does this look like a good deal and a good horse?

[rodriguezpoultry]

If you're just learning how to ride...


Get a horse that's "been there, done that"

Older horses are the way to go with brand-new riders. Get a horse that is a generally laid back breed. (Quarter Horses, Paints...something easy going.)

Arabians are WAY too high strung for me. Probably because they are SO freaking smart.

 

[patandchickens]

Please go find a reputable lesson barn, take some lessons, and ask THEM to help you find a good beginner horse. These ads you are looking at are going to get you into serious trouble.

Arabs are NOT all inherently spooky or high-strung (there are a lot of bombproof ones out there, RoPo); however, relatively few 4 yr olds of any breed make good beginner horses, and this particular Arab is being SERIOUSLY mis-ridden and mis-trained, and is utterly not appropriate for a beginner until/unless someone fixes her various problems first. (She may or may not be sound, either).

Please please please, get rid of this idea that you should be looking for "a good deal" on a horse. When you are new to horses, the only "deal" you should be looking for is to wind up with THE RIGHT HORSE. The horse market is so 'down' right now that you should certainly be able to find a sound sane beginner horse without spending very much -- but do not be worrying about the "good deal" aspect of it. That is a real fast way to end up a) out a buncha money (purchase price is about the least expensive part of horse ownership, and problem horses often cost more to own than good horses) and/or in the hospital with permanent injuries.

And DO NOT BELIEVE anything the seller says regarding the quietness or bombproofness or kidsafeness of a horse for sale. While not all sellers are flat-out liars, it is real real common for words have different meanings to them than to you, or, um, the seller is living in a different version of reality than the rest of us, shall we say. Same goes for the concept of the horse being sound.

Best of luck, please be careful and learn more about horses BEFORE buying,

Pat

 

[SDGsoap&dairy]

That last ad....whoa, that poor mare is in some serious pain in that last picture.

it is severely misridden and mistrained, as you can see from its muscling and how it holds itself.

...and this particular Arab is being SERIOUSLY mis-ridden and mis-trained, and is utterly not appropriate for a beginner until/unless someone fixes her various problems first.

I've never owned a horse but would love to at some point in the distant future. Out of curiosity, can you folks elaborate on these points?

 

[michickenwrangler]

That last ad....whoa, that poor mare is in some serious pain in that last picture.

it is severely misridden and mistrained, as you can see from its muscling and how it holds itself.

...and this particular Arab is being SERIOUSLY mis-ridden and mis-trained, and is utterly not appropriate for a beginner until/unless someone fixes her various problems first.

I've never owned a horse but would love to at some point in the distant future. Out of curiosity, can you folks elaborate on these points?

The ideal is for a horse to travel long and low in a relaxed frame with light contact through the rein from the bit to the hand. You want more muscles on the top of the neck (crest under the mane) than at the bottom. Heavily muscling on the underside is called a "ewe neck".

Now apart from visuals, a horse that has a ewe neck will move with its head way too high, front legs taking most of the impact and its back hollowed out. It will be prone to lameness and back problems. You want a horse to push itself through the hindquarters and carry its own back and head in a relaxed frame.

Most pleasure horses or horses that are not being schooled regularly will have a slight ewe neck, but for pleasure riding a slight one is *acceptable*. Most competition horses in serious disciplines like reining, hunter/jumper, dressage, vaulting and even endurance (all the top riders school dresssage) will have better necks with muscles along the crest and nice backs.

 

[lespaul0738]

thanks guys, again you helped me out, lol

 

[w c]

On the second horse - no, not a good choice for someone to learn to ride on. Yes that's cute that the person can lie on the horse's back when it is loose, but the one riding picture is a big 'Don't Go There' picture. The horse looks hard to control and the person riding it isn't doing it any favors either.

You just don't find nicely trained, appropriate horses to learn on for a few hundred bucks.

