Quarter Horses- versatile

If you’re looking for a horse that can do it all, I highly recommend the Quarter horse.
My first horse was a grade buckskin Quarter horse mare I called (quite un-uniquely, I’m afraid) “Star.” Star was 16 years old and pregnant when she came to live with me. I knew almost nothing about horses, and so I rode her almost up until the day she delivered her foal. Luckily, I was very young and thin as a rail. Plus, knowing as little as I did, I mostly walked her around the pasture bareback using a halter and lead ropes as a bridle.

Star taught me far more than I taught her, that’s for sure. She was a typical Quarter horse: willing, bold, and able to do anything I asked of her.
She was an excellent trail horse, and after she delivered her foal, I started taking serious dressage lessons using her as my lesson horse. I don’t know if she had ever been trained in dressage. Chances are she had not, since I bought her at 16 years old from a pretty old-fashioned cattleman. However, you’d never know it. She picked right up on everything I was learning as quickly as I did. She learned flying changes, pirouettes, and how to bend flowingly around my leg. She was amazing.

When I wanted to take up jumping, Star was game for that, too. She took me through my first few Three-Day Events, and we always won a ribbon (even a blue one occasionally!).
Star passed away on Christmas Eve at the age of 23 from complications from heaves (emphysema). She’d had heaves when I bought her, and the cowboy who sold her to me was honest about it, but I didn’t know what that was and didn’t care. It didn’t affect Star in any serious way until the last year of her life in any case.

Since Star, I have owned several more Quarter horses, and have loved each and every one.
Whether you ride English or Western, want to show and compete or just want to trail ride, the Quarter horse is an excellent breed to consider if you want a horse that can do it all.