How many different horses have you ridden?

joosie

lifelong sufferer of restless brain syndrome
Oct 28, 2004
6,979
2,986
113
New Zealand
Not meant in a competitive, who-has-ridden-the-most-horses way - just that I thought people might enjoy having a think back at their horsey history while you tot up your numbers!

Someone asked me the other day how many horses I’ve ridden, and after 4 weeks in plaster unable to do much of anything I’m starting to go up the wall with boredom, so this afternooon I sat down and had a count.
My overall tally is just shy of 400 :oops: But that includes 14 years as a groom, and all the opportunities and “you-must-get-on-it-because-I’m-your-boss-and-you-have-no-say-in-it” situations that go with the job. If I take away the horses I’ve ridden for work, my leisure count - from riding holidays, random hacks and lessons at riding centres, and riding friends’ horses - drops to 73. Out 21 of those have been horses belonging to people from forum land!
Quite interesting to see those numbers as I’ve wondered about it before but never bothered to try and count! It was really nice actually, thinking back through my riding journey and the various horses, people, experiences and feelings that it’s involved. There were some that I had forgotten about, most of those memories I had repressed for good reason :p
Needless to say that despite riding almost 400 horses I am currently nursing a badly broken wrist from falling off a horse that was STANDING STILL :rolleyes:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jessey
Genuinely don’t remember 😅 I was always the wee person that got lobbed onto everything as a child 🤔 I remember my ponies and could tot up everything from me being 15 and onwards 🤣🤣
 
I know because whenI started to learn to ride in 2001, I kept a list of every teacher and every horse I rode.
Ella my current share is horse 102.
The total stopped moving much when I had long periods of only riding Maisie and then my old share mare. It was bumped up in the years we travelled widely in the USA and went trail riding as often as we could.
It seems to me an impossible dilemma of riding. If one rides the same horse every time one rides, one does not have the experience of many different types of horse. I got both I know, but part of that was RSs not caring a jot what horse they used for the lessons of an old lady.
 
  • Like
Reactions: joosie
What an interesting question!

I must have ridden maybe 12 horses and ponies as a child. The two I remember best are Blaze, a lovely little Irish pony owned by a (carefully cultivated) friend who went to boarding school so I could ride him during term time (only for 6 months alas) and Misty, a little Connie gelding who was lent to me one glorious summer when I went to stay in Perth with my aunt. The others were a variety of riding school horses and Nellie, the young horse at the farm next door whose owner used me as (bareback, barefoot, hatless) ballast when lungeing and backing her (good experience that!)

Then nothing for years until I was 30 and could afford riding lessons after work at a posh school nearby - maybe a dozen horses there over a couple of years.

Once we moved here there was my share pony Arran (a Highland) and a few holiday-riding horses; then trying horses before I bought Ziggy. A few riding trips on holiday after as well, typically with one horse only. I haven't chopped and changed much.

Ziggy, Mattie, half a dozen friends' horses, and now Mike and Sid. Not very many really. I doubt I have reached 50. Fewer than my years of life, anyway!
 
I honestly couldn’t say, my Nan has many pictures of me riding ponies I don’t remember. I’m not even sure I could remember all those I’ve ridden as an adult 🤷🏻‍♀️ I was a groom for a while 25 years ago so rode a lot of livery horses and when I was competing there was a rule about a combination only doing 1 level so we often used to switch horses so we could do more classes and warm up for each other so I could ride a dozen in a weekend. I could try for the last 5 ish years, I think it’s 23 or so including a couple I’ve driven.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MrC
I really wouldn't have a clue, not if you include lesson horses and ones I've briefly sat on to feel, show their owners something, or trim up. Loads! I largely stopped doing it when I had Jim though, getting on others only mad it very clear what he was and it was far better that I viewed him as normal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MrC
I really wouldn't have a clue, not if you include lesson horses and ones I've briefly sat on to feel, show their owners something, or trim up. Loads! I largely stopped doing it when I had Jim though, getting on others only mad it very clear what he was and it was far better that I viewed him as normal.
This made me laugh! But I know you loved him
 
  • Like
Reactions: carthorse
Not many really considering how long I have been riding. I have always been a 'one horse' kinda person. Probably max 30 different horses before I was 18, and since then probably no more than 15 different ones since then. In the last 10 years I have ridden Ben daily (when not too lame!) and ridden only 4 other horses in all that time.
 
Oh my! I couldn't possibly count all the RS ones from childhood.... hell, I can't even remember most of them! 🤪

Since I came back to riding in 2005, I'd guess it's probably in excess of 30.... from my own and friends'.
 
@chunky monkey numbers don't make competence! I could ride a thousand really quiet safe cobs on hacks and still be barely able to ride, or I could have only ever ridden a few complicated but well trained horses and be a good rider (or still bad but bruised and foolish). Also there's riding and just sitting on for a few minutes - would I count something I'd sat on for 5 minutes to show it's owner something?

Sorry @joosie , I'm going off topic there.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jessey
But you have your own! I find the desire to ride other people's decreases proportionately to how much you love your own ;)
And don't I regret that now I'm looking for another. The days when I could hop on and get a feel and tune out of something in a few minutes are long gone 😞
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jane&Ziggy
Yes i have two and by heck there are so different. I know which i prefer. Pity i cant ride him now.
My one wish was to progress my riding with Billy. Sadly that wont ever happen now. Not too old to start riding a few more i guess.
 
I could ride a thousand really quiet safe cobs on hacks a
If you really had ridden a thousand hacks you would have learned a lot more than you think. Unless you are entirely insensitive to landscape, archtiect and the history.
 
If you really had ridden a thousand hacks you would have learned a lot more than you think. Unless you are entirely insensitive to landscape, archtiect and the history.

Skib why don't you stop trying to make out you're something special? It was quite clear to anyone with half a brain cell that we were talking about riding skills and nothing else, and to try and make it seem different you've only quoted a small part of the post. And I have to say that however quiet the horse I'm riding is I do it the courtesy of giving it my attention rather than taking in the surroundings - I ride rather than just sit on a horse.

And not that it's any of your business but I've hacked out far more than a thousand times, no I don't keep count but in over 40 years of riding I can say without a doubt it would be far more than that! So please stop trying to cause trouble, or if you can't do that go back to Horse and Hound forum where there are so many posters your nastiness goes unnoticed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MrC
Yet another reprimand. Why does what I say to you upset you so much? I dont know you and you dont know me. If you were hurt by what I posted it was unintentional. But on the other hand one learns from Twitter not to care a jot about opinions on social media. As for difference,

I am different because I learned to ride as an adult and was not taught in the BHS style. You did not answer when I asked who your teachers were.
 
newrider.com