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lady_ganesh
2010-02-23 02:51 pm UTC (link)

Well, I’m glad some people are keeping horse ownership to be something only the rich can afford.

Maybe I'm gonna sound like a bitch here, but it's a fucking horse. You have to feed, board, and train them. There is no $99 Horse Ownership kit you can buy at Wal-Mart. You know why? Because horses are fucking expensive and take a lot of work. Get a fucking cat if you can't afford to keep a horse.

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	frau_eva 2010-02-23 03:08 pm UTC (link)
	No, you don't sound like a bitch. While I'm certain there's a degree of unnecessary snobbery in this line of work, you can't get past the fact that you're caring for an animal that is bigger and eats more than you, and certainly craps more than you do too. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lady_ganesh 2010-02-23 03:09 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah. I certainly know people who are not rich who own horses, but most of them also own farms. This is not a coincidence. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	beccastareyes 2010-02-23 04:20 pm UTC (link)
	Not to mention, I'd bet there are services that allow you to ride regularly if you can't afford a horse. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jackandahat
2010-02-23 04:27 pm UTC (link)

In my experience, there are... but they're £20 an hour. At least. And you've got to stick with pre-defined trails etc. Not satisfying if you're used to having your own. But they're still a hell of a lot cheaper than buying your own! And you don't have to do the mucking out.

Which is the other option - I got to ride as a kid because I was willing to muck out for the prissy princess crowd who were too dainty to get their shoes dirty (I don't mean people who were busy, or couldn't - I mean the ones who were shocked that their horse shits.) - there's a lot of adverts for "horse sharing" which is a much cheapter option than sole-owning.

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white_tean
2010-02-23 06:30 pm UTC (link)

I'm lucky enough to have horses (thankyou Mom and Dad), and I have an arrangement with a friend who had to sell her horse , who is a very competent rider and rides my mare the one night a week when it's family dinner night. It's a good arrangement, because I trust her and we communicate with each-other and get on the same page (and my mare is the type to actually thrive with a seven day work week).

Since I started that, she rides another woman at the stable's horse once a week as well now, and the son of another rider also rides someone's very, very nice horse (and previously rode another) because she's too busy with work to at the moment, and currently our shared instructor is riding my Mom's horse a couple days a week. Anyway, just saying there are some opportunities where if you're still connected with people with horses at an agistment centre and demonstrate that you can school/exercise a horse with skill, you can find people who would like it if their horse was worked a bit more regularly than they can do. It's a lot dependent on the culture of the stables however unfortunately - it wouldn't work at most places I've been, but the owners at our place don't want to be nosy past making sure everyone who rides has signed an insurance waiver.

And in these cases at my stables, the riders don't have to do anything in return except possibly dump pre-made hays/dinner in. I've heard from people who had similar arrangements as your childhood one, and I know there are people who'd be happy with that, though more because if they're part board they'd like someone to take over a couple days a week of mucking out/feeding.

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catchester
2010-02-26 12:12 am UTC (link)

And you can often come to arrangements with local riding schools. You get a reduction on livery fees (and a choice of either full or half livery) if they can use your horse for lessons. Plus, your horse is exercised for up to 3 hours a day, for free!

You have to trust the school isn't going to put bad riders on your horse, but hopefully you'll have a good relationship with them. And if your horse is on half livery, you should be up there a lot taking care of it anyway.

The riding school i went to as a child had a lot of these "loaned" horses and sometimes the stupidity of the owners amazed me. Some didn't have a clue how to actually take care of their horse. One gave his horse colic (much more serious than it sounds) because he fed it the wrong food when visiting for a lesson. It blew my mind that I, an 11 year old kid, knew more about taking care of his horse than he did. (and I could get more out of his horse in lessons than he could :P ).

As children, even though we were paying full fees, we had no choice but to pitch in for the day, mucking out, cleaning tack, learning about feeds, rugs, equipment etc, and IMHO, it's the only way. Learning to ride isn't enough, you also have to learn how to look after your horse, understand it and respect it. The idea of going there, looking all pristine, getting on my pre tacked up horse, having a lesson and handing him off at the end to someone else was and is just alien to me. Taking care of a horse is part of loving it, even the crappy bits like mucking it out.

On the tack issue, many of the saddles/bridled i used and cleaner were 30+ years old, but still in perfect condition. Yes, it's hella expensive, but it will last a lifetime if cared for.

But i guess we're in a disposable society these days. Buy cheap and get a new one when it wears out...

