I think I repressed a lot of them, most of the weekend memories kept popping back up. The number of times I thought “I can’t believe I did that” or “I can’t believe I tolerated that” over the weekend…
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Interesting. My kids were riding ponies back then. I remember “Tail Gate” at Pony Finals 2012 where a few fake tails were stolen.
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New lesson student, 7 yo, has tales of riding her Mom’s horses. There are several horses. One is the student’s special favorite.
Parents come at end of lesson, instructor making casual chat “I hear you have horses!” Mom & Dad look blankly startled. Student, on foot after ride, disappears behind horse.
Dad finally says, “There are several on the shelf in her bedroom. That’s all we have!”
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Kudos for imagination, kid, but I see a talk about honesty in her future (I hope!).
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Dad’s answer explained why a kid who supposedly has had exposure to horses knew almost nothing about riding, or horses, at all. Even sloppy backyard riding.
Kept dropping the reins and the leadline. Something else caught her attention, the line/reins just hit the ground. Dropped the leadline while leading the horse from A to B. Even while on the horse, while at a halt, dropped the reins out of her hands and sat in the saddle, no reins.
Unfamiliar with ‘whoa’ or stopping a horse. Didn’t know to pull back on the reins.
Definitely signs that something was way off. However there are people who own horses and don’t know how to handle them, so maybe.
She honestly didn’t know that horses don’t behave the way her shelf horses behave – that is, wait to move until she moved them. That she couldn’t just run off for lunch and leave the horse standing there, and it would be there when she got back.
I think she may have thought that shelf horses and real horses are almost the same thing. Well, lessons will help! 
She’s 7. She’ll gather more information as she goes. 
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I have a young student, 7 or 8, who kept talking about her horses at home to the other kids (never to me). Some of the other kids, and once a substitute instructor, came to me talking about this student’s horses she had at home. I was confused, because she was telling the other kids “oh, I had to care for so and so before I came here” or “I was helping my friend ride her horse at my house” and while I know some of my students have horses at home, I wasn’t sure about this one. I did know that her older sister had ridden somewhere else for a long time, so I felt it was plausible that maybe they had horses at home. I finally asked her when I heard her talking about a new pony that she had gotten for Christmas, if these horses were real that she had at her house. She said oh no, not real, I just pretend and practice at home. She’s running a whole pretend barn and riding school at her house, and she apparently takes her duties very seriously because she was telling one of the kids about needing a day off! 
I don’t really fault her or even feel like she is really “lying” to anyone, because she knows everything is pretend, and I used to run pretend horse shows and have barns full of fake horses when I was a kid too. Hopefully she’ll keep doing it and one day it will become the real thing.
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I’ve got video sent by a mom of a 10 yo student jumping a course in her living room. Trot circle at the beginning and end of the course. Picking up the canter, getting the leads and everything.
I’m all for it (as long as she doesn’t trip on a broom handle / vertical & faceplant), she was actually giving herself some good practice experience! 
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This reminds me of a kid who came back from vacation at the beach. While there, she ran into a lesson mate of hers, and they took turns cantering along the beach jumping a jump and teaching. The video I was shown has one kid imitating me while the other jumps “Are you COUNTING?!” (Her rhythm). At least they’re listening!!
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I had an entire ranch where the horses grazed in the backyard and ran feral in the woods behind the house. I even had a pedigree book with illustrations. I broke Mustangs and jumped courses in the backyard and cantered around.
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IMO the point of shelf horses is to allow kids (and adults!) to maintain a horse herd, without the expense and the logistics of maintaining a horse herd!
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I had little plastic horses. Then, there were ‘glass ones’ on the shelves that were not to play with. But I would make a ‘house’ out of large coffee table sort of books that the horses lived in. I do remember I would put one over the other and say ‘mate, mate, mate’. I have no idea where that came from. My mom told me later she would stand beyond to door, and laugh her head off. I can only think it was because we had neighbor boys that I played with. We played with plastic dinosaurs.
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Or “present your tits like a porn star would,” said to me by the very good friend who got me back into riding… while her 14 year old daughter was also in the arena, poor kid!
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We did this at pony camp one year when the kids made pool noodle horses. They gave them names, personalities and everything. A couple were even stoppers. I was the judge for the show 
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Oh god, is it bad that I’m 36 and still “canter” “jumps” at the beach with the kids? Were we supposed to outgrow that? =)
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Absolutely not! As long as you have the scope on a long spot, carry on !!!
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Nah! Who do you think “showed the kids the course” at the aforementioned noodle-horse show? And I’m older than you.
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Hey, every time I drive over the lines of a crosswalk I envision myself jumping an oxer. Or changing leads when I change lanes. So it’s all good.
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I work in a greenhouse with concrete floors. I use a “scooter” to pull the loaded carts of plants. It’s a standing up type. There are some very big separations in some spots. I always “heels down, relax waist & hips” at those spots LOL!
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I did that for years, jumping over furniture in the house and picnic tables and benches in the backyard! We had pretend horse shows too.
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Those poor po-noodles, crammed into rollkur!!! 
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