'member the *old* days?

[ILuvmyButtercups]

So true!

[QUOTE=supaflyskye;5717478]
My mom rode a lot in the '60s through the '70s.
She is constantly expressing surprise at how important saddle fit is these days. “Nobody even THOUGHT about the saddle fitting the horse back then! All our horses were fine! If your horse’s back hurt after a long day of showing then you used a fluffier pad the next day and everyone was fine.”
She recognises that horses perform better in properly fitting tack, but the huge attitude shift awes her.
And the cost of everything. :lol:
Her top of the line Swiss made saddle cost $500 in the early '70s, “and that was a lot!”[/QUOTE]

This always makes me shake my head to this day. Horses went well under just about any tack back then. No matter how bad the fit, we all managed to have quiet horses go perfectly in the hack classes, and they jumped their courses with nary a single swish of the tail or ear back. There were none of these calming supplements, either. The horse was either a long suffering darling, tolerated any sort of rider, or he was a nut case, nothing a lot of longeing didn’t cure. What happened???

[Frank_B]

Hauling a 2-horse BP with a '52 Chevy Deluxe. For you young whippersnappers, Chevy didn’t offer a V-8 engine until '55. At least it didn’t have that accursed 2-speed Powerglide transmission!

Later, the Chevy El Camino and the Ford Ranchero. They combined the disadvantages of a car with the disadvantages of a pickup.

Margaret Cabell Self’s The Horseman’s Encyclopedia.

Norman Thelwell’s A Leg At Each Corner confirmed that we weren’t the only ones that did stupid things on ponies.

Vaseline mixed with Sulfur for minor cuts and scratches.

[goneriding24]

flame suit on

Just like a lot of classes today, overbent horses and big bits, things are overdone now. Because of what winning means, there is a money issue and some trainers have 'nthed things to death. We rode because we loved it (still do) but I wonder if overding our horses is about true horse love or just one-upping others. Horses bred out the wazoo that are too touchy. Then you have others that want to follow and do shortcuts in training, buy a kit. No just “being with a horse”. Most people seem to be too busy and perhaps don’t have the true, pure love of horses like we did. Or sending them off to a trainer. Never seeing their horse except wknds or at a show.

That’s where it goes off the rails for me. I rode everything anyone would let me on. Today, do folks do that? If nothing else, owners are afraid of getting sued if something goes wrong.

Everyone I knew had multiple horses and let kids ride them. Anything to get them interested and learn horsemanship.

Let 'er rip…!

[Tamara_in_TN]

[QUOTE=ILuvmyButtercups;5717562]

I used motor oil on their feet too. [/QUOTE]

now I got a witness!!! ha!!!
no one ever believed me:lol:
that and coal oil on bug bites.

Tamara

[ILuvmyButtercups]

Oh, oh, I forgot! Remember the trailers that were available back then???

Cheap steel hazards, either one horse or two. No dressing rooms, maybe a small tack compartment under the mangers, most never had escape doors, and the ventilation holes were those little round things up front with louvers you could spin around to regulate the air flow. Everyone lusted for a HARTMAN, those dandies, with the plastic flap snapped across the back, above the ramp. Remember the way the ramp latched? With that bolt you slipped in the catch, and you spun the nut lever around and around to secure it.

The big barns had Imperator (sp?) vans, three, four or more stalls, that sat way up in the sky, you could hear the groooms load and unload the horses on those steep wooden ramps from across the show grounds.

And best of all, we could pull our little horsey trailers with our father’s Ford or Chevy station wagon! Or, if you were really fancy, dad’s Lincoln or mom’s big old Caddy, with the A/C!!! No one had pick up trucks, and even those back then were just a single cab with an open bed. Wow, have we come a long way baby since then on that score!

[MizzouMom]

Also read the Miller’s Catalog like it was a novel - all those great Sam Savitt illustrations.

Bareback pads with stirrups that were little wooden things

Hooflex

Creosoted lumber everywhere

Calf Manna

Dusty little fun shows where you didn’t have to be fashionable to win a ribbon

Eating sweet cherries off trees in vacant meadows in Kirkland Washington and smelling orange blossoms riding through orange groves in Valinda CA

Admiring from afar the older, better mounted, successful junior riders who were gods and goddesses - Steve Metcalf riding Clegg’s Alibi and winning every western class he entered in the Seattle area with his perfectly appointed sand-and-black colored tack and attire. Sigh. Think he’s married to Carol now.

