endurance riding from a wannabe's perspective

Feeding the endurance horse

orangemelodie — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:42:56 +0000

it should seem easy: feed this much grain, this much oil, this much hay. especially since everyone seems to have the same horse (aka arabian). but of course, when you start researching calcium-phosphorus ratios, selenium, electrolytes, sheesh!
so my goals are: get an analysis of the hay we buy
Make a list of the various grains and beat pulp we have between tractor supply and the local feed store.
figure out how much time will be spend on grazing grass, and what parts of the year you can count on virtually no grass. Put together some sort of rough plan, post it on various endurance forums, and have my plan blasted to shreds.
Round here, the horses are turned out on grass in the day, stalled at night, and given one scoop of grain at night and sometimes another in the morning, some get bran (i think it is rice bran?) and a squirt of oil. but none of these horses are endurance horses, nor are they even really performance horses. i can just see it now: beet pulp? whats that? more than 2 flakes of hay? why? free-choice salt? they can use the salt block, cant they??
ahhh. cant wait.

My favorite endurance blogs

orangemelodie — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:52:14 +0000

These are a few of my favorite endurance blogs:

http://www.inthenightfarm.blogspot.com

http://www.endurancegranny.blogspot.com

http://www.enduranceridestuff.com/blog

Do you have any favorite endurance blogs?

Review of Potato’s Tevispost.com video

orangemelodie — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:12:03 +0000

Potato Richardson (a two time Tevis cup winner and frequent flyer on the trail) has a free video of tips on his website, www.tevispost.com First of all, at one point he mentions that he will talk about tips on buying an endurance horse, but, unless I missed it, he never seemed to get around to it.

Some interesting facts he mentions:

You can add or subtract 30% of your body weight by posting poorly or correctly.

Says you want to weigh around 165 pounds with your tack.

Recommends the following tack:

saddle: stubben (may have spelled it wrong. Its an english-style saddle, not an endurance saddle)

stirrups: his own design, you can get off of his website. Says not to use the wider stirrup because it can cause an injury to your horse if he falls on his side, and because we actually only put our weight on a smaller area of the ball of our foot. or something like that. something to think about.

saddle girths: the white cotton string ones. says the solid ones create too much heat, which is a good point, and have too much “give” although he doesn’t say why that is a bad thing. says they are easier to wash.

The recommended head halter looked weird too me, I think I would prefer one that has a removable bit snaps. But we will have to see about that.

He says that he finds it absurd that people have camel-packs, saddle bags, sponges, water cups, etc. I personally think that all that gear may make your life easier, may come in handy, and looks pretty cool.

He also spends some time showing how to quickly take off a saddle and breastcollar, says to not use a crupper, and to cut off your half chaps. There wasn’t much riding, the long explanation for posting did not have any real examples of actual posting (the whip example was good, by i felt like fastforwarding through the rest). He had an example of weight distribution using a wheelbarrow that he meant to be used as an example to keep yourself in balance and on the horse’s center of gravity, but which seemed the opposite of keeping your horse working with his back end and not putting all his weight in front. Anyways. I would love to see a video that had real tips for conditioning, riding properly, how to look at conformation in a prospect, etc, and not just tack advice, although that is helpful i guess.

He doesn’t really support all the gadgets in the trail that I would like to get. (HR monitors, GPS, etc.)

In the end, I thought that the endurance tips for Tevis would be more like: ride at this speed at this section of the trail, make sure to stop for water at this section, be careful over this section. Really, this video didn’t have anything to do with Tevis in particular, just his tack preferences, repetitive posting lecture, and saying that you shouldn’t cut a bridle path, ankles, whiskers, etc which I don’t do anyways.

Watch it for yourself and tell me what you think.

future endurance rider? hopefully!

orangemelodie — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:40:51 +0000

Endurance riding has fascinated me for years. I have seen all the youtube tevis videos, searched through trail catalogs, frequent other endurance rider’s blogs, etc. Now it is time to get serious. But endurance riding is a long term dream. I don’t except to get a horse capable of conditioning for a couple of years, because of schooling and financial issues. But that gives me plenty of time to ponder every detail of tack, feeding, conditioning, clothing, etc. It also gives me ample time to get into shape. I’m the kind of person who LOOKS like they are in great shape, but I never exercise, and when I try, you can quickly tell I’m out of shape.
Endurance riding is something that I will need motivation for. Motivation to ride in the drizzle, windy, cold, to ride more frequently than I do right now.
I have a paint horse, but she is not an endurance prospect for several reasons. One, she has bulky muscles. Two she is kinda lazy. Three, she has long pasterns which has caused us to fall on more than one occasion, and the vet wants her to be ridden with sports medicine boots and only at a walk, trot, or easy, slow trails. She loves trails though! Why didn’t I buy an endurance horse? Well, she is our first horse, and I wanted a calm, easy-going horse to start with, especially since my husband hadn’t been around horses before. And, of course, I would love to get an Arabian for endurance. Not exactly calm or easy-going.
So in the long term, I would like to get an Arabian and start conditioning.
In the short term, I will learn everything I can about the sport, and use this blog to record, think, plan, and get motivated! Just like endurance, this is will be a long, slow ride to get to my dream, but just like endurance, half the fun is the ride along the way!