November/December 2026 Issue

November/December 2026 | EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN 48 Go ahead... Ask da Mare Dear Mal…a friend of mine who just started riding told me he is going to buy a former race- horse. He says that the horse raced just a couple of months ago, and the owner claims the horse is not at all high strung. My friend has not actually ridden the horse yet, but he says Bongo (that’s the horse’s name) is pretty “chill.” I’m kind of worried that my friend—a truly novice rider—might get hurt by a racehorse that’s not used to non-racing life. He’s planning to board him at a farm where there are some instructors who have experience with training young horses. I’m especially con- cerned because I have been riding for many years, at a barn where they also train racehorses. To me, those horses seem very high strung. Do you think this is a smart idea for my friend? —Worried Dear Worried…Horses are sentient creatures, and they can easily learn to accommodate new life- styles. Your horse has probably had a lot of train- ing—even if he didn’t start his career on the track. But racehorses are not just speed machines. They’re very well-trained and ac- climated to many of the tools you probably use on your horse: leg yields, weight shift- ing, etc. The difference is that they started their lives with a different job. It’s good that your friend is going to take Bongo to a barn where there are experienced instructors. He, being a novice rider, will likely need as much attention as Bongo will get. You should encourage your friend to take advan- tage of as much instruction as possible, be- cause inevitably there will be some setbacks. You should prepare him for those and help him understand that there are always new challenges. If your friend thinks he will be able to just hop on Bongo and go for a trail ride, he should probably reconsider. Generally, racehorses don’t have the opportunity to see all the stuff that trails have to offer. Things like deer popping out from be- hind trees, foxes romping in the fields, wind swirl- ing leaves. So, a big part of what Bongo will need is careful and calm exposure to his new job. Some of the most successful show horses started their ca- reers as racehorses. So don’t get your friend mired in worry; instead encourage him to embrace all the things he’s likely to learn about himself and Bongo. Dear Mal…I was recently at a party and there were several horse people in attendance. I was sort of eavesdropping on their conversation and was kind of confused when they were talking about their horses’ hands? So, at that point I had to admit I was eavesdropping and ask them why they were talking about their horses’ hands. They explained that tradi- tionally, horses’ heights were expressed in “hands,” one hand being four inches. By this time, they were kind of looking at me as if I were an intruder on their conversation, so I backed away, got another drink and began to wonder about all this. How did all this come about? And how come I just found out about it? —Confused Dear Confused…Pretend for a minute that you’re living in Athens 3,000 or so years ago. Some- one asks you about the fabric you’re shopping for. “How much of this do you want?” You don’t have a measuring tape, because they were not invented yet. So you hold out your arm, and say you want a piece of fabric that’s about an arm’s length. It’s re- ferred to as “anthropic units,” no relation to today’s AI developer. Farmers and others who used hors- es routinely kind of settled on measuring horses’ heights by the width of their hands—from closed thumb to the other side of the palm. It was not ex- actly precise, but it worked. Until the Early Modern Period when King Henry VIII was cavorting around and beheading people. He was interested in horses, and breeding what he considered the very best horses for war. He standardized the hand as four inches. People express their horses’ heights as 16 hh, or 16 hands high—the distance from the ground to the top of the horse’s withers. Now that you know about horses’ hands, don’t get too comfortable with it. The Fédération Équestre Internationale, the governing body for international eques- trian competitions, has begun expressing horses’ measurements in centimeters. T H E D I R E C TO R Y A boutique private boarding and training facility conveniently located in Cochranville, PA. Boarding Includes: • IndoorArena • OutdoorArena • Full Dressage Court • Derby Field and many other amenities . 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