I was a late 70s and 80s barn rat and so many of the memories of standard horse care from even the 50s-60s era still held true.
While I always really appreciate these “memory lane” threads, they also make me appreciate some of the tremendous advances made in equipment and veterinary care since the early to mid-90s.
There have been some huge leaps forward in a relatively short time, which is cool to think about.
[QUOTE=Flashy Gray VA;5727915]
I was a late 70s and 80s barn rat and so many of the memories of standard horse care from even the 50s-60s era still held true.
While I always really appreciate these “memory lane” threads, they also make me appreciate some of the tremendous advances made in equipment and veterinary care since the early to mid-90s.
There have been some huge leaps forward in a relatively short time, which is cool to think about.[/QUOTE]
I was in the 70-80’s too but raised by horsemen born in 1930 so I got all sorts of old old school teaching. The new advances sometimes make me feel like such a dunce. Hello, until 06, I didn’t know about beet pulp or sheath cleaning!! (the sheath cleaning thing though most likely was because anything to do with boy bits or foaling was viewed as something a young lady didn’t need to know about…ugh) Could you imagine trying to explain to an old horseman who firmly believed that a perlino or cremello was an albino that it was not, and albinos don’t exist? I have night mares on that scenario, then realize at least I would be talking with him again.
I miss the simpler way of doing things. I miss the advice of the old timers. I miss the days when horsecrazy kids were “adopted” by those more experienced and taught the nitty gritty stuff. Some of the questionable treatments I don’t miss, lol.Kerosene on a rub rag is NOT showsheen and flyspray combined , lol!!!
[QUOTE=Flashy Gray VA;5727915]
I was a late 70s and 80s barn rat and so many of the memories of standard horse care from even the 50s-60s era still held true.
While I always really appreciate these “memory lane” threads, they also make me appreciate some of the tremendous advances made in equipment and veterinary care since the early to mid-90s.
There have been some huge leaps forward in a relatively short time, which is cool to think about.[/QUOTE]
Absolutely! When I was a kid a 20 year old horse was ancient!
i lessoned in semi-private w/my little sister… at a Morgan/Saddlebred training barn. rings on both ends…center aisle part of riding rings. No helmets . Mr. Dace was HORRIBLY MEAN!!! He got SO MAD at me he once tied a knot on the reins because i let them slip too much (it was winter!!..fingers were stiff with cold) . My mother loved him…would invite him over to family dinners…always made me cringe because i knew him to be mean and abusive. Horses in the stalls we passed by during lessons were all cranked with head harnesses and neck sweats… Office was full of trophys and ribbons. It was amazing i ended up still loving horses… But maybe it was the saddness and pitifulness of them and their condition that carried me through that time. Eventually we landed into a more kind, more cruelty-free riding academy.
The twice yearly tube worming made the horses have pumpkin breath for days - horrible smell. And yes, there were ocassionally nosebleeds.
You walked your horse if he coliced, however many hours it took
I had a Steubben Sigfried for jumping. Rode my ‘horse built by committee’ grade palimino to many a blue ribbon in rust breeches and rubber boots.
Laying across your horses neck to get on bareback. He then raised his head and you slid down to his back. Later I learned to swing up by his mane.
Trotting races on the dirt roads, some of those horses could fly! You just leaned back and relaxed and it was smooth.
Putting our jean jackets over the top wire of the barb wire fence to jump it. That way the horses could see it better and minimized scratches if they under jumped. We were going to the creek in the cow pasture behind our barn. We never bothered the cows and no one seemed to care that we were, essentially, trespassing.
Pouring used motor oil on the fencelines to neaten up the barn yard (EEK).
The wide, flat nosebands on hunter cavessons.
My beautiful wine and white woven mohair blanket and breast plate for western shows. (with matching wine colored cowboy hat) And my beautiful buckstiched belt!
Getting zippers put in my english riding boots before that was a thing. I got tired of the ER cutting them off for broken feet and ankles.
The teenage ‘cowboys’ at my barn were my heros. They could ride any horse and would go out and rope my pony when I couldn’t catch him. Being at the barn allllll day and no pony to ride was the absolute worse!
Wearing the hair off my dapple grey pony where my thighs went from riding bareback. Left two perfect dark grey thigh marks, lol
Teaching the horses to ‘ground tie’ by tying a rein to a front canon. (Don’t laugh, it works) Came in handy when there were no trees to tie up to.
Riding my scruffy 11 hand pony over to the Actual English Horse Barn 7 miles or so away. I was so in awe of the beautiful, purpose built barn. The horses even had fans! And then jumping all their big horse jumps, he was quite the tryer. He also rode to shows in the back of the pickup with stake sides. If he was rarely naughty and wouldn’t jump in, guys would just pick him up and put him in, lol.
I’m sure there’s lots more, this is fun!
I’ll never forget the look on my high school chemistry teachers face when I said we used DMSO on our horses and what the taste of it in your mouth was like. Then a couple classmates backed me up so he knew I wasn’t crazy.
Bet he wondered if he should call CPS.
This was in the mid-80’s.
I have a set of his pamphlets that someone gave me. They don’t have meaning to me, but I’m glad others like 'em.
A question for you folks who are some 20 years older than I am: Just how rich did you need to be in order to be the archetypal amateur that the AHSA was courting when it founded the amateur/professional distinction some time in the 1950s or 1960s?
I have no idea how the board prices and other costs you all remember translate in to 2019 dollars. But it would be interesting to know whether the AHSA was catering to the Rich or Uber-Rich back then. I suspect that the middle class could still ride, perhaps fox hunt even in places like the Mid-Atlantic and even show in most shows. Perhaps Madison Square Garden was reserved for the Uber-Rich.
