Hands High

If you ask how tall a pony is the answer will be given to you in hands, eg. 14 hands high (usually written as14hh). But what does that mean?


Well thousands of years ago the hand was a simple measurement where people actually used the width of their own hand to measure things. Of course eventually a set measurement had to be decided for a hand and this was 4 inches or 10 centimetres.


So a hand is 4 inches or 10 cms.


Now where is a horse or pony measured from?


We measure the height of a horse from his withers. So a 10hh pony is 40 inches or 100 cms tall at the withers.


Now not all horses or ponies are going to measure exactly a certain number of hands, most of them are going to be a bit over eg. 13.2hh. What does the .2 mean? Well that is 2 inches or 5 cms. So a 13.2hh pony measure 13 full hands + an extra 2 inches.