Advice: friend too heavy for horse

The fact that she herself is trying to make up reasons that this horse would still be ok for her to ride kind of ticks me off. Until she is actually at a weight that is fine to ride this horse, she should not be on the horse.

The horse doesn't care if she's cutting sugar out of her diet. The horse is going to care about a sore back.

Be honest and don't let her make excuses. If I was too heavy to ride a horse I would never try to weasel my way on their backs!

Ok, here goes. I'm just going to be straight up and honest with her. Thank you guys, you've helped me work up the courage to do what I know is right, albeit tough.

It's never easy to deny someone something you know they enjoy, but it's not just her feelings that come into play here, it's an animal's health. That trumps hurt feelings every time.

I like! Where do I sign up?

For the OP, I would set a weight limit, based on your horse's size & health, and say that nobody gets to ride if they & the tack are over that limit.

Encourage her to help you do ground work to loose weight!!! I have just started teaching a couple of my horses to ground drive because it means I have to walk to (I got 60lbs of baby fluff to loose). My property is all hills and fairly steep so my walking it behind a horse is hard. You can be supportive by encourage her to loose weight and be more comfortable on a horse by being around the horses. And working with them. Riding isnt everything. People need to learn ground work too.

Why are you afraid to disappoint her. She's not the only person in this world to live with disappointment. Lay it on the line with her. It may provide her with more incentive to lose weight. She may not be clear on what you are saying if you keep dodging the real issue. You are saying one thing and she may be hearing another.

Good luck telling your friend, I know it sucks but it has to happen!!
I would definitely offer to let her groom the horse and you could offer to let her do ground work with the horse, like doing obstacle courses with your horse on foot or something!

As I said, I'd explain to her why, using the 20%:rule for your "damaged" horse, more for a young, healthy one. Do the math, her plus tack equals so and so many %.... and, if she is willing, ground exercises as described above, I particularly like the ground driving. If she'll stick with this, she'll be soon at a weight which makes riding possible.

Most people I know who are over weight are concious of this fact and tend to feel bad if asked to ride anything that they feel can't support them.

Of course you do find people who consider horses machines and think that since the animal weighs so much, it should be able to cart them around. This could be a sense of denial on her part.

"I can ride, I cut sugar from my diet"

Well, honey...not to offend, but sugar simply isn't enough if you want to drop a large amount of weight.

At the weight she is now, it not only poses a threat to the horse's health, it poses a threat to her own health. If she is that extremely overweight, she doesn't have the muscling to keep herself on the horse if the horse would do anything spontanious. Good rider or not, you need muscle if you want to sit a rollback/bolt or anything else a horse can do that's out of rythm. I knew a woman who was so grossy overweight that when the horse turned sharply on it's haunches, she just plopped right off. She had to cast her arm with pins and slings and whatnot.

Its not just about weight loss, its about muscle gain. It just won't hurt the horse, it has the potential to hurt the girl. Good for you for putting your foot down and not buckling when she wants to ride. It will keep both parties equally as safe.

For some reason this does offend, you have no idea why or by how much this woman is overwieght, yes we have a report that a Doctor told her that she was morbidly obese, but we don't know, this just sounds so condescending to me

I would once again say, assuming a lot again, she COULD by huge because she is an Olympic Shot putter and be a mass of muscle, I know not likely, but still please don't make assumptions on what she can and can't do at that size. The question did not ask anyone to make comments like this.