Funniest Item from your Horsey childhood *nostalgia alert*

shysmum said:
erm... i had a full size sticky back plastic picture of a mare looking over a stable door, stuck to my bedroom door.. thought it was fantastic !
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I had one of those!!

I remember buying a full grooming kit and a crop from a tackshop on holiday when I was 6....I never even had a pony then. I would put the grooming kit next to my 'stable' door and pretend to groom the horse on it lol
 
This thread is brilliant!:D I remember;

Aigle rubber riding boots
Free horse and pony hoofpick
Horse sense mag (ringbinder was green with a bay horse on the front wasnt it?)
Making my poor dog Holly jump a 'course' in the back garden:o
My bedroom walls plastered in horse and pony posters (you couldnt see any wall)
Boring my non-horsey family rigid with my 24/7 pony chat!!:D
Beige jods from Oxfam which i was so proud of!:D
Riding 'Topsy' , 'sixpence' , 'Shandy' etc at the RS every Saturday morning.

So many memories!:)
 
GeeGeeboy said:
This thread is brilliant!:D I remember;

Aigle rubber riding boots
Free horse and pony hoofpick
Horse sense mag (ringbinder was green with a bay horse on the front wasnt it?)
Making my poor dog Holly jump a 'course' in the back garden:o
My bedroom walls plastered in horse and pony posters (you couldnt see any wall)
Boring my non-horsey family rigid with my 24/7 pony chat!!:D


So many memories!:)
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glad I wasn't the only one lol! my mum would go mental at me jumping the patio walls with my dog. I still have my H&P hoof pick and my horse sense binders. My hubby thinks I am a nutjob lol
 
I am loving this thread. From the sound of it, we are all pretty much of a 'certain age'. I too remember my first pair of jods that my gran bought me. They were a pair of beige Saddlemaster ones which were not stretchy at all and seemed to last me for years and years. Coupled with a yellow chunky polo neck under your hacking jacket, plus the yellow string gloves, black and white riding crops, black velvet caps with elastic under the chin, black rubber Harry Hall riding boots .......... My grey pony had a red string girth and a bridle with a red and blue velvet browband. I thought we were the bees knees.

Remember cleaning tack with I think its Carr Day and Martin saddle soap in a block with bright orange wrapping (think you can still buy it). Posters of Marion Mould and Stroller and Lucinda Prior Palmer, watching Penwood Forge Mill on late night tv, watching HOYS on tv. Trying to be the most horsey out of your friends, bringing horses into every school essay.l Gymkhanas, apple bobbing, bending and musical statues. Dreaming of being a 3 day eventer and wearing a top hat and tails like they did at Badminton, or as a top showjumper and riding at Hickstead. Pony Magazine, Light Horse if I couldnt get it and the bible of all things horsey. Horse and Hound.

Oh god, it takes me back ............
 
Pony nuts - not fibre nuts or conditioning nut...plain old pony nuts . I remember trying them.

"galloping" in the park and pretending I was doing a cross country course on Black Beauty....I wore my Caldene no stretch jods and £10 rubber boots everywhere lol
 
howengold said:
I had one of those!!

I remember buying a full grooming kit and a crop from a tackshop on holiday when I was 6....I never even had a pony then. I would put the grooming kit next to my 'stable' door and pretend to groom the horse on it lol
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I had one of those too. But it was too big for my door, so i had my back wall papered in fake brick wallpaper, and put the poster up in the middle. It went from floor to ceiling like a real stable. I loved it :)
 
hahah this is awesome!

My poor chestnut pony came with ample tack, including ORANGE rubber grip reins, and ORANGE plastic browband - must note ... the pony was ORANGE! :p:p:p


I went on and bought her a tiger stripe padded saddle cloth, which is so odd... its kinda cool :p:p


She also got a purple *bareback saddle* and purple synthetic western bridle went we went to florida on holiday, poor pony got taught western ways of riding in one fowl swoop! - suprisingly she didnt kill me and ended up going very well in both! dam bareback saddle was useless for staying on, but awfully clever if you wanted to learn how to balance, was more difficult to stay on it than it was to actualy got bareback!


I mounted my horses bareback from a chicken coup....gotta love the chicken coup...




im 23 lol, no excuse for living in the past, but gotta love it!
 
