My horse incurred some pasture injury that resulted in a huge abscess that is slowly healing. He is getting good first aid at home in accordance with what vets at the equine clinic instructed, what my regular vet is instructing, and some additional guidance from my trainer’s friend who is a vet. He is mostly on stall rest with hand walking for 30 minutes twice per day, plus he gets a few hours per day of grazing with a calm buddy. Hand walking is being done at a marching pace (I carry a dressage whip with me for encouragement) over the farm’s varied terrain. I think we have the basics nicely covered and the wound is improving.
My question here is what else I can add to the hand walking to make the most of this situation. Sadly the stress of the infection plus probably the 10 days my horse spent at the clinic caused him to lose some weight and an incredible amount of topline and overall musculature. My regular vet has advised not to give him more exercise than he’s already getting, but with the prognosis here we’ll be doing this routine for several more weeks up to maybe (gulp) 2 months at the worst (that I can concieve of right now).
I don’t know anything really about working a horse in hand, and don’t know where to start. I’m thinking working on lateral moves (leg yields, turning on haunches or forehand) on the ground would help? Any other ideas? My horse is an OTTB turned hunter, this was supposed to be our big summer to graduate from extremely green but that’s clearly out. He could use a little more work on patience and overall smoothness but I don’t know what might translate from ground to saddle. I tried clicker training a couple winters ago but lost interest pretty fast.
Any ideas and resources greatly appreciated!
The varied terrain is great, but to mix things up, ground poles can be your friend for a while. You can put them all in a row or an arc a stride apart, one end on a block, other on the ground, or both on blocks pretty low to ground. You can put them in various patterns, and think about shortening and lengthening his walk stride to change the number of steps between poles. This will help top line. Do walk, halt, back up transitions.
Lateral work on the ground is a bit trickier if you are not experienced but maybe you can get cleared to tack walk and then the lateral work will be easier.
Look for Jec Ballou’s books. 50 Corrective Exercises For Horses would be a good place to start. Many can be done in hand.
We are there with you- 6 weeks in w/ a 3 yr old. It gets hard to mix it up. We do carrot stretches in our walks. Also for some horses when you scratch their belly they round their back nicely which helps build top line. It also sounds monotonous for you and for that I would be putting on a podcast for the walks. I love Spring Hill Equine and there are some on stall rest etc. Good luck!
mine was on stall rest for 3 mos after spinal fusion. First 2 mos only allowed out of his stall for brief hand grazing. The thing which made the biggest difference for him is my BO put together a small paddock attached to his stall-maybe 20x20- so he could eat hay outdoors and sort of be with the other horses in their fields. I did a lot of carrot stretches, belly lifts and tail tucks. Once he was allowed out for arena walking, after the first few wks ground poles were added. I think he adapted better than I did. Felt so bad for him.
Depending on injury location, either or both intro to half steps and intro to Spanish walk can really work a brain and top line. You should be able to find some straightforward instructions online. Hind leg lifts as prep to half steps/piaffe are an amazing thing.
Leg yield and full pass as well as rein back are also very beneficial.
