backalleycoyote comments on America is a car country. For decades, millions of families relied on inexpensive cars to get from home to work and school. Now, a growing number of americans can't afford one.

[–] backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Food, ferrier, routine healthcare, housing. Your biggest cost is housing, and the cost of that varies wildly by how fancy you want to get with it. I went with the low-mid end of decent amenities, similar to dog boarding. The horse has protection from elements, a bit of human interaction, space to be outside. I did not include insurance. However, ime, horse vets can be drastically less expensive than small animal vets for similar procedures. I have always gotten the impression this is because dog/cat healthcare is a much bigger industry and like human healthcare it jacks up the price because it can. I also didn’t include tack, but that’s also one of those things where the cost is dependent on how fancy one wants to get with it.

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[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

That does sound pretty cheap. In southern Spain I see people horse riding all the time. I live very close to a big city and I still pass people on horses on public roads from time to time. I think the biggest issue would be carrying my groceries. I would probably need a donkey too.

I have always gotten the impression this is because dog/cat healthcare is a much bigger industry and like human healthcare it jacks up the price because it can.

I learned from Rick & Morty that it's because horses have bigger organs so less qualified surgeons can operate on them.

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[–] backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 4 points 6 months ago

Western US here. I’m in an urban area where a lot of the farmland that turned into housing in the mid-1900s didn’t become modern subdivisions, so we still have sections of the city where people have enough land to keep their own horse, plus stables on the outskirts. Haven’t seen a horse in downtown in a while, but still see them on side roads, on the walking path along the river, and a lot in the hiking trails that run north of the city, which are basically an extension of the town at this point. When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there was a bar in the farm town about 6mi outside the city that had a hitching post out front and the cowboys still rode there to drink.

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