Have you ever had a brilliant idea to work out at the gym for the first time in months? Or perhaps you made plans to go on a hike with some friends to get away from the television for the day. What about going for a horse ride after a few months of hibernating indoors during a cold wet winter?
How did you feel the next day? Tired? Sore muscles? Did putting on pants seem more work? Did sitting cause your bottom to scream? Did you ask yourself why the hell you exercised so much when you were so unfit? You should have stayed at home, in bed.
Yet, so many of us do that to our horses.
Every weekend, some of us take our horse on a 2 or 3-hour trail ride without any preparation. We don’t even give a passing thought whether our horse is physically fit or not to carry our weight and trek across the country. We ride them long and hard because we can. We make no effort to check our horse is fit enough for the task. The fact that our horse does not collapse in a heap or buck us off due to the spasming of damaged muscles, is a sign to us that these once-a-week trail rides are perfectly fine.
I’m not picking on trail riders because we all do it. Even horsemanship clinicians are guilty of demanding a work load from students without a thought to how fit their students horses are.
I’ve been to clinics where horses normally ridden for a short lesson once a week are required to carry a rider for 3, 4, or 5 hours for 3-plus days at a clinic. I have been to colt starting clinics where the first ride on a horse has lasted 2 hours.
At club rallies and competition events, adults and kids will sit on their unfit, overweight ponies for hours. I also know people whose horses are only ridden at polo cross events or when attending a fox hunt or a camp draft.
When I was trekking around eastern Australia I sometimes came across other people on long treks. Their idea of preparing their horses for long treks was to drag their unfit and ill-prepared horses from the paddock and let the trekking build their fitness over days and weeks. As you might guess, most of those horses needed to be retired from their trips after 2 or 3 weeks through soreness and injury. It was like a “survivor” type reality television show.
Working a horse should begin with frequent short rides of low exertion. Incrementally, the frequency and length of ride increase, along with the amount of effort asked of your horse on each ride.
For example, when preparing for a long trek I would start by riding 3 days a week. After a several days, I would increase it to 4 days, then 5 days a week. After about 8 or 10 weeks I would be riding 6 days a week. I would start by riding for 30 minutes a day. By the 10th week, I was riding 4 hours each ride and adding hills and rough terrain to the rides. On the first training rides, I would just carry the minimum gear. But over the weeks, I would add more weight and packs. By about 12 to 15 weeks, my horses were ready to start our trip. At all times how far I would push my horses were dictated by how well my horses were doing. Each day began with an assessment of my horse’s physical well-being. In large part, that dictated how long we would travel that day, which horse carried me and which horse carried the packs, how many rest stops we would have in the day
Even when I was young and an enthusiastic showjumping rider, an assessment of my horse’s fitness and condition was an important determinant of how much work and the type of work my horses received.
The examples above are just examples from my experience. But the principle applies to every horse, every rider and every activity. If you ride only once a week, it is not okay to take your horse on a camping trip where they will be asked to ride 5 hours a day. If your horse is coming back into work after a layoff, it is not okay to begin with 20 minutes of trotting in the arena.
My point is that working horses is work. It doesn’t matter if you are walking on the trail for an hour once a week, riding 30 minutes of circles in a dressage arena, or you are competing in a 100-mile endurance race. Doing the best by your horse means your horse must have the physical fitness the work requires. Anything less is a betrayal of your horse’s welfare.
L-R; down memory lane with myself, Luke and China