How did you get started with horses??

Our family always had horses, I was born into it, and when I started school, my group of friends all had horses. My childhood was filled with horses & friends, we take off on the morning with our horses and ride everywhere. I had a paper route which I delivered on horseback. I never shook the habit, always had horses and probably always will. My daughter is grown & on her own and has horses and now my granddaughter is 2 months old and will be having her first horse ride soon. Horses are good for your health and promote good clean living. Oh, I like the smell of them :))))) but not when they fart :((((

I started riding my neighbors horses when I was around 8. Once I moved out it was a long dry spell but finaliy at the ripe old age of 38 I have my own. Not only am I living my dream but I have a horse crazy 11 yo that I am able to share it with.

I was 4, and I found an old photograph of my mom riding this horse named Misty. I was in my first lesson the next year.

Oh, this is a lovely thread!
Well, none of my family are horsey whatsoever and I loved horses since the age of about 3. I had lessons from about 5-7 and then had proper lessons at about 9 til the age of 15. My mom then declared riding lessons too expensive (the rate went up every few months) and started hunting round for somewhere else to ride. There's this road close to where I live that has a house and horses, so my mom literally just went up to the people and asked if they knew anyone that would be willing to let me ride for money. These people said them, but for free, cos the horses needed exercise. So for the past 2 years, I've been riding and looking after Lottie and Tazz. I almost feel as if they were my horses because I've been so involved in them, but my life's ambition will always be to own my own horse.

I have no idea why I started liking horses, my parents had no interest whatsoever, despite both of them being born/raised on farms that had working horses, or a pony and trap ...

I did find out a few years ago that my grandfather had been in the Cavalry in WWII

I can always remember liking ponies and wanted one as soon as I was able to ask, but my parents weren't interested and would get really angry at me for asking.

When I was 12 a riding school opened in walking distance of our house, so I started having lessons. The woman who owned the place didn't like me and would put me on the slow, old, dopey ponies and it was over a year before I ever managed to canter, and another year before I learned to jump.

I saved up all my money and when I was 18 I bought myself a pony, I had her for nearly two years before being offered a job as a groom at a showing yard, and my parents made me sell the pony. The job offer was removed (apparently a few days after the woman offered me the job - after a lengthy interview process because she wanted the right person for the job) a boy wandered into the yard and asked "any jobs going?" so she hired him on the spot! (as a PS to that, she phoned me a month later pretending not to know who I was and asked if I was looking for a job as a groom in a showing yard etc, apparently she'd hired a young man who'd left! Hah! I didn't take the job, I thought she sounded a bit 'crazy' TBH) andyhoos there was me with no job, no pony and no money to buy her back as I'd spend half the money I got for her on new gear I'd need when I left home

Over the next 25 years I had lessons sporadically, three years ago I started riding again after a 4 year break due to a [no horse related] back injury, and a year later I bought myself a new horse

These are great stories! I wish I could find a pic of my old mare Sugar but any pictures I do have of her are boxed up somewhere waiting to be moved lol. My parents were never horse people either and in my teens it was a constant struggle to keep them. My dad thought they were a waste of money and dangerous and he didn't want me involved in them. I would have LOVED to be born into a horsey family. The odd thing is I'm the first in my whole family to love horses and be so involved in them.