Mistakes you made when you first got into horses

[Impractical_Horsewoman]

I mean, I’m sure the reason part of the reason “we never used to have problems like this” is people didn’t know much about how to spot many issues. And if the horse wasn’t rideable, it got put down. There just wasn’t that much knowledge or advanced diagnostics and so forth. Additionally, if only the hardiest horses who could endure with relatively hard riding and hard saddles survived, there might be a chance they could also make do with suboptimal diet, pasture, and so forth. And perhaps more fragile horses were less apt to be used for breeding because of all this. I’m obviously not advocating this was better.

I do think there might be something to the idea that horses may have been ridden somewhat differently in the past–I was lucky enough to do an eventing camp at the now-closed Vershire Riding School in Vermont and in many ways the school was a bit like a relic in time–big pastures with many horses in them, immaculate stalls (that the horses were almost never in), horses being ridden all day, up and down hills, very simple tack, and many of the horses were quite old. But they also had long periods of downtime when camp wasn’t being held.

Horses definitely jumped bigger (and so did riders, sooner in their careers) in the past but there may have been more hacking out, and less hard technical demands on them. It also seems like people are less interested in owning sort of “square hardy boxes of do-a-little-bit-of-everything” horses, just like kids are specializing in sports more and more, earlier and earlier.

[Djones]

I made all the mistakes.

Bought a mare out of a stall and turned her out on 40 acres…and caught her only occasionally thereafter. When I did catch her, she ran off with me. Who knew that 2 weeks of up down lessons didn’t prepare me to own a horse? I thought posting was something to do with tying horses up and dressage was pronounced dressidge.

[erinmeri]

I am sure I made plenty of mistakes in the beginning - I was a child and my parents were categorically NOT horsey (unless you believe my father’s tall tale about being drunk in college and being the only idiot able to “wrangle” a stolen horse bareback and bridleless in the middle of the night to be “horsey”.) Thankfully, I don’t remember most of my early mistakes because I averted disaster.

So, I am sure there were plenty. Glad none of us died.

Mistakes that I still remember and fret over:

• Trusting a trainer (years into my junior career) who was abusive to me and horses,

• Trusting same trainer to “invest” in one of my good jumpers when it was laid up… only to later find after I had switched barns that he had nerved it and then put it down when it wouldn’t come sound… which is bad enough, but even worse since 1) he never told us and 2) on paper, my father still owned 50% of the horse and had a right to sign off on decisions.

• Buying a hot, sensitive Grand Prix jumper who could not take a joke as a junior… AFTER I had landed myself in the hospital during the trial. (That one turned me off horses for 17 years.)

• Recent: trying to outride an approaching thunderstorm and ignoring barnmate’s suggestion to come in only to find it was 2 minutes, not 20 minutes, out. To be honest, the horse so thoroughly lost its marbles that I am still shocked I made it back to barn!

Agree with above that mistakes are not always when you’re “new” to horses!

[candyappy]

@Djones

Gosh, you’re right. Competitions haven’t gotten more specialized and better funded so there’s more money to chase, more sponsors, more everything at stake. Horse breeding hasn’t gotten more tech and data driven in my lifetime. Things definitely are all exactly the same as it was at your BB 40 years ago. Absolutely nothing has changed at all over time.

I don’t know what is bothering you? If anything I see people don’t work their horses near as hard now as they did 30 years ago. Too many other distractions. Owners & trainers have changed in that respect as well . Not all of them but it goes along with the change of our overall lifestyles.

Breeding improvements due to ( tech & data) as you say has if anything, produced more unsound horses( legs & body issues) than we ever saw and that really includes today’s TB.

We were close to both a TB and QH tracks and had layups staying there often when they were taking a break or foaling.

You can take it personally if you choose to but things have not changed for the better in boarding or overall longevity where our horses are concerned.

[Djones]

Our POV differ radically, and I suggest your seeing what you want to see vs the data. Like on the leaf blower thread, where you’re certain it’s a gas fumes issue and when provided with peer reviewed data explaining the real issue, you ignore it. I am positive that if sourced hard data to counter your pov on this topic…you’ll ignore it.

So that’s the end of my chat with you.

[candyappy]

I didn’t ignore it @Djones. Ghazzu explained it and what more was there to say? I personally think leaf blowing a barn Isle is unnecessary . I mean it is a place where horses walk and poop.

