:lol::lol: One of the Pharmacies in the area carries those orange soft earplugs. They sell them by the jar.
Trust me…if it can block the hubsters snoring:sleepy: It’ll block out the rude horse owner. I don’t go to bed without them. :yes:
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for all the response to my post, I feel much better now. My husband keeps reminding me that if she really did feel like I was too heavy for her horse, how come she asks me to go riding with her every weekend? He feels it is just her way of trying to say she is boss and stay in control. We don’t have a bad relationship, we are actually pretty good friends, so I think she is just doing what my husband said about the control thing. And as several people have commented, I am not doing endurance riding I am just going for 1 - 2 hour pleasure rides. Granted we do get onto some steeper trails and the poor horse starts breathing a little harder, but not for any long distances then we are back on level single track walking. He has never come up lame, or sore, and I use a lightweight 18lb saddle and I am seriously working on my riding skills. So thank you again to everyone for your replies, I will just let her comments go in one ear and out the other and continue going on rides to improve my balance and riding skills!
[QUOTE=Auventera Two;3136169]
870 pounds? Wow, that’s tiny. My (barely!) 15 hand Arab is about 1,000 pounds and she’s very small compared to some of those endurance horses out there. She’s actually more like 14.3 1/2".
.[/QUOTE]
I weighed Shadow a couple of months ago and he went 970 or 1180 with me sitting on him. I go 195 bare plus equipment.
He is tall. I am 5 11 and standing beside him he is an honest 15.2
He is long legged with strong withers. Actually I have never owned a horse that didn’t have strong withers. I believe alot of hard work developes the withers.
None of my horses are ever fat even though they eat alot of grain and alfalfa hay. I hate timothy or grasses.
I feed about a small water pail of grain a day or 6 coffee cans with a strong mixture of steam rolled corn and a small handful of iodized salt thrown in.
[QUOTE=MCMILLEN;3137120]
Thanks for all the response to my post, I feel much better now. My husband keeps reminding me that if she really did feel like I was too heavy for her horse, how come she asks me to go riding with her every weekend? [/QUOTE]
Uhhhhh…now I have no doubt that he’s fine to carry you!
Sounds like sour grapes to me.
Oh this is baloney. You don’t weigh to much for the horse. I weigh about 180lbs and my daughters horse is a 16.1hh oldenburg. I can ride him just fine.
I feel its insulting when someone comments about my weight on the horse. I see all these western riders riding horses that are 15hh tall and have 200+ guys on them with a huge 50lb western saddle on them doing roping. Give me a break! :mad:
[QUOTE=MCMILLEN;3134834]
I recently leased an Arabian from my neighbor and have been doing quite a bit of trail riding after about 26 years of not riding. I always had quarter horses and no experience with Arabians. The horse I am leasing is a 14 year old 14.2 hands, not sure of weight but stockily built, looks more like a Morgan, former endurance horse. I am 5’4" and 160 pounds. I know I am overweight and have been deligently working on losing pounds and getting back in shape. My problem is she keeps making little comments about me being a little too heavy for the horse. Since I only know about Quarter Horses is she right about me being to heavy for this Arabian? Nothing like being told you are “too heavy for a horse” to make you feel really bad about your weight!![/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Shadow14;3137602]
None of my horses are ever fat even though they eat alot of grain and alfalfa hay. I hate timothy or grasses.
I feed about a small water pail of grain a day or 6 coffee cans with a strong mixture of steam rolled corn and a small handful of iodized salt thrown in.[/QUOTE]
Holy Crap! :eek:
How many horses do you have? Do you feed that total to all of them, or is that amount for each?
I can hardly keep the weight down on my LD horse with Alf/Grass mix hay and barely a handful of oats every day.:winkgrin:
Of course, my friend probably feeds about that to her one ARAB. Guy eats like a TB…
I hear ya DJ on the eating thing! Two of mine drink water and get fat. But the Arab is a hard keeper. She eats 4 times what the others do to maintain weight.
All winter that skinny little twirp ate 1/2 a big feed bucket of soaked beet pulp, BOSS, XTN, and supplements. She consumes alfalfa and grass hay by the bale. I laugh because in the winter the feeding regime is: 2 flakes for you, 3 flakes for you, and a bale for YOU! :eek:
In the summer when the others are on grass only, she’ll still be eating grain and hay to hold weight.
I do not look forward to feeding this horse 20 years down the road from now.
Regarding draft horses, IMO a well conformed light saddle horse will carry more, safely, than a drafter. The reason is that the draft horse has been selectively bred to PULL a load, while the saddle horse has been selectively bred to CARRY a load. While some drafters will go under saddle just fine, I’ve seen some struggle under fairly light loads that one of my MMs (900-1100 lbs, 14.2-15.2) would carry all day long.
Sometimes the half-drafts (a/k/a “warmbloods”) can do a bit better but that’s presuming they got a “hauling” conformation not a “pulling” conformation.
IIRC the Halflingers were originally bred as sturdy pack animals. There may be other breeds with this background. These, I would think, might easily beat the 20% rule.
