of my own.

Aged 10 I was walking home in the thick fog across a playing field and I thought there was someone in front of me and it wasn't until I nearly bumped into him that I realised it was a pony. I didn't know whose it was but it shouldn't have been there so I took my belt off and put it round its neck and took it home with me. My sister knew it belonged to the sister of a friend of hers. My mum rang them up and they were at their wits end as the pony was bored because the daughter who owned it had gone to uni and no-one else wanted anything to do with it. The next day they brought round the key to the field and his tack and I was given the use of him. They paid and arrranged the farrier etc but I could do what I liked with him. He was a 13.1 strawberry roan highland who lived next to the playing field - so two fields away from my house. He was very old and rather naughty and if I was late he'd jump out over the gate and come to find me.

One of his favourite ways of passing time was in the summer with his head resting on the gate watching the cricket being played. I used to spend hours and hours and hours with him, riding bareback, doing my homework, just being there with his glorious pony self.

He was 19 when I got him and after a couple of years my mum got a phone call to say that his owner had left uni and didn't want him anymore and that they had decided to have him put down - no option for me to have him. It broke my heart - I'd never felt so loved before.
 
Sat on Bonny Boy - our Exmoor at 9 days old and was given Topsy my Dartmoor at 6 months. Won my first rosette at 18 months which I promptly chewed and slobbered over - still have it 40 odd years later.

By 4 was able to gallop and jump ditches following mum through Epping forest - off the lead rein - thanks to Topsy being the best pony a child could ever have.
 
I was 9 or 10 when I got my first on loan. He died after about a year (cancer, I think) then I looked after the two ponies and a hunter belonging to a v. posh family until I was 14 (great while the daughter was away at boarding school, less so when it was the holidays).

Then my parents bought me my own aged 15 - amazing considering I had been caught playing truant from school by my dad just three days before we went to pick her up!
 
I was 5/6 and had been having riding lessons. My mum was very horsey and a friend had a pony for sale (I think the pony was more for my mum LOL).

She was a bright bay NF pony called Crystal. The day we had to sell her I bawled my eyes out.

A year later Gypsy was my birthday presant
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I was just away to turn 14.
Begged and begged my parents for years to have my own...but no luck. The daughter of some people who lived up the road from us owns her own yard, she was at the time sharing a horse at her yard and offered me to come ride him...after that i began to share him too...this proved my dedication as he was a pretty old boy prone to laminitus and had arthritis...I spent my whole summer holidays one year mucking out a stinking bed and caring for him.

My parents soon saw i was dedicated...well my mum anyway..so she started the serch for a pony for me
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..much agains my fathers wishes! About a month later i ended up with a fat and scruffy broodmare..deemed too dangerous to ride for the next 10 years....and i love her to bits still
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15 when I got pickle, am now 17. Have ridden since I was 7 though and the only way I got a horse in the end, is when dad started riding!!!!!!!
 
I was 15 when I got my first, a begged from the age pf 5 though! I had to go into hospital for an op and my parents felt so sorry for me that they promised me a horse when I got better...getting an acute appendicitis what the best thing that ever happened to me! A few wks later my sis and I got Murphy, grey 10 yr old 15.2hh Irish cob from a hunting yard, he was a brilliat first horse as he was 110% bombproof so safe and quiet.

This is when I first got him, Pls excuse the awfulness of this piccy (It was taken when I was 15!):

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14, (have had 'loans' since I was 5) Mum and Dad promised me a horse if i didn't make a fuss about moving to France, so as soon as we were living in our house (that had land) i got a horse...If i'd stayed in England I probably wouldn't have a horse now
 
I was 1 but I didnt start riding until I was 4. This is a photo of the day Rosie arrived. I'm in my dad's arms. Oh and we didn't live in that house, its were my parents worked and we kept the horses.


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I got my first loan pony when I was 6, my parents bought me first own pony when I was 13, still have her and always will, and I bought my first very own horse nearly 5 months ago aged 21, I love him to pieces and he will be with me for life
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i got my first loan horse when i was 15, she was a 14.2 welshie, she was pregnant and when she became unrideable she offered me her 16.1 TB
i had her nearly a year to the day and she was sold and i didnt find out before the day she went.

then last July (was 17) i bought my very own
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who TBH looks very much like the loan TB i fell in love with!
 
I was 10 when I got my first pony. I'd been riding since I was little but had to convince I was able to look after an pony without causing it any damage!
 
I was three. Mum and Dad had not long come out of racing and bought an 11.2h Welshie called Simon. When we moved to Wales we took Simon with us and then bought Sweep a black pony who turned out too lazy(!) and then Babycham a pretty palomino who turned out to be a rig(!!) for me so my sister could ride Simon. Sweep and Babycham were sold and instead I kept Simon and my sister got a loan pony. I kept Simon until I was 13 and he was hopelessly outgrown!!
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I have been riding since I was 3. And I rode/competed other people's horses from the age of 12. (Parents would never fork out the dosh to buy one). So I was 26 before I owned my own horse (the coloured in the picture below).
 
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