Re: RC: quextions!!

[CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/22/00 10:43:58 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
robandcarla@hotmail.com writes:

<< If a person trained for a solid year not competing but did some good 
 training to prepare a horse for endurance in reality how many miles can a 
 horse do the next year? If the horse was competing just about midways to end 
 in the pack? No hard pushing but just to finish the ride? This would mean 
 hitting as many rides as possible in one year and How would a person do this 
 SAFELY as not to cause any possible physical harm to the horse? Is it 
 possible to hit one ride per weekend or every other week? >>

There are stresses involved in competition in addition to simply "being fit" 
and one can only address those by going to competitions.  Even with a year of 
training, I would limit a horse to 3-6 rides in his first season (depending 
on age), and would space them WELL apart.  I like 6-8 weeks between rides 
with a young horse (5 or 6), but may go less with a more mature horse that is 
doing well.  It takes awhile to recover from a competition, even if you go 
slowly.  I shy away from every-other-week competition until a horse is in his 
3rd season.  By then, he should be hitting his potential, and you should have 
a much better idea how he recovers.  And this is for MILEAGE 
competition--going out to turn in a peak performance requires MORE recovery 
time.  A third season horse with the ABILITY to be a mileage horse should be 
able to do some back-to-backs and multidays as well.  You may do a few on a 
second season horse with no trouble, but I wouldn't plan to do it for the 
whole season that early in a career.

Heidi