How long have you owned horses - how times have changed

What memories! Had my first pony 40 plus years ago. He never had rugs (section a) and lived out through the winter of 63. I remember Mum driving me the 5 miles to his field in our mini clubman through drifts of snow, to feed him a bran mash twice a day to keep him warm! Nowadays would be told not to drive. A few years later I used to hack my 14.2 about 8 miles to a show, compete all day and then hack back. Can remember a friend and I used to love playing cowboys and indians, riding bareback in halters, no hats, and galloping across the fields ducking down behind ponies necks (to avoid arrows of course). Had the wonderful riding macs, baggyjodhs etc. We had so much more freedom, and dare I say more fun in those days.
 
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those string girths that gave horses horrible painful galls are thankfully gone.

I actually have one of these!!! Not that i have ever used it as got given it years back but i still have it! And i have a jute rug...good old robinsons! Although they are like a brown paper sack lol. I am only 18 so dont recall much from the 'good old years'
 
This has to be one of the most humourous and norstalgic posts I have read for ages - fantastic!
To add....am mid thirties and can remember when I got my first pony about 25ish years ago, my mum was recommended to put him on a "mix" which had not long been out. It was actually more was cost effective as only had one pony on a handful each feed and saveds buying all the different "straights........well, we were fowned upon as being "frivolous" and just "going with the trend".....it's not "proper" "how lazy" and all that........oh how I smile now!

Especially like the bit about child slaves, my mum used to think it was great, from the age of 7 or 8 I was dropped off at the yard at 8am and collected at 5pm each Sat and Sun and she knew where I was and that I was working my wotsits off.....all for a free ride. Said first pony cost £200 including tack and we "rescued" him from a riding school, the family whipped round to buy him. As a single parent it was a struggle for my mum and so we had to sell him after only a short period of time as the rent money was being used for his livery!!! Back to child labour again!! Waited a long time until I was an adult and could afford to buy my own and keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed but it has made me appreciate everything I have now and how hard you have to work to keep it.
 
I was a child slave too, the things I used to do aged 12 would make the compensation culture parents shudder (I loved it though)
I remember riding with a bit of elastic holding on my hat and wearing cherry red jodhpur boots
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, riding down the road sitting side saddle or with our girths undone, ponies, being fed oats, bran and chaff, wearing NZ and jute rugs and riding in wax jackets, jumping jumps made out of crates and deck chairs. All this nostalgia is making me feel old
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About 25 years... I got my first pony at about age 2 as Dad ran a dealing yard. I remember joddy boots and jodphurs which were either always too long or too short, with the rubber clip thingies that were supposed to stop them riding up your leg, but actually just turned rusty and pinged off. Reins were always plain leather or webbing, horrible string girths, double bridles had the bits sewn on with a bit of shammy leather wrapped round the weymouth to make them mouth. Riding without a martingale was sacrilege, using a saddle cloth or god forbid brushing boots
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were banned as being completely frivolous by my dad. I remember my sister kept falling off so was tied on with a surcingle!!! Hacking was a bit rubbish other than summer when we had the stubble fields to gallop round. Schooling consisted of 10 mins attempting to get pony to canter on the left leg, at which point would give up and do more galloping or jumped anything other than ditches- took me til age 13 to finally have a pony which would go with 20 feet of them!! Working hunter pony competitions, gymkhanas and pony club camp with ponies tied up in cow stalls. Cattle truck for a lorry.
We used straw thatch under sweat rugs, stable rugs were jute with stripy blankets underneath folded back with a surcingle. Hunters lived in all season under several rugs with buckets of feed, then at the end of the season were chucked out naked and clipped with no feed and just got on with it. Horses all lived in 24/7. Feed was bran, rolled oats, sugarbeet and linseed.
 
Something else I was thinking about the other days is how much cross country courses have changed. In 'the old days' they were all natural fences that you would expect to find out hunting - logs, hedges, bales, post and rail, water, ditches - but now you find a huge assortment of 'unnatural objects' in the shape of houses, castles, planes etc!
 
