Bringing a senior horse back into work
Our horses are considered mature from the age of 15 years.
As our horses age, the muscles ability to adapt to exercise and stress slows down.
When our older horses are out of work, they will lose muscle condition quicker and be slower to regain the condition when brought back into work than our younger horses. We also will start to see (if we haven’t already) the toll their riding career has taken on their body with signs of arthritis starting to show.
Your horse needs a strong back to hold you. Depending on how long your horse was out of work and how old they are, they will need time to build up the strength of their back to hold you. If they were only out a week or 2 that is fine but if they’ve been out a couple of months they will really need help regaining the strength of their topline to hold you. This is where in-hand exercises and in-hand hacks can be really supportive to your horses condition.
Their endurance will also need to be built up again slowly. As with their muscles, their cardio will take longer to come back into work. Don’t expect them to be up and ready for a half hour of canter if they’ve been out of work even 3 months. You may find yourself doing lots of hacking out and hills in walk and light trot to bring them back into work.
It is always important to ensure they have a good warm up, but even more important in older horses. The older they get the more likely it is that they need a good quality warm up and cool down to prevent muscle strains and injury. Most horses need a good 20min of just walk before trotting and cantering, because this is how long it takes the joints to get working properly.
Keep the exercises easy and don’t just move on because you aren’t getting resistance. While our younger horses like quick training sessions so we finish on a win before we over do their period of time they can concentrate for, our older horses need a little longer on each exercise to ensure they have completely let go and swinging into the movement. Moving on too quickly can lead to muscle strains and injury.