On the other hand, if someone trusts that you know what you are doing, they might just trust you enough to GIVE you their old timer to learn on, or let you come to their place and ride. But that doesn't happen unless you can ride some and know what you're doing to some extent.

And yes, if you are starting out in riding, please, please, please DO NOT BUY A HORSE NOW. Take lessons.

These ladies that posted, they know what they're talking about.. Please listen to them.

As appealing as it sounds to buy a horse, even the quietest horse, even the best trained horse, is going to turn into a completely out of control brat in about one month, if you have no riding experience. DO NOT get a horse now, PLEASE. I've seen more people badly hurt because they just HAD to get 'my own horse' instead of taking lessons and learning how to sit in the saddle and control a horse FIRST.

Lots of places give riding lessons. Don't try to scrimp and save here either. Get a decent instructor. Lessons aren't only for people who want to compete at shows. They teach horse control and how to sit on the horse in such a way that if he makes a sudden move you don't fall off, both are very important.

Most likely, after a year or two of weekly (or hopefully even more often) lessons you will know a lot more about horses and you could probably lease or half lease a horse that you can ride now and again by yourself and have a lesson on once a week.

 

[SDGsoap&dairy]

To what extent can a ewe neck be caused by poor conformation rather than muscle development?

 

[michickenwrangler]

Horses with naturally higher set necks are predisposed to them. Many horses are born with a slight ewe neck but if they are never required to work properly, it will just get worse. Again for light trail riding and pleasure riding, you can ride a horse with a ewe neck. But if you want to show or compete in a high impact discipline where a horse is going to carry itself in frame, you'd want to avoid a horse with one. Again, with proper work they can be corrected but it takes a lot of time.

 

[patandchickens]

To what extent can a ewe neck be caused by poor conformation rather than muscle development?

Not to a very great extent, except in very rare truly-pathologically-built individuals.

When the horse is being actively ridden, if the neck looks hollow (concave-up) it is pretty much 100% due to either serious rider error, chronic serious mis-training, or pretty significant pain.

OTOH when the horse is just standing there in the pasture lounging, a larger number of horses have necks that look at best straight on top and in some cases hollowish if they have very high withers. While that is not something you'd ideally want in a top-notch athlete for most disciplines, it is totally liveable for normal riding-horse AS LONG AS IT DISAPPEARS WHEN RIDDEN.

The thing to remember is that the topline of the horse's neck does not have skeletal structure anywhere even NEAR it, except at the withers and the poll. The neckbones of the horse are down in the middle-to-lower-third of the neck. So the shape of the topline of the neck is determined by what's going on with a) the ligaments and muscles of the loooong muscles of the topline (neck-back-croup) and b) the muscles of the neck itself, including those that articulate the shoulderblade.

Pat

 

[w c]

Most horses aren't trained very well. They go along pretty good as long as there is no contact with the reins to their mouth. But when the rider starts using the reins the riders are unsteady in their seat and don't balance well, and that makes their hand bounce up and down and jab the horse in the mouth, because they are jerking on the reins all the time. This horse's neck looks ok until someone rides her, LOL. Then she starts cranking her head up in the air as high as she can get it, to try and avoid the jabbing from the rider's hand flopping up and down. The rider's feet are out in front of her, she's off balance and so the horse's back is getting a pounding too.

'ewe' neck joins with the body low down on the chest. The horse has to 'crank' his neck up in the air just to balance at all. Pair up a badly shaped neck and a bad rider and you get...well...bad stuff.

In many forms of riding the idea is to get the horse's head down and keep it down. It doesn't really matter if the horse is off balance as long as he has that 'look' and keeps his head DOWN. So because of that, some people just look at 'is the head up' or 'is the head down'. Head down is good, head up is bad. Then there's a type of riding where the rider is more worried about the horse's balance and how he's working his back and hind legs to power and balance himself. His head isn't going to be cranked up in the air into giraffe land, but it isn't going to be kept way down low, either.