Anyone want to share their first horse riding memory / first time on a horse?

[badhairday1980]

Mine was for my friend's birthday, I was about 11 I think. I rode a pony called Rollo.

I had wanted to try horse riding for ages (lots of my friends rode). I was so obsessed I actually used to make pretend horses out of chairs at home and ride them in my bedroom . I even used the shoulder strap off a handbag for the reins and a pillow for the saddle!

So I was sooooooo excited when my friend asked me to go riding for real at the local riding school for her Birthday.

I borrowed my friend's beige jods for the occasion so I would look the part (even though the jobs were far too short for me as I was a lanky kid so I probably looked pretty daft, but I thought I looked the part!).

Was just thinking about that and made me smile

I was staying with my horse mad friend and her just as horse mad sisters at their grandparents home in Oxfordshire (we where all from Liverpool). I was 13 and had never ridden but from the moment I met my best friend she had been getting me more and more horse obsessed. She had spent the car journey to her Grandparents quizzing me about horse colours/sizes/breads of every field of horses we passed!
My friend and her sisters had a riding lesson booked while we where there and their parents very kindly paid for me to join them. My friend and sisters had been ridding a good few years but where graceful enough to share their lesson with me, a lead rein absolute beginner!
I was hooked from that ride and went on to scrounge rides and lessons from where ever I could. I learnt quickly and through hard work and some serendipity by the time I was 16 I was seriously competing other people's ponies for them and learning how to break and bring on youngsters. Over the next two years I ended up with 5 horses on a kind of competing, bringing on loan (but with almost all costs covered by the owners).
From that one little ride in 5 years I had really made the most of every opportunity and worked so hard to give myself a really bright future in the horse world. Unfortunately at that point in went belly up with a competing career ending injury but that's another thread!
I will never forget that moment I first swung my leg over the saddle and felt that thrill of a horse moving under me. Sadly I can't remember the name of the pony I rode that day, I wish I did, that pony shaped my whole life. My competition career may have ended abruptly and young but now I work as a freelance groom and my children are growing up horse mad!

Roadkillbunny lovely story but so sorry to hear about your injury. I hope you can still ride even if you are not competing now?

Yes after my first ride I became pretty obsessed and used to save up money from my paper round for riding lessons. I could only afford a lesson every couple of weeks. When I was a bit older I started mucking out at a local livery yard in return for rides.

My parents are not at all horsey, so although they were not against it, and were really helpful in terms of getting up early to drive me to the yard at weekends, they never really understood what all the fuss was about!

Mine was the pony rides in Colchester's Castle Park when I was tiny! They had a motley crew of mixed ponies, looking back I can't imagine any of them being much bigger than a Sec A, but they were huge to me! My favourite was a little skewbald Shetland. I'd queue just for him every time. That was 30 years ago, and I still occasionally see the pony rides lady around the town. She's always chuffed I remember them.

I was taken to the stables, aged about seven. I rode Midnight and my friend rode Humpty. Midnight was a sweet black pony. Loved riding so much and horses.

When i was ten I had a bad head fall, leaking clear fluid from my ear. My mother was with me and as a nurse insisted i went straight to A and E as she knew it was serious. I had pushed my jaw bone up into my inner ear and ruptured the membrane around my brain. I was fine after a week in hospital, but my mother hated me riding after that and her nerves slightly spread to me. I rode again from time time but never consistently enough for my liking.

Wish I could remember, I nag my Mum for riding lesson and was told that as my sister who was 4 years older than me, had never had riding lesson at my age i would have to wait. Persuaded my sister to start right away so that I only had to wait 4 years. My Mum was so shocked that I had managed to persuade my sister to do anything phoned the riding school only to be told that I couldn't ride till I was at least 4, I said I could wait!

I can't actually remember,but was probably put on a pony as soon as I could sit up.We grew up on a farm and my aunt paid £20 for an elderly,laminitic black shetland called Tarquin,to save him from the meat man.Me,my cousins and sister all rode him,and as soon as we were old enough,were packed off to RS to learn properly.I was 10 when I had my first pony,a spotted pony called Mistral,she had come from a notorious local market and had been re schooled by a charity & cost £220 in 1978.Sadly my sister developed a very serious allergy to horses,so bad that she could be hospitalized because of the asthma attacks her allergy caused,and keeping the horse dust /hair from her became impossible,I lost interest and Mistral was sold.I don't know what happened to her after that,it was the days before passports,she'd be the same age as me now,if still alive.

I don't ride much now as the dds ponies take all my time and money,but occasionally ride Dpony.

When I was about two, my sister had a friend with a cob, about 15hh to judge by the photos. I recall looking down at a thick fluffy mane, my sister was sitting behind me whilst her friend held the horse. I remember it was cold that day and that I liked the smell of horse!

For years I thought I dreamt this, then my sister produced the photos! Parents never knew and still don't...

Don't think I didn't see you sneak in there Mirage.
Nice to see you back.