Rider skill is really important when you’ve got a rider who weighs a significant percentage of the horse.
Most of us who have more “body mass” than we should do our horses a favor when we drop a few kilos. I think it was BGen. Chamberlan (a noted U.S. Army horseman of the early 20th Century) who observed that “it’s not the kilometers, it’s the kilograms” that kills horses. 'Nuff said on that, I guess. 
G,
At the last endurance ride I went to, the Best Condition winner (a guy) riding an Arabian, probably 14.2 or so, not particulary big boned, weighed (per my BC score sheet - the heaviest rider is listed on everyone’s BC sheet) weighed 325 lbs (includes tack). This guys does a lot of 25’s and 50’s.
Sure, the horse would have an easier job if he wasn’t lugging 300+ pounds, but carrying that amount of weight is possible. So you coming in way under 200 is great!
[QUOTE=Auventera Two;3136169]
870 pounds? Wow, that’s tiny. My (barely!) 15 hand Arab is about 1,000 pounds and she’s very small compared to some of those endurance horses out there. She’s actually more like 14.3 1/2".
.[/QUOTE]
My little 14.2 hh. mare is probably no more than 850 lbs. soaking wet. I tack up at about 186 total, just getting me over the Middleweight limit. (though that’s with my treed saddle and a pack, my treeless is lighter). I’m actually trying not to go below that, because I don’t want to ride light weight. There are too many tiny ladies on huge horses in those lower categories. I don’t want to be racing against them. My Mom tacks up at 175 I think, and her horse is 13.3 hh, and probably weighs just barely 800 lbs. But she does 50 miles rides and can outrot my 15.3 hh. mare.
[QUOTE=Auventera Two;3136169]
870 pounds? Wow, that’s tiny. My (barely!) 15 hand Arab is about 1,000 pounds and she’s very small compared to some of those endurance horses out there. She’s actually more like 14.3 1/2".
.[/QUOTE]
My little 14.2 hh. mare is probably no more than 850 lbs. soaking wet. I tack up at about 186 total, just getting me over the Middleweight limit. (though that’s with my treed saddle and a pack, my treeless is lighter). I’m actually trying not to go below that, because I don’t want to ride light weight. There are too many tiny ladies on huge horses in those lower categories. I don’t want to be racing against them. My Mom tacks up at 175 I think, and her horse is 13.3 hh, and probably weighs just barely 800 lbs. But she does 50 miles rides and can outrot my 15.3 hh. mare.
I’ve successfully done 5-hour 50’s on a 14.1 hh stock built purebred Arabian. I’m 5’9" and me plus tack weigh in at 186lbs.
I rode this horse for over 500 competition miles in 4 years with no real issues until her death last summer.
I’ve also jumped over 4’ a 14.1hh fine boned Half-Arabian mare for 3 seasons (we even won 1996 US National Champion Jumper) - we consistently jumped 3’ - 3’6" every other weekend each of those seasons. She went on to a distance career with my mom (about 20 lbs less weight). Due to all the road pounding and jumping she finally broke down (hairline fracture of a knee) at age 14 and is currently our prime broodmare.
It ain’t the size of the horse in the ride, it’s the size of the heart in the horse
RE: Too heavy? AKA Too Much Junk in the trunk?
Hi All,
My horse, Piper weighs 825-850 pounds when filled up before an Endurance Ride. He came out of one ride weighing 790 pounds. He has 000 shoes and less than 7 inch cannon bones. He is barely 14.2
I usually tack out around 210, but have tacked out as high as 230 pounds. Last year we did the Old Dominion 100 as Cavalry so had to carry all our supplies. I didn’t weigh before the ride, but assumed we went over 230 that day. The load did get lighter as we rode throughout the day as we ate some of the weight off.
Piper did two 100 mile rides last year, (OD and Tevis) We also did several 50’s including two sets of back to back 50s (friday/saturday). He can only dream of carrying a 160 pound short balanced rider.
This does not only apply to Arabians. The old foundation quarter horse were wiry short little rascals that were tough as nails. If you put them next to one of todays lead and feed big beauties you would never imagine they could carry cowboys over the old West. You would be wrong.
Don’t worry about 160 pounds on a fit and sound horse. It will be just fine.
Paul N. Sidio
Piper (who keeps trying to get him signed up with Jenny Craig or somebody)
Spokane MO
Well, sometimes I think we tend to underestimate what horses can carry but also overestimate what they weigh if you are used to tape measures.
I’ve ridden in the SE where they have large scales to weigh the horses. My 14.2 Arab mare (solid build) weighed 830 after the ride (prob race loss of about 20-30 lbs) with tack. Granted, my tack is very light as saddle is under 10 lbs with irons and the rest is maybe 5 lbs tops even w/water. My 15.2 Arab gelding, who is a very big and solid horse esp for an Arab, weighed 1075 pre-race with lightweight tack.
I also feel proper shoing, a balanced foot is important, even moreso as the weight goes up. An unbalanced foot shows up as a horse that appears to trip alot. It is the toe stabbing into the ground and it can cause the horse to appear as if the weight is too much.