A simple sweeping or raking after stall cleaning should be sufficient.

Data is flawed compared to actually seeing the differences.

[Djones]

You were the sole person pushing hard for answers and you got them and didn’t acknowledge them …
which can read as ignored them.

So I’m going to refrain from further bingo with you based on past exposure to your means of communication. That’s not taking anything personally.

[candyappy]

@Djones

based on past exposure to your means of communication. That’s not taking anything personally.

Sorry. I only have a limited time to be on my computer and try to read what is directed at me but replying is not something I always do unless I feel it is necessary. If I get an answer I move on.

It may differ from how many use the board but it isn’t a communication issue.

[eightpondfarm]

hmmm…i never had either, and there are 17 horses and two mules here. Never had to agonize over a foot sore horse at all ever…Until Ollie. Cutest little ponymule, who has had 3 serious abscesses on his fronts. Not always the same one either. Takes a couple of months, farrier cutting away, soaks in epsom salt and iodine solution a half hour a day. and a boot. Poor little guy. Always happens in August. Weather is very dry here then. … But i actually think it is forage related. That he is eating something out there in the pasture which at that point in it’s growth cycle blows. And then he gets a canker in his feet.

[findeight]

Never saw an abscess the first 12 years out in So Cal, mostly in a pen, last few years a stall. No real turn out, probably barefoot the first 5 years. Never saw colic either.

Was in So Texas 8 years, one abscess ( hot nail), learned how to pack and wrap. New England for 4 years, no abcess.

Moved to SW Ohio, went through 2 lease horses and 1 owned over 5 years, nothing. Then I bought an expensive ( at the time and for me) mare and became Queen of abcessville for about 18 months. After a proper diet, regular farrier visits and FF grew a proper, healthy hoof, had her for 15+ years. Other then stepping on a toe clip throwing a shoe a couple of times, no abscesses and what she had cleared up in a few days.

Over the years (decades) have seen numerous abscesses in horses coming right off the track for let down. The ones I kept track of were fine after about a year and a half, just like my mare.

JMO based on my experience but think abscesses that reoccur, are not caused by a stone bruise, nail or similar and do not heal quickly are the result of something internal, bad diet, cushings etc.

Also JMO but an abscess is easy to blame for a variety of soundness issues, cheap and easy answer for owners to delude themselves nothing is wrong. Also easier for a seller to pullout of their hat to explain why a sales trial needs to be postponed. Lord forbid they fess up to buyer Dobbin is too sore to try. Again.

Amazing to read on here how many trials are put off because of a sudden abscess. What a coincidence. Yeah…right.

[CBoylen]

Abscesses, when not trauma related, tend to develop from conditions that go back and forth from wet to dry. So pasture conditions, soil, and climate play a big part. I feel like I’ve seen way more in VA than ever in my life, because drought to mud is a common occurrence, combined with decent size rocks. If you’ve got sand and no mud I’m going to expect you see fewer.

[Guyot]

Haven’t read this whole thing yet but I’m going to come back as read tonight but…

There is not enough bandwidth on the internet for all the ways we did it wrong… my parents and myself were the actual warning label of what not to do with horses . God bless my first few riding instructors. They deserved medals!

[BigMama1]

I’m late to the party but I could write a book about mistakes I’ve made re horses:

1. Buying my first-ever horse halfway through my final year of high school, then not going to the university of my choice / pursuing the career of my choice because I wouldn’t have been able to bring my horse with me.

2. Allowing a 20-something-year-old up down instructor to convince me that buying a 3-year-old horse who had only been under saddle for a few months was a perfectly fine idea for a 17yo rider who could WTC and pop over a cross tail, but that’s about it.

3. Realizing that above horse was not a good fit, but refusing a very fair offer to trade him for a horse with more training and miles, because I loved him and couldn’t be parted from him. That decision resulted in such paralyzing anxiety after a couple of predictably awful accidents that I couldn’t even sit on my own horse for 6 months (though I would ride anyone else’s horse) and I still struggle with riding anxiety now, more than 30 years later.

4. Getting back into riding after a 15-year break and buying a 5yo horse, even though I knew better after my first experience with a young horse. This is a 2 for 1 mistake, because I did so believing that this time would be different because I had a trainer who could train the horse up the levels for me while I learned to ride again.