Wow, that was longer than I intended.

TL;DR, Word!

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beccastareyes
2010-02-26 12:32 am UTC (link)

As children, even though we were paying full fees, we had no choice but to pitch in for the day, mucking out, cleaning tack, learning about feeds, rugs, equipment etc, and IMHO, it's the only way. Learning to ride isn't enough, you also have to learn how to look after your horse, understand it and respect it. The idea of going there, looking all pristine, getting on my pre tacked up horse, having a lesson and handing him off at the end to someone else was and is just alien to me. Taking care of a horse is part of loving it, even the crappy bits like mucking it out.

I volunteered at the children's zoo when I was in high school, which was half 'learn about animals' and half 'do anything that doesn't need to be done by a paid person', which included the pony rides. And we did have to learn how to saddle and un-saddle the ponies, care for the tack and the ponies, and so on... because that was what we did on slow days and before the visitors got there (and usually after they left, and when we had to give the ponies a break).

It also taught me a lot about horses. You'd be surprised how much you learn about an animal by having to feed it and clean up after it.

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catchester, 2010-02-26 01:10 am UTC

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beccastareyes, 2010-02-26 01:14 am UTC

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catchester, 2010-02-26 01:22 am UTC

	frequentmouse 2010-02-23 06:25 pm UTC (link)
	Given the price of hay, just keeping a horse alive through the winter isn't something for the poor anymore. Which is also why the burden of FHotD has been about neglected horses, horses sent to meat auction, and scam "horse rescue" operations. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lady_ganesh 2010-02-23 06:31 pm UTC (link)
	FHotD seems like a very depressing site, I confess. Though I liked the banner ads of horses up for adoption. Purty. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

frequentmouse
2010-02-23 06:47 pm UTC (link)

The last time I checked the site was right after a breeder/trainer north of me was all over the news for starving her horses, and I was discouraged to see that for the third winter in a row people were shocked, shocked that with alfalfa retailing for something like $12 a bale people were dumping horses or just not feeding them all over the country. Too many horses everywhere, bought by people who didn't think that they live twice as long as dogs and make much bigger demands for time, space, and money, or at least have a irreducible minimum sum of those three items where scrimping on the first two make the third skyrocket.

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sgaana
2010-02-23 08:52 pm UTC (link)

I've been a regular reader there for a couple of years now, and yeah... it's depressing. I'll confess that I kind of enjoyed the blog more when it was mostly posting pictures of fugly horses and snarking about their conformation, and by-the-by making yet another pitch for "that thing is so fugly it does not need to be bred, creating more fugly horses that won't sell".

But... I can't *argue* with the fact that she has trended more and more towards addressing the logical outcome of what she was snarking about in the first place, which is situations that lead to abuse, starvation, and a slaughter industry that's hard to defend. Nor can I really argue with her choice to get into anti-scam-rescue activism.

It's not fun to READ about. But... yeah.

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lady_ganesh, 2010-02-23 08:54 pm UTC

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frequentmouse, 2010-02-26 10:37 pm UTC

	sarracenia 2010-02-23 08:11 pm UTC (link)
	Seriously. It sucks for the people who can't afford to own one and love horses, but unless they want to harm their horse through simply not having the capability to care for it properly, it's not like there's a better option. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lady_ganesh 2010-02-23 08:55 pm UTC (link)
	Exactly. And having seen horses not properly treated myself, I...yeah. Have the money to do it right, or don't do it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

sgaana
2010-02-23 08:49 pm UTC (link)

Word.

It's like that's a commenter who reads NOTHING else on the Fugly blog, because if you read the Fugly blog at all you get buried up to your eyeballs in stories about people who cannot afford to keep horses, do so anyway, *breed more that they can't afford to keep*, annnnnnd... end up starving and abusing their horses. Not a week goes by without a big story about that on the blog, with heart-rending pictorial evidence.

Keeping. A. Horse. Is. Expensive. If you are doing it correctly and taking good care of the animal. If it's multiple horses, it's even MORE expensive.

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altoidsaddict
2010-02-23 11:05 pm UTC (link)

I don't even know where to begin with that. Maybe informing you of the many ranchers who use horses as well-treated, well-respected working animals and can buy and keep them for next to nothing?

Show barns are such a different reality, I swear. How sad that the show horse industry is so utterly divorced from the origins of the horse as an inexpensive working animal. It's like they think we shoot them for getting a cough or something...