[OldMorgans]

Latter part of 1960’s when I was in HS & had my first horse. Kept him at home all by himself and no one thought that was unusual. Rode w/a cheap bareback pad all over by myself. Only adults used a saddle, generally a cheap western one that fit the rider & who knew it should also fit the horse.
It was normal for a riding horse to have white hair or even bald patches on the back.
Worming, by tube by the vet. All horses were shod.
Alfalfa was the only hay one could get in So. Calif. from the feed stores. $2/bale for the 120 lb bales.
In many ways, it was NOT the GOOD ol’ days. For sure.

[Donkaloosa]

I had a Hartmann! Yep, they had that funky closure with the bolt. It worked.

Even the Top Value stamp redemption catalog had saddles and bridles in it. One of my jobs was pasting the stamps into the books, and of course, I was always begging to save the filled books for tack! My parents didn’t see it the same way, though, and we’d get tennis raquets, or new baseball gloves, or something for the house. Blah!

There was a sporting goods store in town that had saddles, too! And if you went to the drive-in movie, they had a little area in the front with swings and things for pre-movie entertainment for the kids — and they had a pony ride!!! That, of course, was the best!

(And yes, some leg wraps had string ties, but the horses always seemed to eat them off of the wraps.)

[LaurieB]

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h245/LaurienB/older/madras-c.jpg

enough said! :lol:

[MizzouMom]

Forgot to mention the sight, sound and smell of the hot-shoe farrier - none of this banging around on a cold shoe like today.

[Barnfairy]

Not quite old enough to remember the 60’s but still old.

How the heck did I ever get stalls clean with this heavy old 12-tine pitchfork?

Trichlorfon to get bots in the pre-ivermectin era.

If you had a blanket or sheet it rubbed and shifted and sure as heck wasn’t waterproof.

Because the tack was ill-fitting there was Bickmore Gall Salve.

Everything came in metal tins; Repel-X, Wipe, Reducine, Fiebing’s saddle soap…

[JoZ]

I was a kid in the 60’s, a kid with a completely non-horsy family so I don’t have too many horse memories from a riding perspective – and definitely no showing.

I did know every single “double lot” in my suburban neighborhood that had a horse or pony on it. I was the kid you all fear now – at least then no one ever would have thought about a lawsuit. Just the annoyance factor of having a chubby blond kid with more passion than sense hanging around your barn and petting your horses. If I encountered me now… well let’s just say I look back at the people who DID encounter me with gratitude and a bit of wonder.

In the 70’s I began to scout out places to trail ride – another thing of the past. Rent a horse for 2-3 hours? No problem! Meander all through the woods, unguided? No problem? And these were not horses that just plodded along – I remember some exciting and terrifying gallops where if one of us had control of his/her horse (a) it was a miracle and (b) it sure wasn’t me! But I was perfectly safe with my elastic-strap helmet…

[pj1]

:lol::lol: I am laughing like crazy. I remember most of these.
Only thing when I first had horses a full shoe job was TWO DOLLARS!!
We were disgusted when our poor farrier went up to two fifty…

[Alagirl]

@pj;5717863

:lol::lol: I am laughing like crazy. I remember most of these.
Only thing when I first had horses a full shoe job was TWO DOLLARS!!
We were disgusted when our poor farrier went up to two fifty…

Did the scoundrel go after thee with a buggy whip? :lol:

[tradewind]

Tube worming, Crosby, Millers Catalog. Hunter classes on outside courses. Reducine, Feibings, No saddle pads at shows, riding on the coldest days outside, indoors were very very rare…riding in the snow bareback, no parents hovering all the time…New Zealand rugs…learning how to bed the stall with straw using the criss cross method. Stern, no nonsense instructors that could have cared less about hurting any ones feelings. They were there to teach you and make horsewomen out of you, and it you did not get with the program out you went. Very often they were very rude and very loud. Hunter hack classes…TB’s were what you aspired to ride and to own (and for me they still are). The huge belief in "Dr. Green, and Dr. Time for most horse issues. The barn owner who came and inspected your grooming job, and if it was not good enough, making you redo it, and this was for just a regular ride, not a show day…Offset stirrups getting popular…Leather everything, including girths, no elastic or synthetic materials of any kind…Harry Hall breeches if you were lucky…The list is really endless.

[Ponytoes]

Purple Medicine!!! Used for every cut and took forever to get off your hands. I rode saddleseat in the 60’s and had a custom saddlesuit from Miller’s that was always too tight in the legs. Then switched to huntseat in the early 70’s and remember when the saddles with the kneerolls went out of style and everyone had to have a flat pancake saddle (PDN). I can remember in the 60’s our barn had a trailride in the late afternoon every Thurs in the summer to a park several miles away. You had to ride through neighborhoods to get there. We would eat dinner and then ride home in the dark. Helmetless :eek:

[Auburn]

Our “blacksmith” charged $8 for calk shoes all round. I never needed studs for eventing, because the were built into the shoes. :lol:

We had a Miley two horse trailer that we pulled with a Chevy Belair. The Miley had some storage under the mangers. Only wealthy riders had tack trunks. The trunk of the Belair was my tack trunk.

