Ann Romney = Animal Abuser

[riderinthestorm]

95. Nobody spends "hours" drilling their horse for competitions or at competitions!

The horse would sour very, very quickly if its routine was hours of drills. Our work outs are 45 minutes each - a 15 minute warm up walk and trot on the buckle (long and low) with circles, serpentines etc if we are in an arena but mostly we do this part out on the trails. We then collect the reins and ask for more collection for the canter. We canter for 5 minutes asking for more collection as we proceed. There's then a 20 minute work out. Sometimes its strength training, sometimes its working on a specific skill, sometimes if its hot, we only do walk work - bending, suppling, responsiveness. 5 minutes to cool down. Our horses never school over fences more than 2x/week. We work them 6 days/week and a lot of that is hacking.

We do even less drilling at a show. You want your horse fresh, forward and energetic, not exhausted and tapped out. "Hours" of training and drilling would create a very, very uncooperative and exhausted mount so most warm ups are 20 minutes max for a test of 2 - 5 minutes. If its a cross country day, we trot out to the course as a warm up, jump exactly 4 fences and then gallop the course (which can take anywhere from 2 - 6 minutes depending on the level). Again, you can't perform if your horse has been run to pieces before you go. Edited to add that your perception of what is "natural" riding (trail riding?) typically has the horse being ridden for far, far longer and probably even much harder than your average competition horse. Trail riding especially is usually many, many hours of riding in a single day. And you think this is better?

My husband's intermediate horse at competitions, right now at the peak of her fitness, comes out of her stall and walks around on a loose rein. He trots and canters for exactly 5 minutes and goes in. She's super calm and if he worked her anymore than this she'd be very, very flat. He doesn't have time to ride any horse for that many hours in a week!


Again, I reiterate ALL of these movements are natural acts that every horse does in the wild, on their own, at liberty. ALL of them including racing, jumping, galloping around things etc.