Hehe I am twenty four, but I still remember half of this - Jute rugs (still have one) Creen canvas rugs (got one of those too) No brushing boots (gre up at an old school yard where it was bandages or nothing) Snaffle, pelham of kimblewick

Also remember that no horses had spavins, arthritis, kissing spines, and you just used to trot on the roads, and canter through anything (including thick mud) as soon as you got to an open field it was YEEEEE HAAAA

Remeber stepping the muckheap and then sitting in it to eat lunch, our old wooden trailer, Orange tubs of tack soap, and jumps made out of whatever the horse would jump over....

Also remember using a shovel and fork to muck out shavings beds, and a rake to even it out again!

Pimple goves and hats with chin cups...and noone had saddle cloths, everyone had numnahs. Or nothing. Leather girths were a luxury, Cottage craft was the thing to have. Usually brown or orange.

I remember the invention of woof boots, rambo rugs etc...
 
Another thing I've remembered coloured nylon plaited reins. We used to have them to match the string girths. My first pony had blue and 2nd one yellow - looking back they were very tacky!
 
OMG - Great thread!

Been around horses all my life, so over 25 years

I vividly remember the jute rugs, the heavy NZ rugs (God i longed for a 'Chaskit'? with the weird and wonderful leg straps)
Whitney blankets underneith in cold weather, no nonsenses instructors, jumping anything and everything we could find, incl gates, styles (real ones!) hedges and ditches

ponies were either wooly and out 24/7 or clipped, fed straights and 'in' and had to be ridden LOTS

our old chaff cutter, sacks of oats and barley

ohhhh pony nuts .. it took me ages to convince mum to buy a bag and try them!

String vest coolers - with straw underthem

bandages on legs or the leather brushing boots with felt lining and the buckles you can never get tight enough.
leather knee boots, compulsory on all 'clipped', 'in' ponies - for some reason my mum felt the 'woolies' did need them!

stables with built in mangers and feed troughs

3 bits - eggbutt, loose ring, pelham
and double bridles

having a hat that was so big it either flew off when i cantered (hitting the ponies bum) or flopped down so i couldnt see.

Johd boots - garrr
Wax jackets - double garrr, smelling like wet dog everytime it rained
 
At the grand age of 16 I got a NF mare on loan/share. She lived at her owners farm, so I used to catch 2 buses with my dog and went with sandwiches to spend the day riding her.

Her saddle killed my backside, so I mostly rode her bareback, and used to have races across the fields with the dog.

Her owner was my best friend at school, and although she had a fantastic new pony, we used to ride this little Newfie mare miles double. Her at the front holding the reins, and me at the back holding onto a couple of ropes which were attached to a neckstrap. Between the 2 of us, we must've weighed 14 stone. The pony was only 13.2hh, and yet we charged about through the woods and fields for hours on her at 100 miles an hour.

Once, in the snow, she slipped and sat down. I slid off her bum, and then she sat down on me! Thought I'd broken both my legs. But after 1/2hr we carried on and I was OK.

This would be frowned upon now by both Health & Safety and just about every animal lover in the country!

She was unshod - not barefoot. Lived on grass and fresh air as I don't remember ever feeding her, and didn't need a rug as she was a woolly mammoth!
 
That actually makes me quite sad. Those were definately the good 'ole carefree days.

I'm only mid 30's but there seems to be so much water under the bridge since!
 
Only owned my own for 13 years but learned to ride *ahem* 50 years ago. Times have certainly changed a huge amount. In those days everything was fed straights, hay was hay (no such thing as haylage) and was fed dry (none of that soaking nonsense). Chaff was something you laboured hours at the hand-operated chaff-cutter to produce (boy, was that hard work). Nothing got clipped unless it was hunted 5 times a week or a proper competition horse, nothing got rugged or booted unless as aforementioned; nothing got wormed or vaccinated and somehow managed to survive (most of time anyway although I did see a pony die of tetanus once - not nice). There were no such thing as horse dentists or "back" people. The only bedding was straw. There were no fancy names to try and disguise ailments - never mind this COPD stuff - the horse was broken-winded and no-one in their right mind would buy it. Saddles were saddles and didn't come in an infinite variety of shapes, widths and sizes. They tended to be pony saddles, cob saddles and horse saddles. All in all, horses were treated like horses much like they had been for centuries but then horses were still used for working. The milkman had a lovely strawberry roan Welsh cob (my mum used to knit ear covers for him); the greengrocer had a black pony and the Corporation dust carts were pulled by Clydesdales. You took horses to the blacksmith's forge, they didn't come to you. . . . . happy days . . .
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I must admit I do feel that horses are interfered with/molly-coddled far too much these days.
 