I remember the Imperator Vans. Dennis Murphy, Jr. drove and showed for Jack Warner. They would call Frank Imperator to order new ones. At one time, they had two of them. :eek:

I remember my first jumping saddle was Argentine and my second was a Steubben Siegfried. The H/J folks had Prix de Nations. You could always tell when an eventer was doing a H/J round by their tack.

All of the horse trials in Alabama were done in one day. The order was dressage, then cross country and stadium (not called show jumping back then) was last.

For cross country, we had Caliente helmets, which were kind of like hard shell army helmets, with no padding or vents. As soon as the harness, instead of elastic, came out on helmets, we switched over to those (required by Pony Club).

As someone else mentioned, the breeches made out of gabardene (sp?) and flared. The most popular color was rust. I could not afford leather boots, so spent much of my early riding in tall rubber boots.

Ah, the good old days…

[Frosty_M]

Dennis Murphy! Yay! What a nice boy, kind man. Seemed like his boss owned most of Tuscaloosa. He and I trained with Monte Foreman. Monte wrote a book that featured Dennis. I rode as a young teen in one of Monte’s training films. But that was later.

I started riding in the fifties when my parents would rent me a horse at a livery stable at the Fair Grounds. When I was six I started equitation lessons at “Miss Burbanks.” The parkway around our city had an esplanade dividing the driving lanes with a horse trail down the center, but I wasn’t old enough for that.

Later, out in the country- Pony Club and fox hunting. Pre George Morris, riding so you could make do with your riding habit and even showing was cheap. You could buy a back yard horse, teach her to jump, and beat the great Virginia hunters in our A show. But it was mostly Pony Club shows and hunter trials. Our hunt club split and we teenagers kept our branch going.

Riding all day long, playing hide and seek, moonlit rides that were wild gallops.

Excitement when I bought my Pariani jumping saddle for fifty dollars at horse show yard sale. I put another twenty years on that saddle.

No saddle pads for shows which was lucky because I couldn’t afford a real sheepskin. Just took a fluffy fake sheepskin bath mat and cut it to fit.
My saddle fit all my horses and I never had a saddle gall or sore back with them.

Putting rubber bands around warts so they would fall off.

Vets didn’t charge by the mile no matter how far they had to drive.

Worming once or twice a year and that was it. Learning to trim my horse’s feet to save farrier fees.

Books said to talk to your horse but I couldn’t think what to say. So I sang.
Lucky I didn’t get bucked off. Vladimir Littauer’s Combined Training book is still my training bible. The Black Stallion Books, Pamela and the Grey Mare. Ticktock and Jim. Those were great days, when even cities were small and it was easy to find open country to keep horses and ride through, now sadly over developed. People still show and have a great time, even though they drive farther and it is vastly more expensive.

Horses rule!

[Arizona_DQ]

Not just Millers, but Kaufman’s as well. Although I think I heard Old Man Kaufman liked to check the “fit” of clothes on pretty young girls… For some reason, I cannot recall now, I preferred Kaufmans to Millers.

Going to the Garden every November to watch the National Horse Show! (when DID it move??) Not just watching the H/J but the gaited horses - “Rack On”!! and being shocked to see those horses in their stalls with their tails set…

The summer circuit that included the show in Old Field, Long Island. It was right around Labor Day… Watching all the horse trailers as they drove by on the way to the show grounds (past my school bus stop).

The first time I saw Snowman, ridden by Harry DeLeyer! (I still have the book).

Reading the books by Margaret Cabell Self and practicing some of those exercises on rental horses at Hempstead Lake State Park…:eek:

great memories…

[War_Admiral]

I still use Mollimentum! :lol:

The three-fold leather girths, yes, but also Balding girths for horses that got girth gall (probably b/c their saddles didn’t fit).

Remember the grey felt shaped saddle pads for schooling at home?

Flat tack.

Your Big Eq. horse that did a little hilltopping with the local hunt, goofed around at Pony Club level eventing, and did competitive trail.

No Florida circuit. You gave your horses the winter off - except, of course, for the odd ski-joring experience.

Newmarket boots for summer showing. OH how I wanted a pair - never did get 'em.

Showing hunters in double bridles.

Traveling instructors who came to your farm.