Our First Horse

When we first started talking about buying a horse, we sought out advice on the internet and from people we knew with horses. It was universally suggested that we should purchase an older horse, 15-20 years old, especially if we we’re mostly interested in pleasure riding. It is reasoned that older horses are generally more gentle and usually have more riding experience. This made perfect sense to us, even though we ignored it to buy the horse (now horses) we have now. As regular readers will know, we have two horses, 6 and 8 years old. That’s pretty young even in “horse years”. One benefit to their youth, however, is that we probably have many years to look forward to, if we keep them (and we plan on keeping them). Just how long could that be? In my quest to answer that question, here’s what I discovered:

• Although some sources indicate the average horse life expectancy to be between 20-30 years, I found accounts of horses living much longer.
• The Guinness Book of Records shows a record of 62 years old. The horse was named “Old Billy”, born in 1760. This, however, is not the norm.
• One of the Champion horses lived to be 41! See Just Like Gene and Roy.
• Some locals here in Tennessee report horses normally live into their 30’s.
• We’ve been told that a “Horse year” is equal to 3 human years. This is the “dog years” approach, where we compare horse life expectancy to human life expectancy. The average American is living to be around 78 these days. In “horse years” that’s 26.

To be honest with you, some quick internet research shows “horse life expectancy” estimates all over the place. I’ve seen 20 years old and I’ve seen 46. My non-technical way of making sense of the wild variation is to average it out. My un-educated guess is that, barring unforeseen circumstances, our horses should live to be up to 30 years old. For me, that means when Moonshine is a senior citizen, I will be able to sympathize, as I will almost be one myself.

What have you heard or experienced?

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This may seem like an odd post when clearly the 4th of July is both a long time ago and a long time coming, but we have this new tradition of setting off fireworks to celebrate the new year, so this post seems relevant.

One of the neatest things about living in Tennessee is the ability of anyone (18 and older) to buy and light off fireworks. Our horses, however, vehemently disagree.

On the days leading up to the 4th we started stockpiling fireworks for the big night. Of course we couldn’t just wait until July 4th, so we set off a few small ones within sight of the barn. This location was chosen because there was a lot of non-flammable space up there and the horses were still in the pasture. Boom, crackle, whirrrrr…followed by the sound of hooves pounding the ground as our two horses galloped quickly to the rear of the pasture. Later that night I ventured out in the dark with carrots to lure them back in. Both horses reluctantly agreed and came the rest of the way to our barn without further incident.

Fast-forward to last night, New Year’s. We have some fireworks left over from July 4th and last year we discovered that some of our neighbors shoot fireworks at midnight. So after cleaning stalls, I bring a small battery of fireworks down to the paved road next to our house in preparation for midnight. Knowing the horses might not come in if we waited until after shooting off fireworks, we brought them into the barn first and fed them oats. I went through my usual “do I close the stall windows or leave them open?” wondering and decided to leave the windows open. I figured they’d want to see what was going on and they could hear us talking, which might help them to know everything is okay. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….Happy New Year - BOOM! I glanced up at the barn and both horses were moving around nervously. Our fireworks display was short and afterwards we went up to offer Valentine and Moonshine some carrots and lovey dovey talk. They didn’t seem panicked, just a little concerned. We’ll have to work up to the much larger fireworks display we’d like to fire off for the next 4th of July celebration.

This reminds me of a story I’ll share sometime about Civil War re-enactment horses and how they train them to stand calmly next to firing cannons. Let’s just say the training involved fireworks.

Happy new year from ourfirsthorse.com! Here’s hoping 2007 will be the best year yet for you and (if you have any) your horse(s)!

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