Training after a year off - what first?

From: Casillas J Evangelina

When you are training a horse that is already broken, but hasn't been ridden for about 1 year, what do you do first? I have had one person tell me to start out with lunging and work from there. What do I do after lunging and is lunging the best thing to start with. The horses have had a lot of training, but their owner hasn't ridden them for a long time due to a pregnancy. She wants me to be able to ride them, but she wants them to be re-trained first. She cannnot train them because she is trying to get pregnant again and she has difficulty carrying the baby. I am offering to train them for her, but I need to know the answers to my questions first.

Thank you.

Evie

Any horse that has had a year off should be started again, slowly, because it will need to develop physically so that it can carry a rider safely and comfortably. Longeing can be a good way to start putting a horse back into work, as it allows you to build up the horse's musculature, re-establish its reflexes, and remind it of its training while putting minimal stress on its joints and support structures. If you have an arena with good footing, and can longe the horse on a large circle (at LEAST 20 meters in diameter, preferably larger for the first month), it would be an excellent idea to work the horse at walk and trot for a month or so before initiating ridden work. Begin with just a few minutes per day in each direction, and slowly add a minute or two until the horses are working mostly at trot (with many transitions) for fifteen minutes in each direction. When they can do this comfortably, the transitions come easily, and they are not sweating or blowing afterward, it will be a good time to begin light ridden work. Longe in a simple longeing cavesson, without saddle or sidereins, and WATCH the horses carefully so that you have a clear idea of their strength, their ability, and their normal stride length. This is all information that you will need to have in your head when you start them under saddle.

Meanwhile, the initial month or so on the longeline will give you the chance to have the vet and farrier out, so that when you DO begin under-saddle work, the horses will have no problems with teeth or feet.

Once the horses are ready to ride, and you've checked to be sure that all the tack fits, begin with a week of walk-work: straight lines, wide turns, gentle changes of direction. When the horses are at ease under saddle, you can begin to work on transitions within the walk, and you can start making the school figures smaller. When that is comfortable, begin trot-work in the same way: straight lines, etc. until the horses are at ease and balanced, then begin work on transitions and figures.

After a month of longeing, and another month of increasing the time spent on trotting, and the difficulty of the work, you should have horses that will be well on their way to being fit for riding. ;-) It may be tempting to go quickly -- don't do it! Going too quickly will actually take much longer, because of lamenesses and layups, and may make it impossible to get where you want to go.

It takes time for muscles to develop, but muscles are the FIRST structures to respond to training and exercise! By the time you see a distinct change in the horses' musculatures, you will know that their bones are BEGINNING to remodel, and that their tendons and ligaments are BEGINNING to strengthen. You can put quite a lot of muscle on a horse in just a few months, but don't let the new shape fool you into thinking that the horse is FIT. Bones take longer to remodel, as do support structures; even if your training is brilliant and the horses are gifted athletes, and even if they never have a sick or lame day during training, you will need to allow a year for this process to take place. Be patient. If you work slowly and systematically, you will create strong, fit, athletic horses that will be a credit to your training.

Jessica

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