Hidden Spring Farm

This 🙌🏼

*** LENGTH OF SCHOOLING SESSIONS ***

Following my post from this morning, about Johnnie only working for 15 minutes, as he worked so well, I thought I’d give my opinion on how long horses should be worked for. This is my opinion. It is based on both my experience and understanding as a rider and horsewoman, and my knowledge as an equine vet with 12 years’ experience.

My horses are never, ever, schooled for longer than 30 minutes. This is more than enough time to achieve something, and if you haven’t achieved your goal after 30 minutes, it’s unlikely that you will by plugging on for longer. This 30 minutes includes my warm up, and a couple of short walk breaks.

I haven’t really had lessons for many years, but when I trained with Jennie Loriston-Clarke, and then more recently with Olly Barrs, their lesson times are 40 minutes. This includes warming up and warming down. Frequently, they wouldn’t go on past 30 minutes. Horses learn by repetition, not by grilling them for an hour at a time.

Horses also break easily. They damage ligaments and tendons. Yes, this is often unlucky and frequently caused by a sudden twist in the field. But it’s also frequently caused by too much schooling, especially if the surface is deep, or uneven. Proximal suspensory ligaments are not designed to take the weight of a horse in collected work for hours. Once a PSL is damaged, you are often looking at a lengthy rehab, or surgery to cut the nerve that supplies it (neurectomy). That is not to say that every horse with PSD has been overworked, before I offend anyone!

Horses break more easily when they are tired. A tired horse is more likely to trip, possibly resulting in ligament or tendon damage. Muscle needs some degree of fatigue to condition it, but not to the point of exhaustion.

A horse’s brain also breaks easily. Fatigue can also be mental. Granted, some horses’ brains don’t take much to break, but if a horse becomes stressed or can’t work out what you are asking him that day, then take a 24 hour break, and go for a hack, or just lunge the next day. Or give him a day off.

Most horses will be fit enough for their job, without being ridden 6 days a week. The main issue with lower level competition horses, is that many are fat. Exercise is a great way to get horses to lose weight, true, but not without reducing the amount of grass or hard feed they are receiving. Schooling a fat horse for an hour, will cause joint, tendon, and ligament problems in the long term. Find hills to slowly jog them up, or even walk them up, if you are wanting to exercise more to help with fitness and/or weight loss. Don’t school them more. Trotting endlessly around a flat arena isn’t really going to help with fitness.

If you are going to school, then add plenty of variety. Make sure the horse is working from behind, and not dragging himself along on his forehand. If you don’t enjoy schooling, you will be more inclined to switch off and trot endless 20m circles. So go for a hack first, and then just do ten minutes of intense schooling when you get home. That will keep both human and horse brains fresh!

This is an enormous topic, and it would take me days to cover it all, so this is really a brief summary. Keep schooling sessions short and productive, and if the session is going wrong, take a break!

Photo is of my wonderful Harold, on his lap of honour for winning the Advanced Medium Regionals, to qualify for the National Dressage Championships, a good few years ago now!

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Great results from this months Warhorse HT. While it was very wet, it was also very fun and well run as usual.

Sophie and Baloo did their first starter HT together. An impressive dressage score of 21.7 put them in the lead and despite a few time penalties, they held onto the lead for a blue ribbon!

Gina and Just One More also lead their starter division after dressage. A cautious ride (due to concerns over slipping on XC) gave them a few too many time penalties and sadly took them out of the placings but thrilled with a confident ride in both jump phases and no jump penalties.

Katie Grochmal and Mystic Love Song made it back to competition after more than three years since their last run. They laid down a first place dressage test and finished on their dressage score of 22.4 after two beautiful and clean SJ and XC rounds in their BN division.

Kym Ferguson and Mouse made their Eventing debut at BN. A competitive dressage had them sitting in 3rd and they finished in 2nd with just one rail to add to a solid first time out.

Jessie Hayes and Fatty also made it back to 3 phase competition after a lengthy break. Great dressage and two awesome double clean jump phases put them in 3rd place in a large and competitive division.

Marsha Severt and Tenley Jones were able to join in the fun on Saturday for the schooling day. Tenley and May are showing great potential in all phases and Marsha did a great jon channeling Brody’s obvious excitement to be back out on XC.