Reintroducing your horse back to the work

For most Equestrians, The Christmas and the New Year period is an ideal time to allow our horses an opportunity to rest from an intense year both in and out of the race ring. While for some, 2020 wasn’t as significant an event as the years prior year, it’s important to give our horses and ourselves time to reset and get ready to look forward to the coming year.

As we’re all getting back into routines following the holidays and thinking about bringing our horses back to their routines, we’ve compiled many suggestions given by horses all over the globe about how best to approach transitioning them into their normal routines.

Slow but steady

When you’re bringing your horse back to the saddle, beginning with short sessions at a moderate pace regularly is the best way to go. Based on your horse and you, lunging them at the beginning of your sessions for between 10 and 15 minutes is a good method to help their joints move and get any extra energy (aka fuel) from their system before adding a rider into the mix.

After that, you could extend your time by working under the saddle or perhaps some longer reining. Make sure you include plenty of walk or transitions trot and some canter.

Don’t forget to stretch.

Similar to the feeling we feel when we don’t exercise for a couple of weeks and before hitting the gym, your horses can also experience muscle pains and soreness when they take an off from riding. To ease post-exercise pain and speed up their recovery instead of just washing and then putting them back in the paddock, why don’t you opt to massage them using a cream for horse liniment or carrot stretching. Alternately, you could buy hand-held massage guns, massage pads or rugs.

They aren’t the same horse.

Similar to the feeling we feel when we don’t exercise for a couple of weeks and before hitting the gym, your horses can also experience muscle pains and soreness when they take an off from riding. To ease post-exercise pain and speed up their recovery instead of just washing and then putting them back in the paddock, why don’t you opt to massage them using a cream for horse liniment or carrot stretching. Alternately, you could buy hand-held massage guns, massage pads or rugs.

Mix it up

When competitions kick off again, it’s easy to get back to the routine of competing but not to ride for fun. Use the first two months this year to look at ways to change your horse’s routine. You could go for an out-and-back ride, go outside in the open, try a new arena at your local, or try to incorporate some groundwork and other physically stimulating activities.

Safe your horse from Jungle fire 

Happy riding!

We wish you a lot of fun when you bring your horse back to work and that the year ahead brings many happy memories for you both.

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