Making wall jump out of old doors and masking tape them to make the shape of brick them paiting red, gosh i was so proud of all the filler jumps i made like that.
Writing to jimmy fix it to ask if i could go riding with harvey broom.
The love i had for my first pair of jods, ages to get on and off but hell i would live in them, still have them 20+ years later and only just dont fit anymore.
Rubber boots that i had to wedge my foot in the front door to get off.
Wet new zealands that weighed more than i did, getting everyone old blankets to put under jute rugs at night. Managed to get some morewool blankets last year and my horses were toasy in them
Many more shameful things but at least i know i am in good comany.
Those darn petal over reach boots that flap like crazy, hated them and refused to put them on any horse
 
love this thread!

me and my friend had matching knitted bright yellow jumpers with 3 brown horses on them (knitted by our neighbour)
loverson jods cream from charity shop someone had put elastic stirrups to stop them riding up!
elastic under chin strap with paper thin hat
someone gave me a white pair of rubber reins with hardly any grip on which i cleaned up for a show , scrubbed them with jif cream cleaner so my hands stuck like glue!!
oiling saddle so much used to punch yourself on the nose when doing up girth.
gorringe jods then in navybut with a seam across the knee (most uncomfortable)
riding my mates old pony her on the saddle me behind the sadlle but I always had the stirrups! clinging round her waist. we even rode to a couple of shows like that! Age bout 11 .
still got my first ever horse and pony mag it was 70p! my mom wouldnt buy it me so my nan treated me to it , was anyone else in the Young Riders Club???? you got a rosette carnt remember what else .
Its all flooding back now remeber there pony freddie i so wanted him.

Did anyone ever have the thelwell bed spread ??? it was on mail order in H&P I really wanted it but my mom said it was too expensive and she wasnt buying anything out of a magazine (god u should see her on ebay now days......)
 
Pony Magazine - and being in "Charlie's Canter Club"!
I remember my Mom organised for me to loan my favourite pony Cilla for a week as it was the last time I could ride her as I'd got too big for her. No-one else had ever "loaned" a pony at the RS before and I thought I was the dog's danglers! It was to this day my best Christmas ever!
I still have my "handy whip" with the hand on the end!
Does anyone remember the feature in either Pony or Horse & Pony magazine about how to turn your bedroom into a stables? - Fitting stable type split door, green carpet, painting horsey landscapes on the walls, hanging "hay" nets filled with raffia, storing your make up etc in a tack tray, using a saddle rack to hang stuff on etc. I begged and pleaded with my parents for me to be allowed to do it, but never did!
 
Yes I was in the YRC :) and had the 'Freddie' stickers stuck on everything!!
also loved my blue fluffy numnah, with red girth!! :o
 
The old fashioned riding hats with the elastic chin straps, remember them when you flew off they went in the complete opposite direction.

Never had the great pastic jump blocks and poles we used to use ahem.....tea chests and broomsticks and on one memorable occasion (I still remember the hiding my mother gave me) my sister and I carried the new leather sofa out to the field and jumped over the back of it.....parents had gone out for the afternoon....they would never had known if Porridge (my sisters pony) hadn't landed on it and left a perfect set of hoof prints on the seat.

When I was a kid what is now Parelli was known as "stop mucking about with that bloody pony before it kicks you"

Do you all remember HOYS and Hickstead as Primetime TV? used to be allowed to stay up on a school night to watch....Harvey's V sign at Hickstead I had a major crush on Harvey

and who used to practice bending using cones with razor sharp garden canes standing up in them?
 
What about the feed - I can remember the flaked maize, bran, barley oats etc all fed seperately! But the worst thing was the large pot of linseed being boiled up into a gloopy, smelly mess:D
 
I'm probably too young for proper nostalgia...but oh well.

I had a horrid yellow string sweat rug, it was vile and stank of dead things!
I always wanted to wear the hats with the chin cups :o and was gutted when my aunt scrapped them all!
I also wore long rubber boots till I was about 16 and finally entered the heady world of Mountain Horse Jodh boots. :D

My cousins and I had a whole imaginary livery yard/riding school/stud until we were about 15. :o :D
 
hmm freddie must be dead now, thats sad. i had the hoofpick & attempted to turn my bed room into a stable, but my mum put a stop to that! i remember reading all the pony magazines & getting some things very wrong- some of the best were gee-off billington (what an excellent name for a rider), jim-a-haka (gymkhana) & tyneese walking horse! no one told me how to actually pronounce these words & then i just got laughed at! i also had a milton bed spread, still got it somewhere!
 
I think all these have already been mentioned... But I used to love:
*Tying my poor dog up with the headcoller (it used to hang around her neck, but she would just stand patiently ) and leadrope to the door handle and brushing her with my full grooming kit that i had INSISTED I wanted as my christmas present, despite having no horse.
*Jumping said dog around various XC fences I had errected in the garden. Usually made of washing baskets and washing line poles. Oh and sofa cushions piled up as high as they would go for the 'High Jump'
*Trying to paint my mums toe nails with hoof oil. 'Its moisturising mummy!'
and...