But it doesn’t sound like quite so many people were priced-out the way they are now. Do I have this right?
that was back in the days when you could buy a pony with tack from Sears
Not sure what they were “courting”, but by the time I was attending recognized shows in the mid 60s, the Amateur Owners were almost exclusively:
***You forgot cotton jod’s that went out at the knee when mounting from the ground. Wool breeches with many tiny brass buttons.
Late to this thread, but does anyone remember when “saddle fitting” basically consisted of placing the saddle on the horse, and if you could run a dressage whip from pommel to cantle through the gullet without impingeing on the horse’s back, the saddle was declared to “fit.”
Even waaaay back then - Argentine saddles - el cheapos, not desirable and everyone who splurged on a standard Steubben jumping saddle or a Crosby was very impressed when I showed up with the much more expensive ($450!!!) Passier. (late 1960s-1970s)
Hard hat with little elastic strap - and only worn for jumping or shows.
I got most of my riding boots in those days from Goodwill or the Salvation Army - always too short, and it was a BIG day when I got my first pair of Dehners. Now I’m full circle - can’t afford custom any more, but boots at second hand shops are rare now.
Well, my first horse, a 7/8 TB appendix mare cost $650 (1969). An “A” level equitation horse then was about $6,500. When I was 9 to 12 and took lessons at St. Francis Riding Academy in San Francisco (1950s) they cost $3.50 each, and board at that stable was $55 a month. When I was in my 20s and bought that appendix mare, I boarded in Golden Gate Park and paid $55- $90 a month, BUT…my monthly salary was $350 and I was still living at home and paying a minimal rent to my parents.
When i boarded at Golden Gate Park, 1985-1994 it cost 350 to start and ended up being around 500 or 600 when i moved away. Awesome facility. Stalls were small, but the environment was very fun.
LOL boarding in the winter at the only local barn with an indoor arena. Thirty five dollars a month full care with limited turnout in a dirt paddock. circa 1965.
I started riding in the late 50’s- bareback all summer, saddles for the annual gymkhana and lessons in the winter. Our pony had a flat- as -a -pancake English made saddle, German Stubbens and Passiers were unusual and the Argentinian ones weren’t around yet. We used felt numnahs except for shows.
In Canada, we had the Eaton catalogue which had tack for sale (we bought pony a harness from them). Barringtons was the tack store in Toronto with everything imported from England, and Ehrlich’s had harness and racehorse tack. All the leather goods were stiff and orange until oiled.
The barn where we boarded in the winter had standing stalls for the few horses who came in at night, most horses and ponies were out in the field. There was no arena, we put straw and manure in the outside ring so it didn’t get ice-y. In the winter, we put western stirrups on our English saddles and rode in our brown rubber winter boots- you put plastic bags over your shoes for warmth(!) and then the boots.
We had Polish and Hungarian ex-cavalry officers for instructors, poor souls. I wish I had been a good enough rider to learn more from them.
Brown/beige tweed hacking jackets for shows, cotton jodhpurs with a strap under the instep with school oxford shoes or ankle height jodhpur boots, white shirt with a pony club tie. We wore jeans and ordinary rubber boots otherwise.
My mother fot those for me! Never used the “bridle”. And we were totally unsupervised. If you mentioned to a parent that you fell off the only concern was that you got back on.
As kids we had that set of western pony saddle, black with a red suede seat and studs, matching bridle and breastplate. Our donkey, Festus, used to wear that. I read every Girl Scout horse book and horse stories, no lessons or shows. My parents did not do stuff like that for the kids. I was lucky to have a pony! Lessons, riding or ballet, were spoiling kids as far as my parents thought. Poured over the Kaufman and Sons catalog. Had to write off for it ( why is it that at nine years old I could write a letter to a New York Fancy horse catalog and do it all on my own but my 11 year old neice cannot write a thank you card?)
In the 90’s, New Zeeland Rugs! Riding in chaps, using Navaho saddle pads under my dad’s old Stubben ( which was 19"). Eventing was fun, you could just read the rule book and enter. Pouring over “Practical Horseman” and reading over and over again a series by Mike Plum on training the event horse.
Discovering hunting and it was all of $25 dollars to join. No second flight. You jumped and kept up or didn’t come back. Trotting back to the meet 12 miles in the dark and making sure you were behind a gray so you could watch that butt; sparks flying off the shod hooves on rocks in the dark.
That dark blue wound treatment. Wipe to keep flies off.
The thing that I miss the very most is all the open land and that one could just go out of the driveway and fields, trails were all around. Oh, being a little girl riding my pony and my father telling me not to go down certain trails because someone had a still there.
Speaking of blistering - Biegel Oil, anyone?
And, yes, absorbine.
I wanted a Barnsby saddle the worst way. Had an argentine. Couldn’t use a Stubben because of a shark fin wither on my 17 hand OTTB mare.
“:edited” Just remembered! I got a passier saddle, used I think. It was some kind of German saddle, Couldn’t fit a Stubben on my mare. I think that sucker was a passier. Hmm.
Oh, and Rodney Jenkins and Idle Dice. “le sigh”.
I remember most barns painted their woodwork every few years with creosote - both to protect the wood, and also the fence rails and doors, to try to deter horses from chewing on it. Creosote, people!
I watched him winning the Grand Prix in Madison Square Garden with Idle Dice.
It was as good as they say, he rode his own way, very softly.
He had that horse in the right spot every jump and effortlessly.
Horse never did do more than flick an ear and go and turn where there was no way a horse can, but he did, time and again.
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