I was about 18 and on holiday with mates from Uni round the New Forest. They wanted me to tell the hacking place that I could ride (they both could) so that we didn't get given dull nags and a dull ride. I did. Probably not greatly advisable and we were rumbled the instant the nags decided to go for a gallop and I very nearly fell off.

No harm done and it was quite fun for all that.

Mirage I have missed your pony tales :D Did you get a pony for DD2?

Mirage I have missed your pony tales :D Did you get a pony for DD2?

Thank you both..I thought it was time for a break,but it didn't last long.Yes,DD2 has a lovely little loan pony called Brandy,who arrived on Saturday,whom she adores.He is rising 7 and a little green as he hasn't done much,but DD2 is a confident rider,so when he spooks or jumps,she just sits there like a rock.He is very much like the lovely gelding we loaned last year,he was a bit nervous ,but he and DD2 got on really well together. I'm hopeful that,given time,they'll have a lot of fun together.

My first riding memory is of my 5th birthday treat when I was taken out on the lead rein on Brighton racecourse on a little chestnut pony named Bumble. I still remember parts of the ride very clearly, especially how disappointed I was when told it was time to get off. I was smitten from then on.

I have no idea the first time I was 'put' on the pony, but lived on a farm.

My first memory of my pony misty was her pissing off with me onboard & not being able to stop haha. My dad couldn't come after me because he had my little sister on with him & couldn't get through the gap my naughty pony had taken advantage of!

I suspect I was about 4 or 5, as it was in my first year of school. have seen pictures of me on her much younger though but really don't remember it.

I was a late starter, rode first aged 9 when Mum went to college and got a small grant which she spent on our lessons as long as we did the cleaning. The three of us spent from about age 11 to 16 as yard rats at the riding school. I remember thinking my mum was fab for getting up early at weekends and driving all of us to the yard for the day. Once I had my own child I understood her motivation

I didn't learn to ride properly before I was 8, but do have some riding memories before that. The first one was when I was about 6-7 being on holiday at a B&B where there was a pony that I was allowed to ride. My mum led me around the feild, but we lost the chin-cup for the hat I borrowed, so I wasn't allowed to ride again on that holiday as none of the other hats fitted.

The next one is when I was 7, and my best friend at school had a pony. I was allowed to borrow this pony and join in a lesson. After this, I think I consistently begged my mum for riding lessons and she finally relented when we moved to cornwall a year later.

I was a late starter, aged around 11 I think. A riding school in Germany, where we then lived, right in the middle of the village, very odd set up (with hindsight), with the (smaller than average) manege in an old barn...
I rode a Norwegian Fjord horse, called Max. Only did walk and trot. Progressed to cantering a month or two later, again on Max, and promptly fell off.

Loved Max though and if I were not 17st and 6ft1 tall would want a Norwegian Fjord...

Horses are the first animal I have a memory of when I was 3.5yrs old and a couple hacked along our street and stopped outside as the riders knew our neighbour. I remember hearing the clip clopping outside and my parents taking me outside and the riders let me say hello and then let me sit on one if front of one of the riders, it must have only been for a couple of minutes, but that was it!! I remember them as huge, tall willowy handsome horses, like the posh ones in Thelwell cartoons, but they were probably more like the hairy little ponies!!
Ever since then I was hooked!!!

I can't actually remember the first time I rode, I was about 5yrs old. ...the weird thing is I remember the office to the stables smelt of polo mints and still to this day my favourite sound is shod hooves clip-clopping on the road.

My best friend at primary school had a pony. We are quite rural here. all the girls would play 'showjumping' in the playground, round the trees, as we had a woody bit. We had one person being the horse with elastic round your shoulders and one being the rider and we would tear round this mini XC course in the playground over lines of bricks and twigs we found. I nagged for lessons and started at RS aged about 7 I think. Dapple grey pony called Zodiac. I remember I had to lead it in the dark ( Must have been a winter's evening) to the indoor school. He spooked at something and pulled away from me, ripped my nail , I remember. THe teacher grabbed the reins and gave him a hefty kick under his belly, which even not knowing anything about ponies yet , I thought was pretty mean.

THe lesson was OK, but I remember not wanting to go again as I didn;t like the teacher who was a bit shouty. But Mum would not let me give up after one lesson, so I kept going and never stopped loving it. My friend outgrew her pony but kept it when she got a bigger one, and I used to go out hacking with her. I went to a different school as my friend for secondary and lost touch. I met her again soomething like 40 years later as she turned up at my work as an external auditor. She hasn't ridden for year and years and was amazed to find I was still at it and had my own horse.

I started when I was 6.

My first memory, although it might not necessarily have been my first lesson, is of sitting on a pony who had dragged me over to a patch of lush grass, plunged his head down and started munching. The instructor was shouting at me to pull his head up, I couldn't and burst into tears.

Damned shouty instructors!! I sooo nearly gave up once as there was a german teacher at the RS I went to , who was just SOOO mean. My Dad told the RS I was stopping as I was so upset at being shouted at so much, but apparently they had had loads of kids in tears and stopping because of this teacher - so they sacked her - and we all stayed on!!