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Old 04-03-2019, 04:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin View Post
To learn to ride a horse on trails usually takes the average person about a week to two weeks if they are doing it several hours per day. Now keep in mind that would be a person who had never ridden a horse before with a well broken in horse.
If the horse is well broken in, you can learn and apply the basics of horsemanship a lot more quickly than that. After a five minute orientation, my kids (12 and 9 at the time), who had never ridden before, were riding just fine. After about an hour on the trail, they were confident enough to try galloping. I hadn't ridden a horse since I was in grade school, 30 years or so ago, and I had no problem controlling my mount. There is a caveat, though- this was on a trail with experienced riders/guides.

I would say, for dragoons, a couple of weeks of intensive training would do the trick. Riding probably wouldn't even take up majority of the cycle. Most of that time would be devoted to care and maintenance of the horses and tackle.

It would be really helpful to have a cadre of experienced riders to assist with training and whatnot, but as long as broken-in mounts are available, raising dragoon units from completely inexperienced city slickers wouldn't be that difficult, or even particularly time-consuming. Like I said, assuming they'd already had basic, in a pinch, said prospective dragoons could be up and ready to go a couple of weeks. The salient factor is the availability of ready riding horses and suitable tackle. That's the main limiter.
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Last edited by Raellus; 04-03-2019 at 07:07 PM.
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