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mary_mac
2010-02-24 12:04 am UTC (link)

Ummm. Show barns? Where? Most people are talking about ordinary riding horses. And ranching is a serious exception to the course of things and even so does not mean that those animals cost nothing - its just that the things that are major costs - training, feed, gear - for hobby riders are invisible because they're already there.

I mean, in Europe, horses aren't working farm animals, by and large, because they cost more to keep than a tractor or quad. The woman we ride with, she owns her horses, her stables, her land, its a working stable on working pasture. But we've not had good summers, so she hasn't got good silage in, so for the fourth year in a row she is buying hay. Hay is like gold dust, because nobody's had a good summer.

So it goes. You spend money on your livestock somewhere. If you can make it up somewhere else, well and good - they're still expensive. If you're riding as a hobby - which in this day and age is most people, horses cost money. A lot of money.

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lady_ganesh
2010-02-24 01:41 am UTC (link)

For starters, people who use horses as well-treated, well-respected working animals are uaully putting an enormous cost into them-- time. Someone with a 40-hour a week office job is probably not going to be able to train a horse themselves. A rancher also calculates feed costs very differently than a hobbyist, and normally has adequate barn and grazing space for them. There's a reason I noted above that most of the people I know who are not well-off who own a horse are farmers.

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ravenscanary
2010-02-24 03:40 am UTC (link)

If actual working horses make up more than one percent of the horses in North America, I will eat my gym shoes.

In other words, we're not talking about the "show horse industry" versus "working horses" here. We're talking about the 1% of horses who earn their keep in work versus the 99% of horses who don't, who are all considerable drains on an owner's resources.

Hell, even make it (in a fantastic, Western fantasy dream world) that 10% of horses are working animals. The other 90% aren't. People don't make money off of owning horses. They are expensive. That's like arguing that because maybe people use sled dogs for transportation in Alaska it's unfair for people to consider dogs to be animals that only people who can afford to take care of them should own.

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altoidsaddict
2010-02-24 02:23 pm UTC (link)

That's true, owning horses in an urban or even suburban area is very expensive. Land is expensive, pastureland is unreliable or overworked, and hay has to be trucked in from more remote areas which drives up the cost.

But the idea that a horse must be inherently expensive, or less practical than more expensive working vehicles, or that you cannot own horses inexpensively would come as a shock to the people I grew up with. I boarded at a place that was transitioning to a show barn from a working ranch and still had both reliable pasture and grew the bulk of its own hay. My main horse was a $350 donation and someone gave me an Arabian former broodmare along with all of her tack. We were dirt poor, but all I had to do was work at the ranch for board - maintenance and upkeep mostly - and win a couple of all-arounds and even with three horses I was making a profit. 90% of the people boarding at my barn were not even middle class, and we did just fine by pulling together and sharing what we had.

The vast majority of the unadvertised boarding stables around me right now have the same arrangements - grow their own hay, low costs, work in exchange for expenses, etc. Working off a $100/mo board and feed bill is not that hard. These places limit how many animals they support to keep the cost low, but it's not like anyone has a waiting list either - because most people out here who do ride recreationally think they need indoor/outdoor paddocks, a dedicated tack room, and a heated, lighted indoor arena surrounded by white fences.

And actually, your analogy at least takes into account that working animals exist. The original argument does not. Some of us still live in places that, thanks to difficult terrain, retain quite a bit of the Old West's practical nature.

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	ekaterinv 2010-02-24 01:50 pm UTC (link)
	The horse was NEVER an inexpensive working animal. Never. Horses have always been hugely expensive to buy and then keep. The vast majority of farmers could not afford a horse. For the wealthy, stables were a very large chunk of their expenditures. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dragonfangirl 2010-02-25 07:20 am UTC (link)
	In terms of work output versus upkeep input ratio, oxen were generally a more cost-efficient choice. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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cmdr_zoom, 2010-02-25 10:22 pm UTC

	sadisticferret 2010-02-24 02:30 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, I thought that comment was at least as wanky as anything else there, if not moreso. I'm playing the world's tiniest violin for her. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lady_ganesh 2010-02-24 02:32 am UTC (link)
	Especially if the majority of the horsey bloggers are right-- I suspect they are-- and you can get decent tack if you're willing to buy it used. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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sadisticferret, 2010-02-24 02:46 am UTC

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lady_ganesh, 2010-02-24 02:52 am UTC

	sceach 2010-03-02 09:01 pm UTC (link)
	When I used to ride my friends and I called horses debts with hooves. For a reason. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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