Here's a whole whole other look at horses. I wrote it a while back when a friend went hunting for two weeks, with a bunch of other guys, all on horseback.

About that horseback riding stuff. Now there’s a real waste of time. Horses don't have shock absorbers (in case you haven't noticed by now). Furthermore, and this is the worst part, there is no way to send email from a horse. And until there is I say 'let 'em eat grass.'

Personally I learned better than to ride horses a long time ago. When I was a kid about six or seven, my Dad and Grandpa had cows (Now there's a whole other lesson in stupidity). Anyway, in the summertime the ponds dried up and we had to take the cows to the river to drink and we had to ride these disgusting smelly bumpy old horses to get them there (and not only did they have no email they weren't air conditioned either). We only had a few horses and there was a whole bunch of cousins so we had to ride bareback with three or four on a horse. Well, I always got the tail and I gotta' tell you horses have some serious 'flatulence' problems.

I fell off about every day and sometimes the horse would step on my toes. On really bad days they stepped on my fingers. Sometimes all three or four of us would fall off. Then we'd wind up in a tangle of arms and legs and sometimes a fight would break out. We almost couldn't get back on either cause the horse was real tall and we sure didn't have any ladders and they didn't want us on their backs in the first place. It would have been a lot easier to just turn on the faucet and let the cows drink except we didn't have a faucet.

Well when I got big enough to defend myself, I decided I would never ride anything that didn't have nice padded seats, shock absorbers, and air conditioning. Hey, why do you think they invented cars???

Well, now I feel a lot better. I think I'm ridding myself of a lot of hostility here.

Just another point of view and all for fun.
smile