Ad-Lib vs Trickle Feeding - What's Best For Your Horse?
Equestrian Advice & Guides Beginners Advice
Category:
Recent businesses
Hi!
Are you a business?
Build your business profile for FREE and expose your services to thousands of potential clients!
Create my profile now!
No ads have been saved yet.
Your last viewed and saved ads will appear here
No searches have been saved yet.
Your last viewed and saved searches will appear here
14th March 2023
My name is Charlotte & I have had the pleasure of owning Freddie, a 15 year old Connemara gelding, for the last 9 years. Affectionately known at home as the Yeti, Freddie enjoys nothing more than spending his days sleeping and eating. Sadly, for him, his extended holiday was cut short last summer when we brought him out of retirement as to our surprise & pleasure, he became sound following 3 years turned away after an injury.
Currently I am rehabilitating him with the aim of ridden competition, we’re taking each day as it comes but so far, so good.
For a little context, a few years ago Fred had a severe case of Proximal Suspensory Desmitis (suspensory strain & inflammation) and was also diagnosed with Kissing Spine at the same time. He had surgery on both hind legs & his back but reinjured in the field later in the same year. He’s had 3 years turned away, but now is looking better than we’ve seen him in a long time.
In terms of rehabilitation, we got off to a good start last year and with the help of living out overnight last summer and soaked hay during the daytime he’s so far lost over 100kgs! We hit a few bumps in the road over winter, one of which involved a badly infected broken tooth which had to be extracted and resulted in a month off, but we’re back up and running now just in time for the competition season to begin again. I’ll be writing on his behalf in the coming weeks, no doubt he’ll be full of opinions for you as per usual.
This week we have been pushing the boat out and have started pole-work on the long reins with hacking under saddle in the mix too. Long reining is quite simply the best thing since sliced bread, as far as I’m concerned. It gives good exercise, whilst also enabling you to keep them working correctly, without the added weight of a rider. If you haven’t seen it before, it involves connecting two lunge lines to the bit (which must be a snaffle!) like reins and walking behind or alongside the horse whilst guiding with each hand independently, as you would when astride. I’ll tag a photo below so you can see what I mean.
Anywho, Freddie is a long-reining pro at this point, though as I said he has an opinion on absolutely everything and generally squeals to let me know how utterly unimpressed he is at the audacity of me, asking him to work a little, but I do love a horse with a bit of character, and he’s certainly got bags of that.
We’re on the countdown to the first show of the season – which is next month – where I’ll be putting him in for a few in-hand classes. The aim ideally is to compete under saddle this season but I’m not rushing to get there at the first show if he isn’t ready. I’d also like to try our hand at some dressage, as there is an unaffiliated league that runs on-site at our yard. That said, at the competition last weekend Freddie took offence to the catering van and proceeded to bounce his way through the car park in front of all the competitors on his way to the field, so it may be a little more eventful than I imagined at our first one…
More soon!
Charlotte
Related articles
Popular articles