my pal & I are always going on about this - our ponies didn't have saddle cloths or numnahs, were out 24/7 unrugged (and the winters were a lot worse in the seventies), didn't get shod until the last set of shoes had fallen off (cruel - i know). I was lucky enough to live next to a beach so we regularly took the ponies swimming. Had the pony in the house a couple of times when the parents were out too! We used to ride in all weathers and were often blue with the cold when we got home -this partly due to our bri-nylon jodphurs and pathetic anoracks (none of your goretex in those days). Well I lived to tell the tale and my pony survived into his late 30's so can't have been all bad. I feel sorry for kids nowadays who only ever seem to ride in the school.
 
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I feel sorry for kids nowadays who only ever seem to ride in the school.

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Don't get me started on that one. In my young days there were no such things as "schools" or menages. You learnt to stay on in the field and then went out hacking to refine your style (and learn to stick on when they spooked and shyed!)
 
And I remember eating my sarnies whilst standing in the muck heap as it kept my feet warm!

Chap I know who is now in his mid 60's said his job as a 5yr old (his dad was the village farrier) was to take the working horses home after they'd been shod. His Dad would throw him up on one, and then the ropes of the rest of them, and the whole herd would plod back to their farm where he had to shut them in the barn and make sure all the gates were shut on the way back!!
 
Think I'm the real oldie here! Started riding in 1963, first horse in December 1970 (bought him with a friend) and he cost £95!! Set of shoes was 25/- (that's twenty five shillings to all you babies out there, or £1.25!), green canvas New Zealands (which most of you seem to remember) and jute rugs in the stables. Only fed straights - oats, chaff, bran etc. Bought my first saddle, brand new and English, from Alan Hill in Waltham Abbey market for the sum of £28! I often see him at the Cambridge Sales and remind him of those good old days! Oh, yes - full livery was £5 per week! Sold my share of original horse to said friend and bought my very own horse April 1972 - cost me £165! I had her for 22 years until she died at the age of 24. I bought her one of the first quilted stabled rugs - a blue Lavenham with red binding, and to the shock/horror of the other liveries, I paid a massive £199 for a Stubben Parzival saddle from Giddens in New Bond Street! Amazingly, the young saddler who opened a shop close to where I lived (West Essex Saddlery, which subsequently became West Essex and Kernow Saddlery) has "followed me" to where I live now and once again is my local saddler - and he remembers me from all those years ago!

Most of all, we accepted out horses for what they were in those days - warts and all! We took their naughtiness in our stride without analysing them and sending them off for schooling or selling them. They chucked us off, we got back on. My mother always thought I wore my riding hat but in the early 70s you were laughed at for wearing a hat. I fell off so many times, but I never hurt myself - perhaps it was because I was young and just bounced! Our rides were crazy! One friend and I often laugh about the time certain members of the yard waited behind bushes for several others from the yard to ride back, drunk from their "pub ride", and then jumped out from behind the bushes firing starting pistols! Just cannot imagine anyone seeing the fuunny side of that now, but we did! Only last week, my friend said to me "My, God, didn't be some fantastic rides!". Thing is, now I'm "old" , my daughter thinks I'm a wimp rider and she's the only one capable of being a mad rider - her rides are perfectly controlled by my standards!!!!
 
I do remember all the things previously mentioned, half ton wet canvas rugs, jute stable rugs with underblankets and the rest. I also remember having a dressage saddle before they had become quite common and poring over the writings of Dr Reiner Klimke trying to decipher just why most European horses seemed to be ridden quite differently to those from the English hunting and racing tradition and putting my pony through it trying the exercises - I also used a chiropractor (they did humans and animals) almost from the beginning.

So for me, apart from developments in rug and clothing technology, things haven't changed very much - and I still grip with my knees (ooops!)
 
Working in a riding school now and having a group of Saturday helpers, this thread has really made me think about the difference between what *I* did as a child "slave labourer" and what we expect of today's helpers.

