whay did you do with your horses when you were young but wouldnt do now?

3BayGeldings said:
My horse hated hacking alone, but I'd nag and nag at him until we got to the other side of the nature reserve, then let him spin round and gallop all the way home - I loved it :D Wouldn't dream of doing it now :o :eek:
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I erm, taught my daughter age 5 to canter by getting her to force my old pony to a point I knew he'd spin and take off back up the field to where id be waiting
 
ex racer rider said:
Its a cob...... It can jump?!?! :D
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Shocking, innit :eek: :D

Don't worry, he also does cobby things - like impersonate a drum horse:

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flies kites :cool:

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not quite side saddle jumping:

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I also have pics of me cantering along playing a violin, recorder, reading books and all sorts of daft rubbish. I once hacked him out tackless in the dark nd jumped the xc fences on the track. Health and Safety was not my friend :o
 
gracey said:
ha ha .. i done that .. i used to love racing the cars!! lol!! ... ooo and then all the other horses would stampede behind us .. can you imagine if a kid today posted they done any of this stuff .. :eek: they would be soooo shouted and yelled at .. yet we look back and laugh. :o
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gulp:D my first 'pony' is a 4yr old :D:Dam i am 13!!!!

will not go in to what i do with my first 'pony' today ........but i can tell u alot of galloping .....and suddenly my hat disapears ;);)
 
Polos Mum said:
Definitely it would be canter along grass verges of A roads - best ones with the drainage ditches dug as 'jumps' - guessing the speed of cars to then guess how fast we were going!
Not my age that puts me off now but the traffic, it was 20 years ago!
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Me too,just loved the drainage ditches.
That was when I had my own pony. Before that my sister and I (big confession here,but it was her idea cos she is the oldest) happened across some ponies in a secluded field........so we decided to ride them,just assuming they were backed,safe,sound etc.
Once we were allowed our own ponies,I used to jump anything,I used to trespass to have a good gallop and my sis(not me honest!) would nick cream from the farm and mars bars from the village shop and enjoy mars bar dunked in jersey cream on our way home from hacks.....YUK!
 
I will admit to still trespassing now for a good gallop, although only if fields are dry and not crop fields.
Did get into a field with a bull once. Had to jump a leaning 5 bar gate. That was only this summer!
 
I still do the McDonald's thing now, it was a rite of passage for when daughter was competent enough to ride through a big junction to get there. And I let her canter in just a headcollar & leadrope, but I do insist on a hat.
 
from about 14 i use to work for someone who travelled the country doing shows. western shows.

i use to ride the rodeo ponies and win comps,:cool:
then i learnt to trick ride, i could fall off the back of a horse in canter, pick things like baseball caps of the floor as i cantered past, jump on and off in canter all the usuall trick riding stuff.
i cant even mount from the floor anymore:o :D

i never ever wore a hat:eek:
and baling twine came in handy as you can see:)

horse was called honey and my dad thinks he was about 35, he had him since a small boy

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LOTS!!! Seriously, wouldn't dream of doing half the things i did then now!! including riding an jumping minus a hat, or having a bareback race to the field in just a headcollar!!
 
Well I can think of all sorts some of which I certainly would not do now. The normally things riding bareback in just a head collar, jumping everything and anything. Sliding down the ponys tail! Going off all day for a hack and Mum and Dad no idea where I was. Making jumps out of anything popping into the woods and playing. Hacking 4miles to my Saturday lesson giving the pony 30minute break before having the hours lesson and then 30min break before hacking pore thing home. Letting the pony bring himself in and trying hard to explain to Dad where the hoof prints on the lawn came from!!
 
I'm still only young but when I first moved on my current yard I had a very forgiving pony and a lot of friends similar age or younger. We used to (and sometimes still do):

-canter/gallop at any possible moment
-set up ridiculous jumps and courses out of anything
-go hacking and park up at the local shop whilst half of us go in for supplies
-go on the most crazy, stupid hacks across rivers, ditches anything, not really sticking to bridleways. My yard is built on a country park and theres are handy little gap between a hedge and a gate that we slide the horses through for a good river hack and gallop hehe
-Hack up the lane bareback, in a headcollar with no hat on to put them in the summer field
-sit underneath her whilst grooming her/crawl through her legs (to be honest I still do this)
-hacking out for roughly 5 hours including x country jumps and a gallop track in the middle of god knows where without anyone knowing where we all were
 
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Ahem..... went on serious pub rides, including the horse getting a sup or two, and laughed like hyenas on acid all the way back (no where near roads of course) - this was Bookham Common. My horse then was a bay TB called Murphy (5 years old) and he took it all in his stride. :o

Now that I would NOT do today...
 
when i had my own horse for a yr i never wore a hat (well i wore a flat cap mostly) he was an unbacked 3 yr old when i got him. always cantered along every grass verge jumping any obstacles, rode on the roads in the pitch dark and pouring rain.

before that used to jump on any horses or ponies i came across in a field and ride no hat bareback occasionally a headcollar on- at one place a few of us used to go we named the ponies, and valentine had a bucking button, if you touched him bum he bucked-great fun

we also used to play injured indians at one yard-the summer fields were 1 mile from the yard, we would lay across the horses and take the leadrope off the headcollar to flap about and make the ponies gallop as fast as possible last one to fall off one-a few of us did get hurt playing that one but it did not stop us.

loads of stuff really in fact my youngster is with a young friend of mine to be backed just so she does some fun stuff and learns to enjoy being ridden, i would be too scared and stuffy now but i hope to get something rock solid back in a years time
 
I used to take a bridle that was just headpiece, bit and reins to school, go catch pony at lunchtime, trot up to stables bareback in school uniform hatless, drop her at riding school and leave her there until I finished school, grab lunch and walk back to school. No one ever batted an eyelid!

