In general I agree that people don’t need to be
looking for large horses for endurance, but my husband and I have been
discussing him competing on our stallion. He’s a really nice little
sabino arab, about 14.1 and maybe 850 pounds. He’s got solid legs,
good sized canons, but 00 feet. They are good tough feet, he did his
first ride barefoot because the boots wouldn’t stay on.
My husband weighs 220# and his saddle about 20+ pounds
more. He is a balanced rider and his saddle is a Free’n’Easy
which spreads the weight over a pretty large area.
The stallion has always self exercised quite well and when
he started conditioning, we were both very impressed with his fairly low
exercise heart rates and good recoveries (at least down to 70, more on that
below!). He’s doing well mentally – I posted a while back
about advice with dealing with a stallion and every ride he’s gotten
better and better. On the trail, he’s never been anything but a gentleman
too.
Anyhow, we haven’t had any obvious issues concerning
my husbands weight, but we’re only doing LD so far. My husband
loves riding this horse and would like to do 50’s next year and even
possibly Tevis eventually.
We had one horse that was lighter bodied that did well with
my husband until he climbed a really steep hill and she hesitated and then
couldn’t get going again. It wasn’t pretty, but it ended with
no injuries at least! So I am concerned that this is really just too much
weight for a horse of this size even though we haven’t had a problem
yet. I don’t necessarily want to just keep going until we have a
problem if it just isn’t wise. I don’t know if the stallions
testosterone is just getting him through! And then even though the HR
closely matches my horse through extensive exercise and recovery, he does just
hang around 70 for 10 minutes or so. It’s not because he’s being a
stallion or getting distracted by mares. He can stand with his head down
and eat. But that 70 mark is tough to get past. Could that be
because the weight is just too much?
Any stories or general advice would be appreciated. I
know every horse is an individual, but I don’t want to gamble against the
odds too much!
Thanks,
Marlene
Marlene
Moss
www.LosPinos-CO.com
- boarding, training, sales
www.KineticEquineAnalysis.com
- saddlefit for the horse in motion
