Getting Back to Work This Spring? Keep Your Horse Sound!

Take precautions to reduce your horse’s risk of getting hurt while returning to work.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

Getting Back to Work This Spring? Keep Your Horse Sound!
Unless you had access to an indoor arena or migrated south for a few months with your four-legged friend, chances are your horse’s fitness level is not quite sufficient for competition or strenuous outings yet. | Photo: Photos.com
The sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers are blooming, and you might be feeling tempted to launch full-on into your horse-training endeavors.

Maybe you kept fit throughout the winter on the ski slopes or at the gym, but what about your horse? Unless you had access to an indoor arena or migrated south for a few months with your four-legged friend, chances are your horse’s fitness level is not quite sufficient for competition or strenuous outings yet.

While there is no foolproof way to avoid injury altogether, there are precautions every horse owner can take to reduce the horse’s risk of getting hurt. As with any solid fitness program, the key to success is a logical progression and controlling variables such as footing, stable management, and horse health care.

Logical Progression

Many training programs have a pinnacle event in mind. If that’s true in your case, create a plan based on when you want your horse to reach peak fitness. The journey leading up to the main event can consist of weeks and months of conditioning, including a lead up with smaller events to ensure the horse is ready for the more strenuous task ahead. If you’re coming back from a winter of inactivity, it’s wise to start slow with 20 minutes of walking and to build from there. Increase the length of conditioning sessions before increasing intensity

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Equine Guelph is the horse owners’ and caretakers’ center at the University of Guelph, supported and overseen by equine industry groups, and dedicated to improving the health and well-being of horses.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
276 votes · 276 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!