Make sure the horse is well shod.
According to my vet, weight tapes usually under-estimate weight. He says that horses actually weight a lot more than we think they do. So that’s a weird contradiction?? I really don’t know. I just use the tape and take the measurement about 3 times. I’ve also used the weight formula calculations and have gotten about the same weight. I can’t wait to go to a ride that has a scale and find out for sure. But even at that, they have to be calibrated properly, or they aren’t accurate either.
[QUOTE=Guilherme;3139875]
Regarding draft horses, IMO a well conformed light saddle horse will carry more, safely, than a drafter. The reason is that the draft horse has been selectively bred to PULL a load, while the saddle horse has been selectively bred to CARRY a load. While some drafters will go under saddle just fine, I’ve seen some struggle under fairly light loads that one of my MMs (900-1100 lbs, 14.2-15.2) would carry all day long.
Sometimes the half-drafts (a/k/a “warmbloods”) can do a bit better but that’s presuming they got a “hauling” conformation not a “pulling” conformation.
IIRC the Halflingers were originally bred as sturdy pack animals. There may be other breeds with this background. These, I would think, might easily beat the 20% rule.
Rider skill is really important when you’ve got a rider who weighs a significant percentage of the horse.
Most of us who have more “body mass” than we should do our horses a favor when we drop a few kilos. I think it was BGen. Chamberlan (a noted U.S. Army horseman of the early 20th Century) who observed that “it’s not the kilometers, it’s the kilograms” that kills horses. 'Nuff said on that, I guess.
G,[/QUOTE]
Seriously, I do not understand why some riders don’t see this. Even if you’re riding a draft, it’s going to be hard on a horse to carry a very overweight rider. I’ve seen some extremely overweight riders, who have NO intention of losing weight. I mean none. They are not dieting. I feel for those horses when they are jumping or doing dressage. I am sympathetic to the overweight rider,being overweight myself due to a back injury. But now recovered, I’m doing my damndest to get the 40 pounds off. I think some of these people with bigger horses think it’s perfectly okay for their horses to carry their weight. I feel it will come back to them when the horse starts to break down.
Ok…here is my rule. It came from my sister who was single well into her 30’s. “never date a man whose a## is smaller than your own”. Well, the same holds true for me and riding. Not a small woman I have gone as far as to have friends take photos from behind (perish the thought :).
I have a 15.2 hand stb whom most swear is a morgan /arab type horse. I have found he moves the best with a centered seat and in collection when we get on steep terrain. Not harsh but contact vs on the buckle helps with tougher terrain. ON the flat…hell, I let him go!
I hunted on him and even though we weren’t the most polished out there and likely not the most picturesque, he did his job darn well. If we needed to be somewhere-we were.
So the rule applied… at 5’7 and more than 160lbs we are just making it but we do have good times.
To the OP: it sounds like you’re fine. I agree with the person who suggested she’s into control.
To Guilherme:
I ride drafts and find them to be wonderful for my needs. I don’t understand the need to bash them.
I’d argue the draft horse moves loads by leaning into the harness, not “pulling” on the load. Maybe I’m being nitpicky about semantics but if we’re going to talk about how selective breeding changed how the body moved, we need to be clear on how the body is supposed to move for draft work.
The non-draft (light) horse has been bred for a variety of things, so we can’t say “all non-drafts were bred for riding”. Look at the goofy halter-class QHs that can’t do a proper day’s saddle work. Look at the non-draft driving horses. Consider the racing TBs who are bred only for speed and only to carry enough weight to get that 110lb rider across the finish line. Look at the fugly randomly bred mixes with such poor conformation you’ve got to wonder if they’re good for anything. There is a myriad of reasons why people breed (non-draft) horses, and it isn’t always for a sturdy riding horse.
While some drafters will go under saddle just fine, I’ve seen some struggle under fairly light loads that one of my MMs (900-1100 lbs, 14.2-15.2) would carry all day long.
I think you’re comparing horses with poor conformation with your riding horses with good conformation, and that’s not a fair comparison. While it’s true some drafts don’t have ideal conformation, there are some pretty fugly-conformed non-drafts being put under saddle. For example, some drafts have really long backs, so wouldn’t be ideal for a heavy rider… but too long backs are a bad thing for a non-draft.
Also consider draft aren’t built for speed, which is a function of muscle type / metabolism. It’s a rare draft who can sprint off with galloping TBs down the trail. But not all of us want to win the Kentucky Derby, so the drafts may be just fine for the average rider.
In one of our classes, some people were going over some research paper which made the case that it is actually impossible for ANY horse to truly “pull” because legs are built for driving forward, not for pulling forward. In other words, the muscle, tendon, and ligament attachments are such that a horse cannot PULL with it’s legs like a human can pull with it’s arms.
But what they do is use their weight to lean into the harness and drag the load behind them, aided by the driving force of the legs. So when people say their horse falls on the forehand and pullshimself along with the frong legs instead of driving off the hind, it’s just not possible. They’re still driving, but not with the power desired.
