Re: [RC] Conditioning an older horse??? - firedancefarms
Hi Chris,
We did a 25 with our stallion last year
at age 18. We plan to do a 50 with him this year at age 19, slow of
course. Physically, there is no problem, if the mares would
stop kicking him the day before we are going to a ride! But you have
to be careful with older stallions, as they can be very unpredictable. We
were very careful to introduce him to camping etc in small steps (the first one
being not to fight the horse in the window tied to the trailer!) and make very
sure he was PERFECT around other horses. Although we got him last
Dec, we did not feel confident enough to take him on a ride until October,
when hormones were lower and he was not breeding mares. I do not know
if we will ride this horse on rides in the spring and summer when
hormones start to kick in.
We had another stallion we got when he
was 16, and much as I wanted to race him, we never felt confident enough with
him to take him on a ride. He had never really been "off the farm" and,
although broke, we did not trust him to not cause a problem. Standing
around in a halter and having other horses standing around in halters only meant
one thing to him!
Keep in mind it is not the ride that is
the problem. It is the camping, tied up all night, other horses getting
loose, the vet checks, close exposure to other horses at the water trough that
you have to worry about.
Bottom line...he'll do the ride fine,
but we found it took an awful lot of training to handle the other aspects of the
ride.
