How good riders get good...

[which_chick]

(Not about the D. Emerson book.)

Friend of mine posted on facebook pictures of their children out playing horse a few weekends ago. They were sorta-public on facebook, so...



Tot #1 on the bay pony is seven years old. Here's them:



If you're not super-good at horses, that there is a kinda high-octane pony, a pony that moves out a bit. This is Tot #1's first move up pony after Tot #1's starter ponies that were kinder and gentler. Tot #1 and pony are moving at a pretty good clip, there.

I have it on good authority that Tot #1's pony is a borrow-n-return pony. Borrow now, return when outgrown by Tots in your household. This is frequently what happens to solid, safe, confidence-building move up ponies in the horse world. They aren't sold, they are loaned out.



Tot #2 on the gray pony is four years old and in the very early stages of learning-to-ride-independently. The pony is going a lot slower than the bay pony in the first picture. (This pony is twenty-five, and, as it happens, the granddaughter of the pony I learned to ride on when I was 11. She's a poor man's welsh, a shetland-arab cross (7/8 arab) that has maintained a lot of the pony characteristics with some arab refinement added.)

Tot #2's pony belongs to the family and has a very wide and deep store of experience to bring to the table for her novice tot rider. She has been under saddle since she was four and is taking care of Tot #2 while Tot #2 gains confidence with the whole riding gig. This pony is worth her weight in gold and will (should she live that long) wind up providing this same service to the family's Tot #3 expected later this year.

Okay, so this is all very nice, tots on ponies, etc. Yay. How do good riders get good?

They get safe, regular practice on ponies of suitable temperament and ability from a very early age. This is not just practice at home, it's also practice out-and-about, with parents and family willing to round up tots and ponies and throw everybody into the truck & trailer and haul to some venue and Do The Thing of a Saturday.

Safe, regular practice. An adult has to be willing to assist the tots with catching the pony, saddling the pony, supervising the riding, supervising the putting-away-of-the-pony, etc. A contained area in which to practice is helpful.

Pony of suitable temperament and ability. This is not an easy thing to find. The people who have charmingly adorable 25 yr old troopers who will take care of a four year old tot are not going to offer up that pony to a random stranger. The people who have a suitable move-up pony for the seven year old who wants to go faster aren't gonna hand it over to just anyone. There need to be connections in the horse world so that these ponies are made available to the tots who need them.

Practice out-and-about. It's a lot of weekends and a fair amount of money to go to venues (even kind of small, local venues) and Do The Thing. It's more-worth-it if all the kids participate and a lot harder to justify if only one kid in the family wants to play.

And, again, from a very early age. This means either a fortune in instruction or parents who know and understand ponies and how to arrange kids-n-ponies so that everybody survives and is the better for the experience.

Comments

[crockpotcauldron]

Whoa, horses get a lot smaller than I expected. They can also carry riders a lot longer than I expected. Is that because kids are lighter or are all horses like that?

[which_chick]

Horse is an artificial distinction for a category of equine that stands 14.2hh or bigger. Bird, for example, is 14.3 or 4'11" at the withers. He's an inch taller than "pony". When he goes out in public, he looks tiny to the rest of the horse world.

Here's how horses are measured:



Everything shorter than 14.2 is a pony, not a horse. They're all equines and they can 100% interbreed, but the custom is to call things under 14.2hh "ponies" and the things 14.2hh or taller "horses". So, equines probably get a lot smaller than you thought, but horses are all taller than 14.2hh.

The grey pony pictured is 13hh, 4'4" at the shoulder. I have not met the bay pony in person, but she's not huge either. The kids are pretty small. But, these ponies are still big enough for a modestly-sized adult to ride them. The gray pony, in her younger days, did the 30-mile state 4H competitive ride with a short-ish adult aboard... and won it. At the time, short-ish adult weighed about 140 lbs.

But "not huge" doesn't mean "tiny". The ponies pictured are kind of medium-ish ponies. Small ponies, well, shetlands of 10 hh (3'4" tall) are not uncommon. Those are getting into "tiny" territory. But we're not done yet.

"Mini" is a category of equine that is specifically tiny on purpose. Most minis are 38" or smaller at the withers. (Minis are measured in inches to ... make them seem smaller, I guess?) People do not ride minis, as a rule. They're used for carts and for in-hand work and being-cute which you wouldn't think was an equine's job but, y'know, we have purse dogs so I guess.

Minis are pretty darned small for equines, and while I do not have much time for them, there are a lot of them out there. Here's a mini:



As for how long they can be useful, ponies generally live a pretty long time and it's not unusual to find active individuals in their mid-twenties. By 30 almost all ponies are retired or doing "photoshoot of toddler riding while mom holds toddler steady and someone takes a picture" sorts of jobs.

[adafrog]

Word. Turns out riding on a pony all day with or without a saddle while you're little gives you a good seat. And confidence. Because kids don't know to be afraid they will do all sorts of shit (like climb up their pony's neck, or sliding down their butt, or riding in a halter and no shoes, or.....lolol)
Also good to fall off at that age because you bounce. lol

[crockpotcauldron]

Oh wow! That's really cool to know, thank you for going into so much detail!