Gallop around bareback, sometimes in a headcollar and not always wearing a hat. Gallop up and down 'sidesaddle'. Cross the river. Go out for full days with a picnic in a rucksack of some sort. Take the pony and put her in the garden while I had lunch.

When I was 7 we borrowed a riding school pony to take to a pony club rally, my mum cycled with me and left me there ( she was coming back at the end of the day ) as we walked to get lunch the pony decided it had had enough and tanked out of the gate and onto the road and didn't stop until we were back at riding school!

How things have changed! I have some old pics on my facebook. The little chestnut was the one that tanked me out of pony club. I think I was 8 or 9 here.

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Actually, I lie. We hacked bareback through the centre of Milton Keynes to get a 5yr old horse and a 2yr old shettie stallion to their new fields.
Neither of them put a foot wrong! We even stopped for a chat in Horsatack :P

I didn't get on though! I mainly led the shettie and took pictures :P
I was very disapproving, but my friend needed me :P

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When I had a stud farm my mate and I (both young - in those days - dressage trainers)used to jump on some of my unbroken 3 year old colts in the field, nothing on their heads, no saddles, and canter around laughing like drains. Horses didn't bat an eye, and a lovely experience.
 
What happened is that everyone became risk averse, Health and Safety became a profession and no-one can accept that falling off, possibly getting hurt, is part of living and learning how not to do it again.
 
gwniver said:
gulp:D my first 'pony' is a 4yr old :D:Dam i am 13!!!!

will not go in to what i do with my first 'pony' today ........but i can tell u alot of galloping .....and suddenly my hat disapears ;);)
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:eek::eek::eek: do you KNOW how daft and stooopid you are being?? :mad::mad::mad: i really can not encourage you!!! i am old enough to be your mum!!!


;) i am glad you are enjoying your pony .. ;) lol xx
 
Kerrieberry2 I think it was the amount of work, and varied things to do. We hacked literally everywhere we could ( I was nearly 11 when I got my first pony ) rallies, there was loads of gymkhana's, hunting, hunter trials, prince philip cup games practice, we did everything and went everywhere. I fell off all the time and thought nothing of it. If ponies were naughty they got more work! It's all different now, roads are too busy there's a lot more health and safety. More arena's rather than hacking.

My first pony was very cheap as she was a little crazy, and my bigger ones were youngsters bought just backed.
 
I got my first pony (katie)when I was 7 and she was 14h2 just backed and very opinionated. Schooling was mega boring and Katie's education was hacking with my friends galloping on grass verges. Turning on a sixpence shouting first one home wins !!!! Jumping everything and playing mountain goats in a disused quarry. My mum then decided I should go to pony club!!! My pony was nothing like the other girls "posh ponies" and Katie never went in an out line but we made every sj and xc team.18 yrs on I still can't do a u turn home with out her ******ing off back to the yard !!!
 
kerrieberry2 said:
i wonder what ever happened? all these amazing ponies that everyone use to have??? and now people really struggle to find a nice little pony for their kids!
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When ponies stopped being ponies and became miniature sporthorses instead (that's my theory anyway).

I'm still young but some things I use to do on ponio that would make me faint now are playing "horsey-touchers" (sounds pervy now, but at the time it meant a game where a bunch of us would find a field/arena and gallop after each other bareback. One person would be "on" and he/she would have to chase down another rider and touch him/her to stop being "on" :p - ponio always did well as his dressage training meant he could take turns a lot faster than most ponies and he was rather impressive at the time because he could transition from a halt to a flat out gallop :o;) ) and I use to actually go to shows and jump the yellow-one :o... Which sounds normal enough but he's bonkers when jumping and I can't believe I had the balls to actually consciously decide to take him round a course at a strange venue :o
 
QoC, horseback tag (and cowboys and indians and tracking games and all sorts!) are all old pony games. Never had enough child friends who were up for playing properly, myself, though we quite often played mock-tag in twos and threes. The curse of being on mainly adult livery yards!
 
kerrieberry2 said:
i wonder what ever happened? all these amazing ponies that everyone use to have??? and now people really struggle to find a nice little pony for their kids!
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they were not all nice little ponies (some were right little s**ts) but most of them lived out full time did not get hard feed and worked hard. they lived as i believe horses should
 
I was thinking about this today actually, how spooky! Was out a hack on my mare, she hasn't been ridden in a week or so so was pretending she has never been ridden before in her life, spooking, scuttling across the road to avoid a stone, planting her feet and having heart failure at hedges etc etc

It made me remember how I used to ride my old pony anywhere, through or over anything and I have no recollection of him EVER spooking, bolting, refusing to go forward or not doing something I asked. What a wee star he was. Nothing would be in our way. We used to go up to the river in the summer, bareback, and send our ponies over the bank and into the water for a swim, then hang on for dear life while they clambered back out! A quick gallop round the field to dry them off and off we went home! We had a pact that we were going to join the circus (we had travellers that would do a circus in the summer - we were going to join them haha) so we taught ourselves all kinds of tricks on our ponies, standing on them, backwards rolling off their bums, rolling underneath and vaulting back on them...

Our favourite game was relaying. We would spend hours dragging logs and big branches from the forest and make a jump course, split in to teams and race round the course, jump off and the next person would jump on and do it again and see what team won!

Anyone remember chase me charlie? That was so much fun!

My friend lived on a farm and we would go out and 'herd' the sheep before her dad saw!

I miss being a fear free kid!
 
I used to hack my pony out and put my reins round my shoulders :-0 omg would not in a million years do that now! Dont even know why I did it!!!!
 
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