Horse Comes Out Stiff- Need Advice

[Jo]

Turnout, turnout, turnout, and more turnout.

If you can’t/won’t change that, make sure your warm up is adequately addressing the needs of your horse. I have seen riders rush through their warm up to get to the fun stuff (jumping). If your horse needs 25 minutes of walking with figures, it needs 25 minutes of walking even if it seems boring to the rider.

My mare is 17, out about 22 hours a day, in to eat only, weather pending. She’s on twice yearly Adequan and warms up better with walking, then a short trot, then some canter, then back to serious trot work.

[ElementFarm]

I have an older mare. She’s on full day (or night in summer) turnout. I have her on Smartflex Sr pellets as a supplement. I found Adequan was helpful for her and doing maintenance doses monthly helped us for a long time. Recently that wasn’t enough. We had a full workup with a really great sports medicine vet, and ended up injecting stifles, hocks, and one ankle. He also recommend PRP for those areas. My horse is so much improved. She’s much less stiff starting out, and moving better and more forward than she was before.

Another note, as it gets colder, those older horses need to stay warm. So blanket as required. And I’ll use heat lamps and a cooler during cold-weather tacking/untacking, and do a longer warm-up undersaddle before asking for real work.

[Ibex]

My mare comes out stiff sometimes due to some old injuries. I found the groundwork (not just lunging, but cowboy style changes of directions etc done at the w/t) BEFORE I get on makes all the difference as she’s had a good stretch. I also find keeping her blanketed slightly more warmly (your mileage may vary on that depending on your horse, but at least she hates being cold) and using a quarter sheet to start helps.