Record speed, distance, heart rate and calories while horseback riding WITHOUT counting steps and floors climbed to avoid distorting my statistics

I recommend suggesting Garmin (at Share Ideas | Garmin) to modify their native Horseback activity profile in this way. In the meantime you could record your horseback riding using one of the existing activity profiles suppressing the steps and floors counting. There are numerous ones, but I think Cycling would be the most useful in this case. Once saved and synced, change the activity type to Horseback Riding in Garmin Connect.

I have had the Fenix 7 for a week now, and it has Horseback Riding as a native activity option. From what I can tell, selecting this activity DOES suppress some or all of your steps and floors climbed. I ride (endurance training & dressage mostly) and also run about 5 days a week. On the days that I've ridden but not run, the Horseback riding activity is not counting most of my "steps" that were previously counted when I would ride. For example, I rode 6 miles on a non-running day and only recorded <4000 steps that day from my dog walk.  Additionally, I handwalk my horse a few miles one or twice a week. This evening I did a short hilly walk with him, and I had it on Horseback Riding just to keep track of how many miles he gets per week - it was a 2 mile walk with 300' of total ascent, but today (another non-running day), Garmin had my floors climbed as only 1! Since I need my "Hill Score" more than my horse needs a measly 2 miles logged in Garmin, I will probably change my "horse hiking" activity to be based off of "Hiking" instead of Horseback Riding. 

I do wish Garmin could do what Equilab does so well in identifying gaits from a gyroscope - I still use Equilab almost every ride so I can track minutes in trot and canter. However, I was very pleased to see how well the "Workout" worked for a Horseback Riding activity: I do canter intervals - 2 min canter with 2 min trot, repeat 8 or 10 times - and I use a Polar Equine HRM. I created the workout as an "other" workout (as opposed to "run" "bike" etc. I had the warmup to end upon lap button press. Then when I went to start my Horseback Riding Activity, I could simply go to my Workouts and start the workout. After we'd done our warmup, I pressed the lap button and began our intervals. I could scroll from my main screen (which shows my horse's HR, pace, etc) to the interval screen, which showed me the remaining time in the interval and the interval number I was on. The audible beep was helpful too, though I didn't want my horse relying on it too much to anticipate the gait change so I varied it a few seconds. The watch recorded the horse's HR in the app - I am not sure if there's a way to see the rider HR when using an external HRM (seems like there should be, since the Youtube reviewers seem to test accuracy by using an external monitor at the same time as the wrist monitor). Anyway, the Horseback Riding app has been interesting, although I do miss my thousands of extra steps on days when I run and ride 5-10 miles each! I suppose it's keeping me honest :)