It was also a common assumption at the local riding school that if you couldnt canter, You werent a good rider...
Oh how I wanted to learn to canter, and when I did. I felt like I'd made it! I remember telling my dad that I simpley HAD to have my own pony now, because there was nothing more the riding school could teach me!!!

Sorry if not very nostalgic, I'm only 22 :)
 
I'm only 22 so probably not very nostalgic!
I remember string girths, when I was younger I remember seeing horses with canvas rugs.

I used to have a whip, grooming kit, head collar etc but no pony! I only had one riding lesson a year on my birthday until I was 12 and used to take all my kit so I could help get the pony ready with "my" stuff :)

I used to lead the dog around a course of "showjumps" in my garden (still do sometimes as I am still horseless!)

The days before proper health and safety...my first riding hat was £2 from a boot sale, way too big...more adult male size and I was about 8 yrs old. My dad used to stuff cotton wool and newspaper up the sides so it fitted, and when I fell off my hat fell off too and me and instructor had to hunt around the grass for the cotton wool to re-pack it!!!

My walls were covered in posters of Milton!






.......My bike was actually a palomino arab called Rainbow and I used to go "galloping" around the estate :)
 
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My first pair of Jodhs were bat wing ones, probably about 5th or 6th hand by then (80's).
I learnt to ride at a pretty run down riding school run by an old lady who took no nonsense. You fell of you got back on unless you were unconcious. I vividly recall her bellows of "WHAT IF YOU WERE OUT HACKING AND A PHEASANT SPOOKED YOUR HORSE? SHORTEN THOSE REINS - NOW!!!" but she was lovely and when we helped out we'd be rewarded with lemon curd sandwiches and crisps in her huge kitchen. In the winter we'd all huddle in the tack room for a mug of Bovril. Sometimes we'd be allowed to take the ponies into the field to ride, that was a real treat.

I had a pony on loan when I was about 8 or 9, a pony belonging to my mother's friend. It must have been about 30 years old as it hadn't done anything in years. The gardener gave me it's saddle and bridle and I cleaned them up and he went into the saddlers and treated me to a white string girth. I saved up and bought a second hand numnah - faded red quilted. I still have it!
In those days you either rode in a snaffle or a pelham. Some people had dutch gags, but they were for the hunting field. My mum decided I was horsey enough to own some harry hall jodhpurs which cost £8.99. I had them for my birthday and was the only one of my friends to own lycra black jodhpurs. I also had a full length barbour wax jacket which poppered up round my legs for when it rained.
The gardener did my pony's feet as in those days blacksmiths didn't travel and you had to hack to them. I'd hack the 12 miles at the beginning of summer, have some shoes put on, and the gardener would remove them at the end of august. The rest of the year he'd just rasp his feet himself.
I also recall travelling to buy a second hand saddle which was Indian leather and very very uncomfy - this was for my second pony - who 'oh joy' wore a pelham. i felt very grown up. He also had rugs - a padded stable rug (they were just out) and a green new zealand. If you needed to keep them warmer you popped a blanket under and an anti cast roller on top. I still do this with my ponies, I don't own numerous rugs, we just layer and fix in place with a roller. I'm pretty finniky that my 'v' has to be exact too...
Shavings were for the posh only.
Mixes were only just coming about in my teenage years, and if we were lucky enough to borrow a trailer for a show we'd have two ponies in there, the tack in the back of the car (a renault) and all us kids in the back with the ponies....
Elf and safety didn't exist in those days.
If your pony bucked it was naughty, simple, because back people didn't exist. If your saddle tipped you'd get a bit of sponge out of an old sofa and wedge it under the saddle.
I was also very proud of my horse and pony hoofpick and mane comb (red) and my stylo rubber riding boots.
 
I had my own grooming kit for the pony camp I went to once a year at the riding school where I got 'free' lessons/hacks once a week for 2 days slave labour. Which I loved.

Plastic riding boots definatley hideous, I vividly remember that because I was a well muscled kid with little feet and I short legs so I had to fold the bottoms of my jodhs back up to the knee as they were always too long the damn boots were too tight round the leg and cut off the blood supply to my feet.

Canvas rugs and tolerant horses who dealt with the short 11 year old swinging the rug up with huge effort then pulling it about till it was in the right place.

No H&S so long bareback hacks in the summer up and down the hills so you slid off the bum if you didn't hold on. Bareback jumping and even xc later on. Jumping courses with no stirrups or reins on a pony who ran out to teach me to steer with my seat. Taught to me stay on though.