I remember at the age of 9 mucking out 5 or 6 stables in the morning, sweeping acres of yard, poo picking for hours, moving hay bales around, forking up a muck heap so high I needed a ladder to get to the top, leading lessons for hours on end, actually being expected to teach beginner riders... I remember getting absolutely SCREAMED at by an instructor who caught us chatting in the hay barn at about 11:30 instead of sweeping the yard - you couldn't talk to the helpers like that today! Today the kids think they have worked hard if they have to do one stable and tack up a few riding school horses. And they moan if they have to lead more than once! And we don't take them under 13!

Attitudes to riding have changed as well. I remember scrapping with my mates to ride the 'naughty' horses in lessons. These days anything that likes to go faster than a trot never leaves the field it seems. We used to 'ride' up the field bareback in a headcollar... we'd be lifted onto the pony's back, given about 3 secs to grab a handful of mane then the handler would let go and the pony would be off, flat out up the hill towards the field. I can't imagine allowing the kids to do that now... I don't think any of them would want to anyway, they are all so cossetted they would be terrified.

In lessons we used to jump with no stirrups, no reins, over cavaletti on unpredictable horses that were miles to big for us.. and we loved it. If you could get 'Topper' over 2'6 you were a hero for the day. We used to beg for bareback lessons or chase-me-charlie lessons. I used to ride a 17.2 ID in lessons sometimes. I had to climb on the top of the fence just to get my foot in the stirrup but I thought i was the coolest.

it is really noticable that the young riders of today just don't seem to have the 'guts' that riders in the past had. there is an expectation that 'everything will go well' and if it doesn't, it must be someone's fault... I dunno where i am going with this but teaching today is definitely a very different experience to how I was taught only about 20years ago.
 
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Think I'm the real oldie here! Started riding in 1963, first horse in December 1970. Most of all, we accepted out horses for what they were in those days - warts and all! They chucked us off, we got back on. I fell off so many times, but I never hurt myself - perhaps it was because I was young and just bounced!

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You're not the only oldie! I too started in 1963, got my first pony when I was 12 - my non-horsey parents bought a pony for £100 from local gypsies and basically were robbed - it was horrible! Kicked, bucked, bolted, had tiny piggy eyes - but it didn't put me off, we sold it quick, and I was a riding-school slave for 7 years.

The riding school horses had canvas NZ rugs, jute stable rugs with wool blankets underneath that had to be folded back just so and secured by a surcingle. Only fed straights and nuts with the odd bran mash for the hunters after a cold day out. Cold shod every 8 weeks. Never wormed or saw a dentist or back man. Only the stabled horses ever got hay.

When they got colic they were drenched - heads held up over a beam by a rope and some horrible concoction poured down their throats via a bottle and a rubber tube .... No numnahs or saddle pads, all bits were snaffle or pelham. Drop or cavesson nosebands. The few boots there were had stiff leather straps with rusted buckles.

I had a yellow rubber riding mac that could stand up on its own, and non-stretchy cord jodhs with suede knee patches. I always wore a hat but never with the chin strap done up.

We packed the tacked-up ponies into cattle floats to go to PC rallies and gymkhanas and always had tremendous fun. There was very little attempt to understand horse behaviour - if it misbehaved it got leathered. A rearer was whacked over the head with a bottle of water. I remember hardly any lameness, or sunburnt noses, or mudfever. The horse first-aid kit consisted of a bottle of Bone Radiol, purple spray and udder cream.

Keeping horses was an awful lot simpler then!
 
Think I recognise some of the nags in your sig GTF???!!!
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Times gone by eh??

Anyway back to the topic I have owned horses now for 21 years & crikey if I'd known then what I know now...........

I've actually only had a total of 7 in that time;

Dec 1985 - May 1986 -
Tarn - 16hh bay mare
June 1986 - Sept 1989 -
Je T'adore - 16.2hh bay French TB gelding (1st horse in GTF's sig)
Dec 1989 - 1994 -
Burl - 16.2hh bay Westfalian gelding
1994 - 2 months 'nuff said!! -
McIntosh Red - 15.2hh chestnut TBxID gelding
1994 - 2005 -
Popper Joe - 16hh bay TB gelding (ex jnr European eventer & my horse of a lifetime)
Current day -
Jads Lad - 17hh Grey TB gelding ex racer (in my sig)
Cheap Knight - 15.2hh chestnut TB gelding ex racer

Can easily identify with the jute rugs etc etc etc - how did I ever survive without all the cr@p that I've got now??!!
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I remember going on a Riding Holiday when I was 16 and being given this horrible horrid pony that kicked.

