DefinitelyDressage.com

I'll go first. I'm 29 in the first picture, 73 in the second

Love it! I'll have to go hunting for old pix later!

Does this include 40 and a *bit*?

As a helmet-free 3yo in 1981 on Rascal, my first pony:



Last Thursday (38 years later!) with Maia:

Sure, why not? I just thought under 30 wouldn't generate as many differences. ;0)

Hot4Spots wrote:Sure, why not? I just thought under 30 wouldn't generate as many differences. ;0)

Lol. I am over 40! Just not by a whole lot.

Hots4, I love your photos and this is a great idea....

...but I only started riding at 30...and am now 51. Need to hunt for old photos! (I look much better on a horse now after some decades of education )

Then, 17 years old:

Now (today, in fact!) 71 years old:

Love photo threads! This is me "then" age 14 at the county fair. This was my heart horse Jaguar - we had just won the hunter hack championship.


Now, 27 years later on Susan's mare Kyra:

Zola--my Irish cob. Such a great horse! This would have been around 1986, I was 25


34 years (and regrettably, probably a many pounds!) later...

I notice most are posting ON their horses (not just snuggling with them like my first post), so here are a few OLD pics of me on my horse(s):

Top is at a horse show (hunter/jumper) at Bercut Field in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco (circa 1975). The reason we are all looking in the same direction is that a friend's horse had fallen in the arena (the dark grey in the foreground) and had stepped on her arm getting up. She was okay, but was taken away in an ambulance. The second picture is my grey - the really white one - jumping in her poor style over a "jump" on the cross-country course we all had built, hidden behind the trout casting ponds in the Park. A "Honda cop" tried to jump some of them (there was a drop!) on his motorcycle and got hurt, so when he got better he destroyed our entire course (which even included a water ditch - the trout pond's drainage channel) The third Is circa 1978 on my first, best event horse, Chico, on the cliffs above Ocean Beach, San Francisco. That water is about 300-400 feet below.

lovely pics! Im NOT OLD ENOUGH teee heeee

Lovely automatic release Hot4Spots.

Me, probably about 6 years old, and me at 55!

Here are my photos. Left taken during the "Indian Wars." The right at National Western Stock Show in Denver Colorado:



The left photo was taken during a private clinic with the late Jean Claude-Racinet. Right photo was taken at my farm.



Bonus pictures. How many people have photos taken 25 years apart with the same equine?

My schoolie Ladybug in the early 80s. Note the rust breeches.



Me and Miss A, 30 some years later. I am convinced Miss A. is Ladybug reincarnated.

Paula - I LOVE rust breeches (you can see a pair in my jumping pic), but they only seem to be available these days thru Tailored Sportsman, which I don't like. I did Land Rover aka not-rolex, in April and a breeches retailer had a rust pair of riding tights I bought and just love. They are rust, with a tackified full seat in light olive with foxhounds on it. LOL

I'm 39 in the first photo; 51 in the second.



Flynn, RIP, one of my favorite-ever lease horses. He was a TB bred to be a hunter who decided to become a dressage horse after he got bored with jump patterns. He was trained/competed to 4th, but I really learned 1st and some of 2nd level with him at that time, but he also taught me basics about lateral work. I believe he was 22 in this photo. I got to lease him after a scary fall (trip) off another horse I was leasing (who sold anyway!). He was a great confidence builder and really solidified my love for dressage training. I recall doing 10 t-c-t-c transitions each direction without stirrups on him as part of my "homework." Afterwards, he LOVED to hack! He is one of the few horses I've known who would slow down on our way back to the barn. He was an extremely curious, charismatic fellow, and also very handsome.



Emi this spring.

Hot4Spots wrote:Paula - I LOVE rust breeches (you can see a pair in my jumping pic), but they only seem to be available these days thru Tailored Sportsman, which I don't like. I did Land Rove aka not-rolex, in April and a breeches retailer had a rust pair of riding tights I bought and just love. They are rust, with a tackified full seat in light olive with foxhounds on it. LOL

You must tell me the brand!

Buckwild Breeches. They were about $120, so not bad for full seats.

What an incredibly interesting thread! All of you look so good and healthy. I don't have any of these kind of pictures because I didn't start riding until I was 42.

Hot4Spots wrote:Buckwild Breeches. They were about $120, so not bad for full seats.

Uh oh, found their website. Love the rust, and they are ON SALE.

Here is an early one, I was about 4

Another early one


And more currently

These photos are great!! I love seeing 'old' photos and that we are still at it years later.

Here's mine. My parents had a share in a farm which had trail riding. We used to go most weekends when I was about 8 or so? I used to get so nervous I would vomit but I loved the horses. This horse was 'Nibbler' who was tolerant of my nerves. I was a weird kid.
I think it's funny that as a runty kid I still had a big bum

I didn't buy my first horse until I was 30, but rode anything anyone would loan me when I was a teenager. I'd love to be able to tell the runty kid that it might take a while, but you'd have your own lovely horses.

15



50



60

Palomino gelding Rajahi pronounced Ra-gee was my first ever horse when I was 14. We evented together through Training level schooled Prelim. Raj was an extremely safe jumper and an incredible trail horse. I was probably 17 in this picture.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater


Grecor aka Cori was my first born foal in 1989. She was out of my beloved TB mare Cors de Lis by Gixibar AHS stallion. I had actually sold her at 3 and then repossessed her when they quit paying for her. She was not the most talented of horses but very safe to ride. Big girl at 17 hh. Lots of health issues over the years but it was DJD that ended up causing me to put her down in 2010 at 21.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

And of course the big beast Rip also bred and raised by me out of Gallie by Paparazzo. Gallie is by Gixibar so he and Cori are related. My first gelding to raise and train. GIVE ME MARES! He’s been a challenge and still is!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

Cori was just beautiful.

Thanks PaulaO! While Cori was not the most talented of souls I sure appreciated her safeness US. One time I was cantering along in a light seat, letting roll on and had a covey of quail burst up right under her nose. Cori never even flenched. Rip would have had heart failure and been in the next county without me.

For the most part I have bred and raised most of my riding horses, buying just a few over the years. Some ended up not being what I wanted or needed and so I moved them on, others I kept with like Rip, Gaila and Joplin. I've had to let some go for various reasons, they are buried here on our farm (5, 3 mine and 2 boarders) and 2 on the old farm.