I’ve ridden off and on all my life and before I bought my first horse 6 years ago, I managed to find horses to trail ride in a variety of ways. While I strongly recommend against stealing horses, I admit that I did steal a ride once when I was about 9 years old. My walk to school went by a horse pasture that could not be seen from the farmhouse. One day a friend and I climbed the fence and threw our legs over two horses. Grabbing the crowns of their halters, we managed to ride them around the pasture, unseen!
Since then, I have found more responsible and safer methods to find a mount. In this post I share my experiences with a few different methods, so if you don’t have a regular horse to ride or are thinking of changing things up, you’ll have a few things to consider.
Borrowing: For most of my life I have ridden borrowed horses. Borrowing comes in different forms. If you have a friend or acquaintance who has a horse, they might let you ride from time to time, especially if they are injured or too busy to ride much. In Maine I rode a 17-hand warmblood whose owner couldn’t ride due to arthritis, and she was happy to have her horse get a little exercise.
One of my first borrowed horses, an Arabian named El Ternay, ~1977
If someone has more than one horse, they might invite you to ride with them. This is a win-win because they get a riding companion and get their second horse exercised, and you get to ride. In New Hampshire a friend of mine had three Icelandic horses and we often went out trail riding together, which was fantastic. It’s also fun to get to ride different breeds and I think it can make you a better rider to ride a variety of horses.
The main advantage of borrowing is that your expenses are likely to be zero. Your commitment to taking care of horses might also be zero, or you might happily help muck stalls and do chores, or you can strike a deal where you do chores in exchange for the opportunity to ride. Either way, it is a great privilege to be allowed to ride someone else’s horse and I am supremely grateful to all the people I have known who trusted me with their horses.
Sara, the Icelandic, 2008
Every horse person has different ways of doing things. If you move around like I have, you must learn to adjust to each new situation and go with the flow. You get used to the way one person does things, only to find that the next horse owner tells you that way is all wrong. While this can be frustrating, you are learning about different approaches and can eventually decide which ones you want to adopt for yourself if you ever get your own horse.
Of course “beggars can’t be choosers” so when you ride someone else’s horse, you can’t be picky. More than once I thought I was going to be killed by a borrowed horse, and at other times I thought I would die of boredom on a sluggish one.
The downside to borrowing is that – unless you have a really sweet deal – you cannot count on it. You can’t ride anytime or anywhere you wish, and you never know when it will end. It’s a small price to pay and I have always been very appreciative of the rides I get in these circumstances, but if you want more consistency you might want to step up to the next option: leasing.
Leasing: Leasing a horse is a great option if you want to ride the same horse on a regular basis but cannot afford a horse of your own or do not want the responsibility of owning.
There are many different types of leases such as “free leases,” where you do not pay the owner but pay all the horse’s expenses. These can be “on farm” where the horse stays at the owner’s farm, or “off farm” where you keep the horse at your barn or a boarding barn. A great option is a half-lease, where the horse remains at the owner’s barn and you pay roughly half the upkeep and get to ride 3 days a week. There are many other variations on this theme.
When I was 19 years old and spending a summer in Washington State, long before the internet existed, I drove around and saw a lot of horses standing in pastures who were never ridden, probably the horses of children that had long ago left the nest. I knocked on a farmhouse door, begged the family to let me to take their horses off their hands for the summer, and the next thing I knew I had two horses in my pasture. Nowadays you can often find lease horses through word of mouth or on Craigslist, Facebook, or other social media.
My free-leased horses in Washington, Serene & Joey, 1980
The benefits of leasing are that you can ride on a regular basis and have a horse that you can get to know and build a connection with. And, if things don’t work out, such as your financial situation changes or you decide the horse is not the one for you, you can get out of it (though how quickly will depend on whatever agreement you signed).
The downsides include the fact that you might fall in love with the horse and one day the owner wants him or her back full time. You are also subject to following the owner’s rules and could find yourself in conflict with them. And if the horse gets sick or goes lame, you will still be paying the lease without being able to ride; welcome to the world of horse ownership – the owner is in the same boat.
My leased horse, Gold Fox, in 2015. When he died I was as devastated as if he were my own.
Leasing (in particular a full lease) is a great stepping stone to owning if you are considering buying your first horse. Owning a horse is a huge responsibility; leasing can be a dry run to test out whether you want to eventually own. You discover the myriad of things you never had to deal with before. There are farrier visits (and the bills), veterinary care (and the bills), feed, supplements, blanketing, vaccination, and so much more. There is the stress of discovering your horse is lame, or coughing, or off their feed, and the late night visits from the vet.
Owning: Owning a horse might be the scariest thing to some people, and the most comfortable thing to others. Just like when it comes to houses, there are owners and there are renters. I own my house and, since purchasing my first horse, am definitely in the equine ownership camp.
The best thing about owning your own horse is that you become a team and can work together over many years to develop your respective skills in your chosen discipline(s). It is also wonderful to not be beholden to anyone else regarding when, where, or how you can ride, or how you manage your horse. Of course, if you don’t have a lot of experience, you should educate yourself and get advice from others about care, feeding, training, etc., but at the end of the day, the decisions are yours.
I really like the security of owning my own horse. Just like I know that I can live in my house forever if I want to (assuming I keep paying the mortgage), my horse is mine forever.
My heart horse, Tupelo Honey
That said, nothing is for sure and just because you can trot your horse along your favorite trail today, doesn’t mean you can tomorrow. At the barn where I board there are 24 horses and it seems that at any given time there is at least one who is lame, recovering from an injury or illness, or getting its feet soaked daily for a hoof abscess. Any number of things could happen to my horse at any moment and my idyll would end, temporarily or even permanently.
So, before you buy a horse you should seriously consider if you can weather the storms of illness or injury, how much you are willing and able to spend on veterinary bills, and if the knowledge that it could all end in a split second is worth the joy. For me, it is. When I bought my horse Tupelo I knew that he could die the very next day, but I also know that it was much more likely he would live for many years, and I did not want to miss all that joy.
Happy Trails!
Monica
❤