Winter Riding and Exercise

[Tranquillity]

Hi everyone! My question is about winter riding. My horse is out in his paddock all day but that's not enough exercise right? At my stable there is no indoor arena so I can't ride during the winter months. How can I make my horse get enough exercise and how can I help myself stay in shape to get prepared for the next riding season?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.:)

[Kylie Chamberlain]

What kind of weather do you get in winter?
Although it is summer right now here, in winter I rode my horse (and i didn't have indoor facilities).
Everything was fine. Some of the fields and the school got muddy and slippery from the rain, but I just rode else where.
If you cant ride maybe you should lunge your horse, and for your own fitness jog?
Anyway thats just my two cents.
C ya!

[Speedy]

Kylie, I was in Oz last xmas and it was fab - loved it. Where abouts are you? in the UK, over New Year we were frozen solid - didn't get above freezing for days - ice everywhere, roads like ice-rinks and outdoor school/paddocks frozen too. We couldn't do anything as there was simply nowhere to go that was safe. Now that everything has thawed, it's all saturated with water - knee-deep in mud and the horses almost fall over trying to pull their legs out!

Anyway, all I can suggest is roadwork. I know it's boring, but as long as it's not icy it's all I can suggest. I take mine trotting round the roads and just keep her ticking over until there's some good enough ground to canter. She's nowhere near as fit as she was, but I've just had to accept that. If the ground is ok, then I lunge her so that if she finds some dodgy ground, then she hasn't got my weight to pull out too!!! Hopefully it shouldn't take too many weeks to get her fit before next season. As for me, I go jogging - just a couple of miles a few times a week, round the estate where I live cos there are streetlamps!

[Thinkerbell]

My rule of thumb is that I do not trot if it is colder than -15 (Celcius. I think that's about 5 on the Farenheit scale, correct me if I'm wrong.). I do wrap up in lots (and lots and lots) and head out for walks on a long rein down to -25ish, if it's colder than that, I freeze my toes and fingers off after ten minutes, so it's not worth it. As for icy ground -is it not common to fit the horseshoes with studs in Britain? Our horses wear studded shoes from early November to late March, so frozen ground isn't that much of a problem. But I really despise muddy ground... And weeks of rain that never stops. But there's always the option of roadwork, and I don't find it boring, there's so much interesting work to be done in walk.(If there's not too much traffic!)

[cvb]

Hi Thinkerbell

I'm a Brit just going through my first winter of owning a horse in sweden. The shoes used here are different.

In the UK, they tend to use 2 studs per shoe, and rarely in all four feet. It tends to relate to competing and not general use, but if you have stud holes in the shoes, people will use road studs as well.

But in Sweden (and Norway too I guess ?) they have the most amazing shoes. We started the winter with 'normal' shoes with 4 stud holes per shoe. Now we have 'gold' shoes with 6 studs built in to them, plus we have snow pads fitted. So its all-terrain four wheel hoof horse time ! I'm very impressed.

The down side is when the horse isn't so used to the studs, and catches themselves with them. When its as cold as it has been over christmas, the cuts don't heal so well.

The other thing about the UK is that when its cold, it tends to have been wet before. So the surfaces get very hard and very icey. Off-road, its been mud before, so the bumpy mud freezes. The horses tend to find this quite uncomfortable. And the roads are like black ice and much busier than where I ride here.

Here it seems to be dry before its cold, so the ice is not quite so awful. And the roads are much quieter.

[floppy]

we only use winter shoes with 2 studs in them (and the rubber to stop snow collecting int he hoofs) here in germany.
but the swedish shoes sounds funny. good idea.

as for riding in the winter..i ride in all weather except hard rainful.

[Thinkerbell]

I don't like using two studs per shoe, because I feel that two studs disturb the natural balance more. As for the weather before (and during) winter where I live... around Christmas we had -24 degrees, now we have +3 and rain. I am just outside Oslo, where are you? And how did you land in Sweden?

As for your hourse getting stud-cuts, where does he/she get the cuts? Do you use any boots? I can really recommend "Superbra Hästsalva" to apply on cleaned wounds, it works well for me.

[Speedy]

Just like cvb said - the fields and bridleways are so poached from the rain that when they freeze it's like an obstacle course and the horses stumble all the time. Also, we don't use studs as often as other countries seem to - they really are mostly used for competing, and generally are the two stud kind - those other ones sound good though. As for road work, I have one lane where I can do some schooling (but water runs off the field onto it so when it freezes its dangerous!), but other than that it's all busy roads with a constant stream of traffic - sometimes England is truly grotty!

[cvb]

I'm using boots when riding now, but both her 'nasty' cuts she got in the field. I suspect she was 'playing' as she lost a shoe last weekend as well (front one, so quite clever).

We had minus temps (-5 during day, then dropping) until the last week. Not all the snow has cleared yet.

The 'gold' shoes seem to be great as she's hardly slipped at all. My only scarey moment was on a big lump of rock that was icier than it looked. Even studs won't cope with that !