I just joined a horse club and signed up for western dressage clinics/lessons. My goal is to ride at least 3x per week, ground work 2x per week, and give my daughter lessons on Saturday's. This is a stretch but now that the time has changed, I can get a lot more done in the evening.

ride for 40minutes (up from 30 as part of improving fitness)

When the clocks go forward next Sat/Sun I aim to work with my 20 month old gelding doing Horse Agility...

Hope the weather stays good and we can achieve our goals.

Great idea...
Can we do a 30 day challenge? - for horse people?
I hope to ride 20 out of the next 30 days.
Grooming for me this time of year is more like scraping hair off the horses. So now time for shedding blades, brushes and jsckets that don't hold the hair.

Today I lunged then rode my 'big guy' and he was great!
What type of exercises do you do in your regular routine to prevent boredom?
For you and your horse?

~Laura

I'm up early to get out riding!

My goal is to ride 3x a week this month.
I had been slacking with it over the winter and even last month as I have been super busy with grad school.

I rode on Monday and while we had a great ride I could tell neither me nor my horse were in our best shape.

Excellent discussions here.
so far this month - thats the last 3 days - I get up early and muck stalls before i do anything (4 horses = 4 stalls to muck) and have horses on a rotation basis. ride 2 horsesper day for 5 days... so far so good for the last week and first part of april!

I count the stall mucking as exercise and the rides as general rides for exercises as well.

~Laura

I just acquired a new horse so he has been getting used to my place. Tomorrow he gets moved over to his final stop for a while so he can get used to my other 2 yr old before I put them in the same pasture together. So I guess a goal for this week is just to groom him and continue to get him used to me and my routine.

I want to be able to ride more often. I often feel too tired/unmotivated to do so, but I know that in order to be motivated, you have to act motivated. So my goal is to ride at least three times a week. I'd love to be able to ride four to five times a week, though. Not only do I need more cardio in my life, my pony needs more schooling, as I'm hoping to lease her throughout the next few months.

Hi all,

This is a great idea -- sadly my next weeks are a bit upside-down, but after May 8th I'll be needing to work my just-turned-4 year-old and my 11 year-old. My daughter is going away for the summer so I'll have to keep them both fit, and get the youngster into his next level of training. So once I'm back from the next while of being away it will be time to get going at least 4 days per week...

I'll be back!!!

Got my 2 in this weekend YAY!!!!!

The weather was lovely and despite not having any company we got two really good hacks in.

On Saturday we went down this single track road which leads to nowhere, so you have to turn round and come back. I love this track as it's on a tidal road and leads to a very little village at the end, where you can turn it into a 3hr beach ride if you want. There were only a few cars but as predicted, it took us around 30 mins to get out there and about 25 back.......Shy loves the sea and gets excited when she gets a sniff of the air! However, going home is also good too!!!!

Sunday we did a nice 3mile loop, all on roads but it's good cos it's quite hilly. I've started to do some trot work now to keep her balanced and in a good rhythm. From taking to her owner and her owner's mum, it seems that they've just got on her, expected her to go fast round show jump courses and then got off her again! I'm teaching her that life is good at a steady pace! Now we've got the walk perfected and not jogging on the way home, it's time to get the trot right.

Plan for this week....ride Tuesday and Thursday (weather permitting of course). I have a treadmill at home so Monday and Wednesday I'll get an hour on there in.

I'm off to see my mum and dad at the weekend so no riding then hopefully next week get back into the 4 rides a week.

My goal (for my horse only, considering my job is exercise riding) is to ride him 6 days a week, and work on ground manners and showmanship the other day. I plan to jump him two days a week, work on english flat work and dressage two days, have one day as a trail/western horsemanship day and one day as a mix between gaming and reining. Each ride consists of 10-25 minutes of grooming (Depending on how dirty the mudball decided to get), 10 minute warm up, 20-45 minute working and 10-20 minute cool down, then 5 minutes of grooming after.

To keep my horse and I from getting bored:
With the jumping, I switch between arena jumping and cross country jumps, and we mix it up between working on the basics on the tiny jumps or going up to 3 feet with many different courses, and sometimes we just do ground poles.
With english flat work, I try to mix it up as much as possible, but it can be pretty hard in my mind. I make up patterns or ride dressage tests quite often. But I always work on something different every time I ride, like one day I could be working on extensions, the next day I'll be working on bettering my transitions, and another day working on leg yeilding, shoulder fore, etc.
With western, I normally just make up patterns to try to keep him busy. I dislike western, so it's hard for me to make him enjoy it too. That's why we normally just end up on the trail
With gaming and reining, that just seems to be something he enjoys, but I make sure not to practice the same things over and over (switch between barrels, poles, keyhole, reining patterns, etc.)

That's all I've got to say