Horse and Pony and my walls papered with posters, I even had the picture of Downland Cancara that they had to print an apology for commenting that he hadn't put on that much weight and the picture was of one of his pregnant mares in his rug. :)

I had a beautiful buckskin eventer called Lady and a bright red bay endurance arab called (imaginitively enough) Red, who were whatever I happened to be sitting on at the time, bike, wall, tree branch...... and which I did jump in the garden as I cantered around whinnying...
 
OMG this is the best thread EVER!

Only 25 so not true hard core retro nostalgia but i remember..

Making my gerbils jumps a course (poor things!)
Jumping round the garden for hours on end
Sitting in the corner when at Brownies reading Horse and Pony with my sister and 2 other horsey friends and telling Brown Owl that I only wanted to do to horse riding badge!
Thatching the ponies when they came in from the field wet in time for the 9 o clock lesson
Those weird string sweat rugs that we all seemed to want and buy!?
CHIN CUPS!
Midnight steeplechases
Plastering every corner of my room in Horse and pony posters and entering the 'Win Freddie for a year' competition and never winning!

Oh the list goes on and on - will have to catch up with some old friends now!
 
Does anyone remember those elastic things with a clip on each end that you used to clip onto the bottom of your jodhs and under your jodh boots to stop them riding up? Worked really well but horrible to take off at the end of the day after having standing in god knows what!

Also seam to remember Horse and Pony running a competion where you could win your very own pony, think they only ran it once though.

Remember those horrible jodhs though, had brown and cream pairs - had to stand on one leg to get the other off. When I got my Harry Hall Navy cords thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Also remember at the age of 11 cycling to the yard, dog in tow, with packed lunch to spend the whole day up there. Warming feet in muck heap, telling ghost stories (farrier was into the cult). Great fun.

Falling asleep in the stable with the dog and pony in there - Mum turning up and having a fit. Oh to be young and not aware of the dangers! lol
 
Herbie31 said:
Does anyone remember those elastic things with a clip on each end that you used to clip onto the bottom of your jodhs and under your jodh boots to stop them riding up? Worked really well but horrible to take off at the end of the day after having standing in god knows what!
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they still do those! My kids have them for shows


Also remember at the age of 11 cycling to the yard, dog in tow, with packed lunch to spend the whole day up there. Warming feet in muck heap, telling ghost stories (farrier was into the cult). Great fun.
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I remember doing that too. My sister would ride on the handle bars and my cousin would ride my sisters bike, the poor dog used to trot along side us there and back and also follow us on day long hacks lol! We used to only have one ridable pony and my sis and I would take it in turns while poor Scott would be stuck with the bike all day lol

*Wax jackets that sent your skin slimy too!
 
I still have the string anti-sweat rugs, I think they are fab and I don't want to get rid of them just yet dispite also having a more modern version!
I also still have several jute rugs - again really for sentimental reasons. One has the cross over sersingles and boy thats modern!! lol

One of my vivid memories is the sound of clanking buckets... you see we all had metal water buckets and metal feed bowls, none of this plastic bucket malarky!! So morning stables and feed time did sound a bit noisy!
Talking of feed time we had army storage ''bins'' for feed..... one for pony nuts, one for bran and one for oats, then in a dustbin we had sugar beat flakes, I was told to soak flakes for 12 hours and then a few years later we got the nuts version but you had to soak them for 24 hours. We also had a 'chopper' to chop up our own alfa - oh how I loved to turn the wheel, made me feel really important! lol
Always saw cars pulling the heavy double trailers, maybe the odd range rover but little else. No-one ever thought that was a problem. You were posh if you had a lorry, albeit a heavy wooden cladded one!

Kids also rode ponies til there feet needed rollar skates and there knees couldn't be hitched up any higher... none of kids riding horses back then. (not that I saw anyway). Tack was simple, 5 point breast plate?? What the hell would that be?!!
Actually, kids were fit, agile and rarely did you see a more 'chubby' child. They wanted to live at the stables all day, and then cycled home in the dark. If you had ponies at home, playing ponies in the fields was also a game that lasted all day.
AND, I remember cleaning my grooming kit every week!! (doesn't happen now!).
 
Ah I love this thread remembering my red wintec saddle (very modern!) jute rugs with the carefully folded blankets, canvas new zealands, jods with a seam below the knee that cut off my circulation, the smell of waxed jackets.

Had a long line of feed bins containing every feed in the shop; my pony used to get a scoop of each in the winter, and half in the summer

'Thatching' with straw sweaty/wet horses

Hacking everywhere no matter how busy (high street on many occasions)

Aged 12 with unhorsey parents I was left completely to my own devices to care for the pony, used to go twice a day on my bike

Unhorsey parents who purchased said pony for me from local paper, just went and picked it up like buying a rabbit!

How lucky I am to have horses now! Still that pony mad kid really. :)
 
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