Health Benefits of Horse Riding
As well as being a fun outdoor activity there are many health benefits to horse riding. Riding provides great exercise to improve you physical health.
Horse riding is a great way to stay fit, and did you know that horse riding & being around horses has many other physical, mental and social benefits?
Reduce Stress
Spending time with horses is great for reducing stress levels! As well as the physical exercise of riding, grooming or mucking out a stable, simply standing and watching them can be very relaxing!
Make Friends
By spending time with horses you will meet many friends with similar interests. Most horse people will tell you that they have met their best friends at horse riding lessons and competitions.
Teamwork
Horses don’t always do what we want them to do and so creative thinking is needed. You can’t force your horse to do something, so how can you work with your horse to solve the issue?
Self Awareness
horses are herd and prey animals, which means that they have a strong emotional sense and use this to survive. If one horse in the herd is scared, the others will also become frightened. Horses respond in the same way to people. If you approach a horse when you’re angry the horse will want to move away from you and may not do what you’re asking. If you’re scared, the horse will become scared as well!
Trust
Horses don’t have an agenda for the time they spend with us. They don’t care what somebody looks like, what you’re wearing or who your friends are. They don’t lie or do things deliberately to annoy us. All they care about is how we make them feel in that moment, and so if a horse allows you to interact with them you know that it is because they trust you.
Mounted Police like in the picture above have to build up an incredible amount of trust with their horse. Police horses are often in alarming and potentially dangerous situations that most horses would run away from. Police horses trust their riders to keep them safe.