Part of the weeks 'fun' was that you had a turn out inspection every morning. This mare was iron grey, very pretty, but a grubby little moo, and you couldn't brush anything beyond her saddle area otherwise she'd kick you!

Every morning at the inspection the instructress would muse over her grubby hind legs and dusty bottom and I'd bleat that she'd tried to kick me 6 times already! Instructress would rubbish it, but all the grooms said they'd never go near the pony as she was evil.

Poor sod was probably fed up with being bathed and plaited every day of the week!

How many riding schools would let their pupils loose near a pony like this?
 
I had a loan pony when I was about 8 or 9. He lived out 24/7 and he was never rugged
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I used to get off the school bus on a friday afternoon and walk down to the field, put his headcollar on and hop on him bareback. I then used to ride him home, sometimes on the pavement if there was quite a bit of traffic and he used to stay with us for the weekend
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I remember our porch always used to smell of saddle soap and tack, it was a lovely smell.

We used to ride through the woods and if we were really brave we would canter past the borstel
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and the girls used to shout at us as we went past, it was really scary when your that small!!

Fantastic childhood memories
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My brother learnt the hard way that you don't stand directly behind a pony and brush his tail, he got double barrelled and ended up in the ditch LOL
 
Oh my God! And I thought I was "old""!!! When I started riding, we rode with cavalry saddles with huge pommels which we had to hold for about a YEAR before we were allowed to hold the reins, but even then it was only at the walk and we had to wait ages before we could hold them at a trot! Had to past a really strict test before we could actually hold our reins when jumping which included small bits of paper under your knees, ping pong balls under your elbows, pennies (the big, old pre-decimal ones!) under your fingers on the horse's neck (if you dropped one, you failed the test!) and cotton between your fingers (if the cotton broke, it would mean you'd pull on the horse's mouith, so FAIL!)! Then we had to do the whole test without stirrups! We eventually graduated to riding with double reins and using spurs! My jodhs were bedford cord with the huge baggy tops, and we really did wear yellow polo neck jumpers and string back gloves - just like in Monica Edwards' pony books! I went to an "expensive" establishment (Snaresbrook Riding School on the London/Essex border) and you had to book your lessons for a school term, at the equivalent of 11/6d an hour! (about 57p!). Local cheap, downmarket stables only charged 5/-d (25p) per hour and was very much frowned upon! When I had my own horse in the seventies, I rebeled and wouldn't wear a hat but had to wear one to when I moved to a "smart" yard in1974. I remember hacking out in the seventies alongside a regular Epping Forest rider, David Trott, on his old grey with ringbone.....little did I know what a top class dressage judge he would become! (I'm not into dressage at all!)

But it was SO different in those days! As I said in any earlier post, we seemed to put up with all out horse's faults without question; we didn't analyse why it had thrown us off or whatever....we just appreciated that we had a horse and stuck with it!

We did such mad things (again see my earlier post!) and like someone else said, there were no "back people", no dentists -we just rode! I can remember in those halcyon days being told about a back person (oh, so new!) who maybe able to help my horse's problem He came from Oxford to visit my horse on the Essex/London border and charged me £20 - which must have been the best part of a week's wages in those days!

Amazingly, some of my best and closest friends now are people I first met back then!
 
Only 11 years as I'm only 21. In that time I've owned 8 horses, and have 6 now.

When I was 10 the old NZ rugs and string sweat rugs were all the rage, aswell as having bright coloured nummnahs etc.

I've changed the way I keep my horses, I've learnt a lot in the time aswell.
 
Do you remember when the first synthetic saddles came out? They were made by Wintec and either red/black or bright blue/black?

Remember seeing them in a shop and thinking they were revolting and would never take off. Don't know anyone who bought one.

They seemed to die a death and then a few years later they bought out the more suitable black and brown versions. The uptake was slow, I think because people still remembered the blue and red monstrosities!
 
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