Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Angie:

 

I think that your perspective may be from someone living in the south, where the weather can be awful hot and sticky.  I ride an non-Arab by choice.  Definitely not anything like a Belgian, but he is big and heat and humidity are not his friend.  Because of this, I typically won't do any endurance rides in July or August, unless I know I'll be in a place where the whether will be friendly to us.  But I wouldn't discount a horse like this. 

 

I did the wonderful Doncaster Renegade ride in 2004.  On Saturday there was the 50/75 endurance rides, I did the 50.  But on Sunday they did a 25/35 CTR ride.  So as we were doing our loops and vetting, they were vetting in the CTR horses.  There was the biggest Percheron I've ever seen being vetted in for one of the CTR's.  This horse was well over 16H and had to have been 1,500 lbs, easy.  And the weather was hot that day, high 80's.  From what I could tell, this horse did fine.  And CTR is faster than endurance minimum times.  This horse would have had a maximum of 4 hours 20 minutes to finish 25 miles (real ride time - I excluded hold time). 

 

So it can be done.  When I was looking at my horse (a Standardbred) 6 years ago, other riders told me I was nuts.  Now the Standardbred is a breed that people consider a good, non-Arab endurance horse.  So I say go with whatever you want to ride.  Just understand that you may have to ride back of the pack.  You may also have to pass on summer rides because it will be too hot for this horse to safely compete.  However, just remember that this horse might be perfect when it is 40 degrees outside, the weather alot of Arab owners dread.

 

Carolyn Burgess

"rides2far@xxxxxxxx" <rides2far@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> OK, I'm going to be the lone "bad guy" here. I've got a purebred Belgian that lives along the road that I ride by to get to my trails. She is MASSIVE. For those of you who are saying, "My Quarter Horse, or "My Paso Fino", "My Mustang" or My Appaloosa does great...so a Belgian will be fine". My gosh, that's a pretty big generalization Now, if it's not a purebred, that's a little different. There's a Shire/hackney/Arab cross from Canada that was awesome, and some other warmbloods I'm sure.... but be a realist. Be careful. Realize that most of what you read, or is written about endurance may not necessarily be so for your horse. Chances are not many people know how a Belgian's body reacts to 25 miles at speed. You're going to be learning a lot from scratch and have to be more on the ball than usual. I'd buy a thermometer, I'd be careful who I trained with,
>  I'd ride with a heart monitor
>
> I remember reading the percentages of fast twitch & slow twitch muscles in different breeds long ago. I was really into that because I was riding a non-Arab. Arabs had something like 40% slow twitch...and I think Apps, QH, etc. had closer to maybe...5%? and then the ability to convert some over to slow twitch. Anybody know the ratio for draft horses?
>
> Angie
>
>
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