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RE: [RC] LDs "bad" for horses - heidi

The only way I think that 25s were not positive was I do think they "taught" 
my mare that she didn't have to eat/drink real well until after the ride. 


Whether or not LDs are "bad" for horses depends on a lot of things.  One
of the key issues, IMO, is the one articulated above--it simply isn't
long enough to teach them to take care of themselves, because they can
go 25 miles on reserves.

SOME HORSES (certainly not all!) do 25s and start to get the
"is-that-all-it-is" attitude.  It has NOTHING to do with racing or
pacing.  It simply isn't far enough to capture their imagination or
their work ethic.  Those horses DO get sour at that distance, and if
you are sufficiently experienced to know that a given horse is like
that (they do tend to be fairly talented horses, for the most part)
then IMO it really IS better for the horse to start right off doing
50s.  If you don't have the experience, but you find that you have
plenty of horse and he starts to pull at you and disrespect you on 25s,
then it is time to move up.  Keeping on at the 25-mile distance will NOT
be good for this horse.  I've seen too many horses forced to continue on
25s that really got sour and nasty about it.  And they weren't
necessarily raced, either.

I've had an interesting experience with an older horse I've been riding.
I started him off on 25s not so much for his sake (he was a 15-year-old
that had been a 4-H horse all of his life) but for mine, since I was
having health issues.  I did 3 25s on him, and I HAD to move him up,
whether I was ready or not!  He is a reasonably calm horse, but just
getting out and going down the trail and not being enough of a
challenge was doing something to his brain.  Since then, he's had
somewhere around 750 endurance miles--and this year, getting a junior
rider started, I've dropped back and done some 25s sponsoring her.  Now
that he has done the endurance miles, he is good as gold on 25s.  He's
learned the ropes and it doesn't mess with his head anymore.

For the most part, 25s are for the riders.  Most horses are perfectly
capable of doing slow 50s, but many riders are not.  I've been
there--when I came back into the sport a few years ago I was no longer
physically capable of doing much more than 25 miles, and it was
wonderful to be able to come into the sport and do that distance to try
to get my body back into the swing of things.  But I have yet to ride a
horse that I would not prefer to start on 50s.

Heidi


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