For the Love of Dogs, Horses, and Fitness!

Getting back in the saddle regularly is probably the most common issue we all face when winter finally releases its clutches on our riding endeavors. When the light returns in the afternoons, the arenas dry out, and your horse's coat finally begins to shed off to make grooming take less than a day, it's time to get ready for summer riding!

The fortunate few do not have to deal with riding's seasonal limitations. Some have covered, lighted arenas that make the sport year-round. This is a huge boon to those who want to keep a regular, uninterrupted routine. For the rest of us, who can't afford expensive board and body clips and heavy winter rugs on our horses, the transition to spring is a welcome one.  However, even though you were working regularly for an hour or so at a time in November, keep in mind that in the spring, your horse's cardiovascular, respiratory, skeletal, and joint systems need to get back up to speed slowly to prevent injury.

To do this, try a basic, half-hour strategy called The Threes. It is an easy, structured, adjustable method of reintroducing exercise into your horse's life. It is a simple as this: Walk three arena circuits to the left, three to the right. Then do the same with the jog or trot. Walk for one more circuit each way. Then go to jog or lope, three circuits, to the left. Give your horse a walk circuit rest, then jog or lope to the right for three more. Cool down for three more circuits. The first couple of weeks, do these half-hour sessions every other day. As your horse increases in fitness and strength, you can modify the routine. Eliminate the walk break between trot and canter. Later on, eliminate the walk break between lope or canter directions. When your horse does not try to break to a trot after three circuits each way, you can start to add time, and constructive activities, to the workout to extend the timeframe back to an hour or more. Good constructive activities are practicing transitions, lateral movements, patterns, obstacles, and trail work.

In a few weeks, your horse will be ready to resume the summer/fall schedule to support competition training!

Like any other skill or ability, horseback riders come in a large spectrum of types and experience levels. Some riders rode a pony as a child, never to try it again. Others begged their parents relentlessly through their childhood years, only to wind up empty-handed - pretending their bicycles were galloping chargers. The fortunate few did indeed win that pony from worn-down parents. They rode the shaggy beast until outgrown, then moved up to a larger horse, all the while allowing their developing motor skills to include the feel of four feet beneath them. For these riders, using those four feet is as familiar to them as the original biped mechanism of walking or running. Each rider is unique, because each rider has an individual base of learning. How the rider builds upon that base makes all the difference in riding ability.

The range of horse enthusiasts stretches from the pure recreational to the ancient art form. Some simply see the horse as a living dirt bike, charging around hills or dunes, whooping like maniacs. To them, the gears are go, stop. Add a little bit of care and sensibility and you have a car driver: start, stop, turn, low, high gears, even reverse. Go a step further to the airplane pilot: start, stop, turn, take-off, landing, adjustment for balance. Watch a Grand Prix or Spanish Riding School Dressage rider and you will see a helicopter pilot: Forward, backward, spin, hover, roll, pitch, yaw. This artist in horseflesh can balance himself and his horse on two rear hooves in suspended animation. A quantum leap from the dirt bike rider, to be sure.

Most riders exist in the middle of the plane. The sensible continuously strive to improve their strength and balance - to move closer to helicopter pilot status. As a rider adds hours in the saddle, nuances emerge that echo the beauty of the art form: shifts in weight, opening or closing of strides, and the period of suspension between beats of the canter. How the horse carries his ears or swishes his tail suddenly means something. Even riding a turn can be done in worlds-apart fashions: the dirt-bike rider usually treats a turn like a NASCAR bank, throwing balance to the wind. Yet done properly, a turn can become an upright, balanced ballet move where the horse flexes his body through the ribcage and molds to the curve. To the untrained eye, this is very difficult to see. It has to be felt in the seat and hands to be appreciated fully.

Most of us have been "horseback riding" at one time or another. The next time you give it a try, pay attention to your style. Few of us can achieve helicopter pilot perfection, but at least we should strive to appreciate the grandeur of those four feet beneath us.