Hi everyone,
I grew up riding in Florida and now I live in Boston. It’s been pretty cold the past few days and snowing today. Wanted to get some feedback on your temperature threshold for riding. When is it too cold to excercise your horse? I’ve heard 23 F and under, some articles saying 15 F and under too. How cold is too cold for you and your horse?
If it is under 20 we cancel lessons here. It really depends on the horse and the rider. Just like with blanketing, there is no “magic temperature”… just pay attention to you and your horse and if they are struggling or you are close to frostbite and can’t give a good ride call it a day. Also, if you have an indoor (especially if heated, wouldn’t that be nice) thresholds are different than if you are outside and have to contend with windchills as well.
Once it gets down into the low-mid 20s I don’t ride. I might take him for a walk if it’s not windy, but we don’t do any hard work. Neither of us enjoys it.
I live in Calgary and we have a heated barn and indoor arena, the general rule is if it doesn’t get above -25C (-13F) during the day or if its cold and windy, then the horses that live outside aren’t ridden but the horses that live indoors, stay inside and are ridden hopefully everyday. It’s too hard on the horses that live outside to get all warm and sweaty and then have to go back out in the cold. If we followed the 23 F or even the 15 F rule then we wouldn’t ride for most of the winter.
I lived in MN for several years and there were a lot of factors aside from absolute temperature. 20 F feels a lot different on a still sunny day or in an indoor arena, as opposed to an overcast, blustery day with spitting “winter mix” precipitation. The horse and type of work is going to make a difference, too. Tolerance for a recently transported older horse with some chronic respiratory issues is going to be lower (particularly in a dusty indoor) than a young horse that has lived in that environment for years.
Edited to add–IME lesson cancellations were based more heavily on road conditions/safety of people getting to the barn rather than the actual riding conditions, if that makes sense.
Another Midwest rider here - if we capped at 20*, there would be so many days we never rode. Lessons tend to get canceled at around 15*, and most people I know tend to ride until single digits.
A measure of awareness is necessary. The colder it is, the lighter the work becomes (oftentimes those days would be designated for just a hack - walk/trot, work on stretching and supplenness).
I have ridden my horses in low single digits but that was at a walk only to stretch his legs, complete with fleece cooler to keep him covered.
Be mindful of the breathing. My general rule of thumb is I don’t want to work them enough that the breathing becomes hard or more labored in cold weather - so for some horses, a brisk walk will be just fine but others in different condition may find it taxing enough to be real “work”.
I’m also in Calgary and we also have indoor heated arenas, so never cancel lessons (we have no horses that live outside). Like the above poster said, if we cancelled for cold weather, we’d not ride for over 6 months, so most show stables here, have heated indoor arenas!
When I lived in NH, my rule was I wouldn’t ride below zero. That was in an unheated indoor. I think my limit would be quite a lot higher for outdoor riding.
I’m in Ontario, and my Oklahoma mare is experiencing her first Canadian winter. We’re at a boarding stable with an unheated indoor arena. I ride down to around - 10°C/14°F. My TB mare gets daily turnout and is blanketed, so she has a pretty wimpy coat. That works well, as I’ve only gotten her sweaty once through the winter. Anything colder than that is just no fun.
Unfortunately, this year, this is where we are at. The 20* days have also been 2* with windchill and more often than not with ice or wintery mix - 3/4 lessons this month cancelled and/or rescheduled if possible. On a bright sunny 20* we’d probably still ride… it is just all the other factors that come with it! This is a “normal” winter for us, but we’ve had reprieve from it for the last few years so it feels really awful. I still like to go out and lightly lunge or just let my guy loose in the arena OR I’ll hop on bareback and just do walking, maybe a little sitting trot, and do figures around the arena to stretch his legs. If it is too cold I lose any motivation to go through fully tacking up.
These are all super helpful thank you! Wow for those of you with heated indoors - I’m super jealous!! We have an indoor but it gets sooooo cold in there, feels colder than outside almost. Welcome to New England I guess right? Haha
Yes definitely! That’s why I’m being so careful with this TB, he’s not in the best working shape yet.
Holy. Cow. You people are TOUGH! I am in southeast Virginia and we complain if it gets below 40! I am suitably chastened.
If the ambient temperature in the indoor is below 20, I do not ride above a walk (and I sit on my horse bareback with his rugs on to do it.)
My lungs don’t handle it well and my horse’s don’t either.
When I moved to Texas and was trying to find a barn, I set up a visit/trial lesson with one place about this time of year, and they called me to cancel because it was “so cold.” It was 40 and a gorgeous sunny, non-windy day. I had been out running errands in a light sweatshirt and really looking forward to getting back in the saddle as it seemed such nice weather for riding, cool enough for no bugs, warm enough to have no need to stuff a freezing cold bit under my shirt before bridling.
In fairness, I find that cold is quite relative. I spent one winter away from Canada, and the lowest temperature I encountered that year was -4C/25F. But those coldest days felt, to me, nearly as cold as the low temperatures I was used to back home (regular lows of -20C/-4C)
I generally ride up to -18C/~0F. That said, I try and be sensible - if we have had a bunch of warmer days followed by a huge drop in temp, that is often an easy day to skip. If we have a longer cold snap, I just keep riding and tailor my rides to the conditions. Our indoor is not heated.
I agree with backstage (and others) who have said, “it depends.”
Like with any weather situation, it totally depends on what your horse is conditioned to. Here in the temperate northwest, I see people start posting that they’re canceling lessons and rides when the temperatures drop below 30 degrees or above 95/100 degrees.
Can you imagine how little would get done in the SE if you didn’t ride any day where the temp hit 95 degrees (with virtually no humidity)? And same story for what people in the midwest or far north would do if they didn’t ride below 30? But the horses aren’t conditioned to it here, so when we get unusual temp runs, we don’t ride.
So if your horse has just moved to Boston with you and is from Florida, then I would err on the side of caution and probably stick to a higher range than you might hear suggested by fellow (local) riders. If the horse is from the area or has lived in a cold climate for a while, then the range of comfort might be more extreme than you yourself are comfortable with.
For me, riding in the cold is more about motivation than the actual temperature. If I have a lesson, or a buddy to ride with, I can do about low to mid 20s (F). If I arrive to the barn after work, it’s dark outside, no one else is around, and it’s in the 30s, I tend to give my horse a good groom, feed him a few treats, and then skedaddle back to warmer places.
We have no heated indoor but we do have an indoor. If the footing is ok in there I ride. If it’s frozen I don’t. We’ve never had it cold enough to not ride and the footing not be frozen.
We still ride until it hits around 110-120 including humidity. I wish we had a river and some shaded trails to ride on when it gets around that temperature so I could at least do something. We really are 80% of the time in one extreme or the other. The horses are definitely used to it though, other than our poor Florida horse (this is his first winter in the Midwest) who I’ve found out is petrified of ice. He has just never seen it before and I’m sure it is a strange sensation when you first start slipping.
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