🐴Fitness Simplified🐴
Take you, the you who is reading these words, and ask yourself these simple questions---
“How would I like it if I had to perform some physical task which I wasn’t fit enough or strong enough to be able to handle without feeling fatigue, pain, and distress? How would I like it if, when I tried to relieve the discomfort by slowing down, someone physically forced me to keep going?”
Simple, right? So if you wouldn’t like it if it happened to you, what makes you think that it’s OK to do it to a horse?
Horses are stronger and faster than humans, but they still get tired when they are asked, or, more likely, made, to do things that cause fatigue, pain and distress. So be a decent horse person, and do the right thing. Either make sure that you have worked them gradually and consistently enough to build in enough fitness and strength for whatever it is you are asking, or don’t ask.
Much of this is a matter of degree, sure. If all you do is slow walking trail rides, that requires one level of fitness. If your goal is a longer, faster ride, or something that takes galloping, like fox hunting, eventing, it often takes many months---sure as shooting not weeks---to build in that reservoir of conditioning.
If you can’t tell whether or not your horse is ready for whatever it is that you want him to do, go get help from someone who CAN tell.
Of all the bad things that some humans do to horses, and there are many of them, I would say that asking an unfit horse to work above its level is the most common.
Which is sort of good news, because it is one of the easiest to fix, and requires the least riding or driving skill. All it takes is creating a consistent pattern of gradually increasing exercise. They don’t become magically fit standing around, they don’t get fit by having a couple of days of hard work followed by no work, followed by hard. They get fit over time by gradual increases, interspersed by recovery.
If YOUR goal is to be any kind of horse person, this is the most important piece of the puzzle to learn how to do, this right here.