Training....how often? how long?

[wingnut]

My three youngest girls are now 3, 2 and 2. We've been working on ground manners since they came to live with us in 2009. Of course, as we start training anew this spring, we're spending time knocking off the cobwebs...both theirs and mine!! I am working toward having the three yr old ready to pull a cart sometimes this summer....or even into the fall if necessary. I would like to be able to say she's "green broke" before we have to put things away during the cold weather next winter.

The "babies" (they will always be that I think!) will each be two in late May/early June. While I only plan to show in halter one of the two (can't manage two) at our local club shows, right now I'm not sure which one I'll show so I'm training them both. We're really concentrating on "ring" behavior so that we can consistently rely on them doing what needs to be done while we're in the ring. We learned the hard way last year when, as yearlings, each show that we did was totally hit or miss with regards to their behavior ("I will NOT trot. In fact, I will not MOVE, so there!)

Last but not least, we basically free fed them hay this winter as it was terribly cold most of the season and I decided I wanted to have warm horses and would worry about getting them "fit & trim" once the weather broke in the spring. So everyone but the hard keeper has some pounds to lose.

I'm currious for input on how our training should go based on your own experiences. This past Sunday, I would groom one horse, walk them for 30 minutes (mostly level ground with very minor grades) then do some lunge work (no round pen available) in each direction for a maxium of 5-8 minutes total. The walk was to ensure they were warmed up appropriately and the lunging was to work on verbal commands and get some trotting in to start working on getting those bellies reduced.

The weather was beautiful again yesterday, so I was able to get the same three moving again late yesterday afternoon. We couldn't do the 30 minutes walk each, but we did practice our "ring walking/trotting in hand" for about 15 minutes each (until it was obvious they were starting to get bored). Then we further warmed them up with more walking on the lunge line (verbal command practicing) before moving on to just a couple of minutes in each direction at a slow trot.

Does this sound like a reasonable approach? Given their ages, what would be the max amount of lunge time should I be doing with them? How many days per week should I be working toward? I don't want to push them too hard or too fast and risk injury.

Your input is greatly appreciated, as always!

 

[HGFarm]

Yes, I would take it easy and ease into your routine over a period of a few weeks so you dont over do them- also start to change their diet a little too while doing it and you should notice them start to shape up.

 

[Mominis]

It sounds like you have limited facilities and it would help to know what exactly you have to work with, but you sure are starting off right! Lots of walking to warm up is important all through the conditioning process. I sure can't tell you how to condition your horses, but I am happy to tell you what we do. =) . We start with lots of walking and trotting for the first 30 days, take vitals, and see what the recovery times are. We never want to work them to the point where their vitals don't return to normal within a maximum of ten minutes, though we strive for 5 minutes.

We also do a lot of "ponying" them off of a vehicle. It is a 2 person job (one to drive and one to hold the horse), but it's a great way to get young horses fit without the torque on the joints that you get when working on circles, especially on a longe. We do teach our young horses to longe at 2 years old so that we can exercise them at shows, but we don't really actively incorporate longe work until they are 3 years or over. With ponying, we can control the speed, difficulty (on a flat path or on a slight incline), and the length of time. Once we get the cardio established (around the 30 day mark or so), we move on to more intense workouts concentrating on building different areas of the horses's body that may need extra help (for example: bitting up a horse in a nice long low frame to help round out the muscles of the topline or hill work to help fill out the back end and chest, etc)

Our youngest guy, Eli (aka Michigan's Blowing You Away), is the same age as your girls and he is doing lots of trotting and walking in the round pen right now, supplemented with light ponying on the flat. Working on those walk/trot/walk or whoa/trot/whoa transitions not only help the horse mentally, but they are great for them physically as well. The horse has to shift the weight back to perform a correct transition, which works his topline and hind end.

Hope that helps.

 

[wingnut]

Thanks for this input!

Laurie: I have begun to pull back on the amount hay as well as their feed (Strategy) they get daily. Very minor adjustments, done slowly as with everything else, to be sure we don't cause any problems we don't need.

Mominis: You are correct, our facilities are limited : ) We basically turned out back 2 acres into our farm. We are pleased to be able to have a dry lot and a pasture. I use the dry lot for training as it keeps them from being distracted by grass and I can confine the others out of the way. Thanks for the tip about taking vitals and keeping track on how quickly they recover. That's good information.

I wish we had some way of ponying them but in all honestly, *I* could use the exercise too...it's a win-win! We even manage some minimal trotting/jogging during our return portion of our walks. Most days, I won't be able to work all of them at once like I did on Sunday. I think I need to set up a workable rotation schedule so that no one is overworked. I don't plan lunging the 2 yr olds too much as I have read many folks believe too much circle work too soon can be hard on their still growing bodies. The long walks also allow for new experiences which hopefully will help them become "bomb proof". For instance, part of our walk is through our neighbor's former nursery area, so there's lots of crunchy, noisy dead leaves as well as twigs. The 2 yr olds both got a little flustered by all this noise but I purposely walked them around and around in that area until they relaxed and began to ignore the noise. Since my goal is to eventually have all three driving some day, I want to get them as acclimated as possible to the area they'll be driving in.