Hi all

Bex84

Bex84

New Member
Apr 2, 2022
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Hi all, my name is Bex. I am 36 and have been taking lessons for a few months. My ultimate goal is to be competent enough to accompany my daughter out riding. I recently made the transition from riding school to “real world” and it’s been a bit of a learning curve! Currently sharing a sweet cob but looking to buy. The market is bonkers though! Very interested in natural horsemanship
 
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Hallo and welcome.
I too learned to ride as an adult.
The priority has to be rider safety and although you may feel that riding schools are elementary and not a "real world" I would suggest returning and having regular lessons from a competent teacher on a variety of horses and trying various disciplines as well as sharing the cob before buying one of your own.
Riding and especially riding outside the school, is a complex matter. It is more like learning to play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language than simply remembering facts. For this you need a competent teacher and some application. Think of it like school learning. If you are in the UK - a year to GCSE and a further two years to specialise more like A levels.

What should you try to learn? The most important thing to learn is balance in the saddle - not just avoiding falling off sideways, but tipping forward (which can be lethal) and tipping back. Lunge lessons are ideal for establishing balance both for yourself and your child. You should ride without stirrups (in a school not hacking) and if safe, ride bareback as well.

Then there is communication with and control of the horse both on the ground leading, and from the saddle.
I too was interested in Natural Horsemanship and learned particularly from Mark Rashid. But any form of NH involves a very rewarding knowledge of horse and animal psychology and of behaviourism.

So that as well as learning how to ride, you will take the important step of discovering how to teach a horse the things you need it to learn.
 
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Thank you for the tips. Safe to say the buying bit has been put on hold. I’m lucky to have an instructor that comes in to teach which is great. My school unlike some never rotated horses so i didn’t get to mix things up. I have since though made connections through friends etc and have been able to ride different horses that way. My use of the term “real world” was not meant to be disparaging or dismissive of schools. Without my riding school lessons I wouldn’t have a clue but at least now I know enough to ride a quiet share and at the same time learn all the other care matters that go with it 😊
 
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Hi and welcome.

I agree that the market is crazy, and it has been for a couple of years now. The trouble is the biggest price hikes have tended to be for sensible fun horses that have done a bit and are tolerant of less than perfect riding and since it takes several years to produce horses like that I can't see the market dropping any tie soon unless the general cost of living rises so much that people can't afford to keep them. If you can keep sharing the cob and riding friends horses that - or winning the lottery - may be your best bet for now.
 
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Sadly if you want a safe hacking horse between 14.2 & 16hh that isn't old (young horses don't have the experience to really be called a safe hack imo) and that's not got problems then that's about right, particularly if you maybe want the option of doing a bit more as you progress. Yes you can get cheaper but you'll probably have some work to do, or it'll be starting to get on in years, or there'll be an "if" or "but" somewhere. You haven't been riding long, you don't want to take on a problem, heck lots of us who've been riding for years don't want to take on a problem. The market really is a sellers one, and that reminds me when you start looking remember that many sellers are not at all honest so be very careful and don't be rushed or pushed into buying without a vetting.
 
I think I mght need more than £10,000 these days.
But if I were buying a horse, I would probably approach a dealer with a good reputation and ask them to import one for me from Ireland. One women I know did similar, but importing from the Netherlands.
 
@Skib friends in Ireland have said that a lot of what is now being imported from Ireland as general riding horses are, to quote, "the barrel scrapings" because all the good ones have already gone or aren't for sale.

What annoyed me when I was looking wasn't so much the prices as what those prices were attached to. Lame horses, horses so badly put together they didn't stand a good chance of staying sound in work, 4yos being advertised as bombproof and suitable for novices, the list seemed endless yet they were all having hefty price tags attached. A good price for a good horse is one thing, but a lot of them were far from good horses.
 
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carthorse said:
I can't see the market dropping any tie soon unless the general cost of living rises so much that people can't afford to keep them.
Click to expand...
I suspect this is what we will see happening by next winter, I’ve already seen chatter that hay producers (nationally) are expecting 25% price increases because of the increase in fertiliser and fuel, feed will be the same, and I can well see livery costs increasing. And with travel now back on the cards I can see many of the lockdown horses looking for new homes. Bide your time until next spring and I think we’ll know one way or the other Bex.
 
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