Seen this??

[horseylady]

guess which paper

Bloody ridiculous!! I think both of mine weigh about 500kg meaning I'd need to weight 50kg or less if you take the saddle in consideration. My bmi would be about 12!!!

I wish they'd think more before printing such articles.

Typical rubbish from the home of the "scroll of shame"...

I thought there was a rough consensus that horses showed relatively little indication of stress when carrying 15 and 20% of their body weight, and that one shouldn't go above 25%.

That's just a rough guide though; loads of variables - depends on breed, size, conformation, age, fitness levels, age, duration of work and difficulty, ability of rider and weather conditions.

To be fair my mum saw it in the Express too so it's obviously doing the rounds to fill up a bit of space!

?The problem is that these ratios are not widely known by people in the horse industry. This made me go a bit as I'm sure most riding schools have weight limits don't they? I know I haven't been to many riding schools but ds rode at an RDA place last year and they had weight limits for all the horses up on a board. The trekking place we go to in exmoor has a 14st limit even though several of the horses are much bigger and heavier than dhorse whom the vet has said can carry 15st so they are obviously erring on the side of caution to take into account rough terrain and beginner riders. The researcher complains that the 'horse industry' isn't following her ridiculously low limits and then admits herself that they are only broad guidelines and don't include variables like age and breeding so she's contradicted herself really. I wonder how much all that 'research' cost?

Mind you, if it put a stop to all those ads showing hulking great gypsy blokes on tiny little yearlings I'd be all for some 'guidelines' but I don't suppose they will take much notice anyway!

You see with natives they go on a stone a hand. But I wouldn't say that at 60kg I was too heavy for my horses. Ones a section d the other a tb.

Anyway there's no way on this earth I could lose 10kg!!!

What a total load of bollocks! I weigh 14st 8. That's 98kg. So my ideal mount would weigh around 800kg! That's Suffolk punch territory! Which given the fact that in 5ft3 would be absolutely ridiculous!
This scale they are suggesting, might work for a TB, a long backed warmblood, but it's way out for most others!
I don't ride anymore, but we have smaller ponies, and my friend rides all of them. Her main hack, at 9-10 stone, is her 10 HH Shetland stallion. He's 16, and has never been lame or bad backed. A 3 hour hack still ends with him acting like a numb nut! All of ours are the same, and we wouldn't allow someone to ride them if they couldn't cope. The stone per hand is more than adequate for the native breeds. My friends solid highland treats me like I'm not there when I get on him.

Just seen this haven't got time to read it atm though!

"However, the weight guidelines did not factor in things like the age and breed of the horses, the kind of riding undertaken, or the experience of the rider."

Sounds like pretty crappy research then doesn't it?! I would bet anything it's one of these projects college students are strongly encouraged to do without any training in how to actually do research, that produce completely silly results.