Re: Touchy subject rider weight

wagonsroll said:

Well I'm a dress size 26 - 32 depending upon which part of me you're dressing! I'm always interested in all forms of bigotry so tell me tommy tank why should I "in your opinion" be too big to ride?

Its the English language I know but do you know what you have suggested.

Re: Touchy subject rider weight

 Why should we push our horses to be fit and not ourselves.

Re: Touchy subject rider weight

I've been reading all this with interest, but haven't commented until now....

as 3MMM said, there are a lot of people with health and metabolic difficulties out there who although large in size still want to enjoy their horses, and if your horse is up to carrying your weight, why on earth not?

Horses have evolved into many different types and kinds for doing a variety of jobs, not just the average riding horse, or the tb & arab, bred for speed.

There are the heavy draught horses, Shires, Percherons, Belgian Draught, Ardennais, Boulonnais, Clydesdale, to name but a few, and they are bred for weight carrying - and although she doesn't mention it, wagonsroll has I think 2 percherons, who as I just said, are bred for weight carrying.

So if you ride the horse to suit your weight, and don't take it out of it's bred-in comfort zone - ie take a tb to pull the Wadworths beer dray - then I can't see a problem.

Re: Touchy subject rider weight

lydiarose said:

 Why should we push our horses to be fit and not ourselves.

I'm overweight but i am a lot fitter than alot of the skinny people i know!!! Don't think that just because someone isn't skinny that they aren't fit, a very sweepng statement that.

Re: A touchy subject

Isn't the point of the original post that someone who is 3 stones overweight thinks they're too heavy to ride a horse, horse, not pony, what kind of a world do we live in when being 3 stone overweight means the difference between enjoying a wonderous hobby and lifestyle and not!

Please do not think i am taking this subject personally I dont think their is any convincing bigots to see another viewpoint this is why I wouldn't have a conversation with a member of the Klu Klux clan. My point originally was just because you're over a dress size 26 doesn't mean anything, a person who is 5'2 can weigh 14 stone and be in at least a dress size 26, so size isn't relevant to weight. Weight isn't relevant to fitness, and size isn't relevant to lifestyle.

IMO people who think that larger people are large due to what they eat are basing this "assumption" on their own lifestyle choices, ie I'm a lazy so and so and eat too much etc, have done this for the last 10 years of my life and slowly put on 2 stone, i'll change my lazy habits and cut out on the crap and i'll lose a stone, because of their lazy nature it then becomes " I'll get round to losing the last stone when i feel like it but i'm really working hard at it" 

Rhapsody the young man  you are talking about probably suffers with a rheumatoid condition called Inflammatory Metabolic Syndrome. This condition has now been proved to be causative of atherosclerosis rather than a response to poor diet and lifestyle conditions, i would ask any health care professional to bare in mind that just because the patient in front of them has received such poor medical care that they remain undiagnosed resulting in a heart attack aged 21, that this doesn't mean that he doesn't have an undiagnosed condition. Strangely IMS sufferers have low doses of LDL and high doses of HDL but still end up with atherosclerosis.

Cocos mum if peopple were educated and informed we wouldn't be having this discussion!