5. Not knowing / understanding the importance of verifying a trainer’s actual track record in training horses and coaching clients up the levels before believing their own assessment of their skills.

6. Knowing a horse had shivers and buying it anyway.

7. Not trusting my gut when it was time to retire a horse.

[BigMama1]

@dungrulla

We keep our horses outside at the barn I board at and they mostly eat hay/grass. We rarely have abscesses. When we do we usually just leave the horse outside to self-resolve unless they’re really bad. Haven’t had one not go away yet. They typically go away WAY faster than when I was wrapping/taping too.

My shivers horse was also the king of the abscesses. And his shivers got to the point where it was impossible to soak / poultice / wrap a hind foot the way I had always treated an abscess. That was when I learned they would resolve in a week if I treated them and 7 days if I didn’t.

[BigMama1]

@PamnReba

(psssttt - if you’re curious about today’s halter standards, go check out the Fossil Gate Farms online dispersal sale here: https://prohorseservices.com/2022/dispersal-of-fossil-gate-farms-halter-horses/ . It’s interesting.)

OMG that is not what halter horses looked like when I was a teenager. They look like caricatures of quarter horses!

[Renn_aissance]

@skydy

Yes, but I can’t understand why in all of my experience there was never a horse with an abscess. Colic? Yes. Dystocia in a foaling mare? Yes. Cuts and scrapes and their attendant issues? Yes. Hoof abscesses? No.

I just had to comment. I have never had an abscess in my own horses. I have had plenty of cases where the vet and I hoped it was an abscess brewing, and it wasn’t an abscess. TBs and ISH. Meanwhile, my sister’s horses- different genetics and different dietary needs, but two Thoroughbreds, who over a period of time lived in the next stall, had the same vet and farrier, and went out in the same field for the same amount of time as my horses- would each blow one spring like clockwork. (Of course, now that I have said this, my horse will come in with one tomorrow.)

The dumbest thing I ever did was ride triple, bareback, on Claudia’s pony, with nary a helmet between the three of us… and then, proving that there was nary a brain cell between the three of us either, we took the pony out and started trotting down the road where our parents would see us.

That was an awfully kindhearted pony she had, because we shouldn’t have lived long enough for our mothers to threaten to kill us.

[BigMama1]

When I was a teen we never had horses with abscesses either, but we did have horses who would just be lame for a while, until they got better. I’m guessing we just didn’t know about abscesses or what to look for.

Just like we didn’t have saddle fitters or custom saddles and never had any saddle fit issues. If it didn’t look right you bought a riser pad or made one out of foam you bought. The same saddle would fit 29 different horses just fine. Of course we did have a lot of rank horses, buckers, a few bolters and lots who went around looking like a giraffe. But that couldn’t have been from ill-fitting saddles, right? Because we didn’t have saddle fitting issues back in the day lol.

[walktrot]

I didn’t know that I didn’t know what I needed until I went to one of the expos like Equine Affaire. You have to scour the aisles carefully because there are dozens of things you didn’t know you needed when you left the house this morning. If you don’t find all of the things you didn’t know you needed you are forced to return the following year, when there will be more things you didn’t know you needed last year. If you add all of the things you didn’t know you needed last year with all of the things you didn’t know you needed this year you are compelled to spend more time carefully shopping each booth. The longer you own your horse the worse it gets. It gets more complicated when you know what you need but can’t find it. You might have to look at all the stuff you don’t need to see if there is a suitable alternative. Then there is a decision about which product is the better alternative and what its avialbility is.

Some of these expos have big name trainers and clinicians so if you get tired of looking for things you didn’t know you needed you can sit down and rest for an hour. If you are lucky the clnician won’t be selling books and tack and other things you didn’t know you needed.

[Warmblood1]

I honestly believe horses teach you a level of emotional control that one wouldn’t otherwise have. There are other sports and situations that teach it but rarely are we connected to something of such power that has a mind of its own where we are challenged in the same ways. It’s a unique situation.

That said, my greatest challenge as a kid when riding was controlling myself. Physically, mentally, emotionally. The largest mistakes I made could be traced back to self discipline. Horses changed me as a human being and I am forever grateful for that.

[ShenanAnna]

Self discipline. And compassion, and helping those less capable. Thank you, thank you, childhood horses.