Horse riding

littlemimmy

Does anyone horse ride? I used to ride regularly, and actually stopped before I was diagnosed with RA. I'm now very overweight, but would love to get back in the saddle 'one day'.

However, having not ridden since my diagnosis, it's just occurred to me that I'm not sure whether it's wise. My wrists are getting pretty bad, and I constantly fear falling over and hurting them, so am I going to cope with the prospect of a 30mph fall from 8 feet?!

Has anyone got any advice or experience they can share?

stickywicket

We've had a few horse riders on here. As I recall, they tend to be wondering f they can carry on especially if they own the horse and are finding mucking out difficult.

I don't know how badly you're affected so please don't be offended if I ask have you considered RDA? I'd never ridden until I was years into RA with a couple of TKRs. I carried on through two THRs but, after the knee revision my surgeon wasn't too keen on my continuing.

RDA has all standards of riders from hopeless (me) to paralympians. We had one girl with cerebral palsy, learning difficulties and hemiplegia and you'd never have believed any of it if you saw her on a horse.

Of course, there are no guarantees you won't come off. I never did but a pregnant mare I was riding once tried to go down and roll over me. Prompt helper action stopped her. You do need a health professional to assert it's OK for you to ride before RDA will accept you.

There might be some old threads on riding if you do a search.