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[RC] [RC] How to tell if you are over doing it?/Building a Base - Lucy Chaplin TrumbullOK. I'll fess up. This year I broke my horse from "overdoing" it. Maybe. Disclaimer: Not all horses are created equal. If you read, f'instance, Angie's comment "I'll do a slow 50 miler on most horses after 90 days" by rights, we should have been fine. Except this was Mouse we're talking about, not Angie's horse nor any of those "I pulled him out of the paddock and did a slow 50" horses you read about. You could argue that she's not a suitable prospect for distance - but you could probably argue that about many high-mileage horses. I've got her, so what I have do now is figure out what I did wrong and try and see if I can avoid it in the future. * * * Mouse has been in our family for five years. She arrived as a halter-broke greenie and I picked away at her training. We (intermittently) did lots of groundwork, the odd trail ride (chaperoned), camping trips, fun rides, etc. When I wasn't picking at her, she'd cheerfully stand around in her paddock and do very little. Finally got to the stage where we could ride alone, and I started conditioning her properly at Christmas 2001 when she was 9. The following was our ride schedule, which doesn't by any means look terribly aggressive - especially when you consider we rode at the tail end of most of these rides and took it really easy: April 27th - 30 August 10th - 30 September 7 - two-day 50 (NATRC CTR) September 21 - 30 (NATRC CTR) October 26th - 50 What happened? Well, half-way through the 50 miler (carefully selected as her first 50 because it was reputed to be a) fairly easy, b) fairly short, and c) a popular "first 50" for many others), she showed up slightly off, and by the end we had to hand-walk in the last few miles and she was totally off. She finished, but obviously didn't get her completion. I was proud of her, of how she dealt with it mentally and metabolically, but bummed that she "broke". An ultrasound revealed a pulled suspensory and superficial flexor tendon. <ouch>. So we're now on confinement, regular hand-walking, and due for the second ultrasound next week (after three months), with many months of rehab ahead of us. <sigh> What went wrong (possibly): ------------------------- 1) Mouse has sticklet legs and "dainty" tendons. More than likely this will always be her weak link and the one thing I have to watch with her. It was also speculated that the tendons are shorter/tighter on the bum leg (her clubby foot) and therefore more prone to injury. Important fact to remember when I blame myself: sh*t happens and this injury might have happened regardless as to how I'd conditioned/managed her. It might have been there all along from years back, waiting to be pushed into failure. Either way, I still have to try and avoid it happening again. This might mean she never does 50s. Or it might mean that I just use her for LD/slower-paced NATRC rides instead. 2) For her, we probably did too much, too infrequently. My schedule means I can't ride every day or even every other day. I'm feeling pretty cheerful if I get to ride three times a week. So we built up to doing do a short ride (or two - if we were lucky) in the week (~5-8 miles) and a longer ride (~10-20 miles) on the weekend (although these were seldom faster than 3-5 mph). Caveat: This conditioning schedule worked fine for Provo, my other horse, who had more base on him, put on by his previous owner (base that still consisted of being ridden twice a week). He went on to do 50s with no problem (while *my* knee blew out after the third one in six weeks. Lesson: make sure you are as fit as your horse). Seeing the rehab. schedule Mouse's on now, I'm guessing it probably would have been better *with her* to do as many short, easy rides as I could manage, every other day (with a longer one at weekends). Probably, an half-hour or an hour every other day is better than just doing five hours *once* a week. I always thought of LSD as being like an onion - it should go on in very thin layers. With Mouse, our layers were too chunky for her legs. 3) The terrain around here is not a piece of cake. We live a few miles from the American River canyon and climbs of several hundred to a thousand feet are normal. There are many places where continuous trotting is not possible. Given her sticklet legs, I should have paid more attention to this fact. Instead, I just assumed she *should* be able to cope with it, as that's what everyone else around here does. One thing she has never been good at is using her back end to push up hills. She'd tend to pull from the front, so that's something I have to figure out how to get her to do better in the future. And having done a couple of NATRC rides, I would do well to go more with their pacing strategy (where feasible): walk the ups and downs, walk the rocks, trot every-thing else. 4) She is so comfy, I tended to stay on her, rather than dismounting and walking. She has a really nice easy, smooth trot and I'd let her trot/jog downhills if she wanted. Ack. What did Angie say? "The important thing to me is go easy on downhills"? Again, I thought we were OK because her trot is so quiet and slow (we're not talking about a huge extended trot here). 5) Given the opportunity, she can be really slug-like, esp. on uphills, and so motivating her has been a problem. In my desire to try and speed her up (not talking racing speeds here - more upping from 3-4 mph to 5-6 mph) I encouraged any sign of forward enthusiasm - which meant whenever she did want to bound a bit, I let her. Wrong. I figured the more she did, the fitter she'd get (instead of being blimp-like), and the more she'd enjoy what she was doing, so the more motivated she'd be. This worked partially. Her attitude did improve - on and off. It was the "offs" I should have paid more attention to. 6) Another thing I could have worked on was extending/ speeding up her walk gait (Mouse + walk = slug). Instead, I worked on getting her to do her nice slow trot everywhere (we had to trot a lot because she was slow in that gait and even slower at the walk, we'd go overtime if we didn't). In the future, this "trundle-trot" will be a useful gait, but I probably used it too much for the level of conditioning she was at. 7) The biggest lesson I learnt, is that just because everyone else can leap on a do 50s, doesn't mean your horse can. :( The best thing about our regular rehab hand-walks is that it is letting me work on a whole lot of holes in our training. F'instance, Mouse's lateral abilities are almost non-existent. So while we've been doing our walks, I've been clicker training her on all sorts of things she never knew how to do. When we do finally get up and running again (figuratively speaking <g>), I'll have a better horse to play with. Fingers crossed. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Lucy Chaplin Trumbull elsie AT foothill DOT net Repotted english person in Sierra Foothills, California * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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