She's gonna pump you up...

Well, maybe, sort of...I'm going to try anyway.

Now that Ernie's back into some sort of working condition after having three weeks off during my winter break, I've finally gotten my act together and decided I NEED to get him on a firm work schedule. We've rediscovered stretching on the ground, and I've been doing them with him every day, either before I ride or just when I pull him out to groom on days I don't. But stretching isn't all I need to do to get his strength and flexibility back up to par.

Do you know how HARD it is to get an old horse back into shape? It's takes 5 times as long as with a younger horse, just because of the age factor alone. His muscle building abilities are lowered, his recovery times are longer, and he feels stiffness and the little bit of arthritis he's got way more than, say, my mare would. I keep him on 24 hr turnout to try and mitigate that problem, and it works for the most part.

So, with a new year comes new challenges I suppose. I won't lie, I do miss the time when I could hop on him after a couple weeks off and discover not much has changed. Now, a few weeks off means a ski-slope butt, a slacking belly and the return of the pencil-neck. It's pretty depressing. I'm forever trying to find a happy middle ground between too much work and too little: unfortunately, I don't think Ernie will ever be able to "retire", in any sense of the word. He needs a job like a addict needs a fix. He gets moody, pissy and depressed when he thinks I'm ignoring him; even if he were to get turned out on 100 acres of gorgeous green grass with his best friend and live happily ever after, I think he'd still be unhappy. So I have to rack my brain and come up with a schedule he likes, and that I can physically handle.

Without further delay, here is Ernest's new and improved daily schedule:

Sunday: Weekly massage 1. I'm halfway to getting my certification as an Equine Massage Practitioner, so I've been using Ernie as my practice partner. He has a love-hate relationship with massage: he likes the after effects, just not how we get there. Everything is so tense and tight that he assumes it's going to be awful, and acts like he's being tortured before finally releasing all that stress. This massage session is full but basic maintenance: full body, superficial and deep muscles, head to tail.
Monday: Light ride. Chances are he's going to be a little sore from the Sunday massage session, so my goal is to keep this ride short but effective. Lots of bending at the walk and trot (no canter), stretching, flexion, big stretchy trot circles; the general focus is to leave the arena relaxed and loose.
Tuesday: This is my lesson day. It's an hour of more intense work. We're working now on lateral flexion and bend, spiral in and out on a circle, leg yields, shoulders in, etc. We're also working on my personal faults as a rider (yes, I do have them), but we'll talk about those later. XD
Wednesday: Off. We'll do the regular carrot stretches, tail pulls and belly lifts, as well as some stretching for his shoulders and hindquarters, but he gets to be a lazy boy otherwise...
Thursday: Light ride or massage. I leave this day open for a reason: my class schedule gets kinda nuts, for one, but it's mostly because depending on how the week goes, if he's more sore or tired, I may just do some handwalking and light massage to relax him, but I won't ask for anything strenuous. It's not worth it.
Friday: Conditioning. Fridays I have a lot of time in the afternoon, and I'd like to spend a decent amount of time in the saddle (45 minutes to an hour) doing lots (LOTS) of transitions, asking for lengthenings and really asking him to step up under himself and into the bridle. When Ernie doesn't want to work, he pretends to step under by breaking at the third vertebrae ("see, mom, I'm connected to the bit!"...) and going shallow out back. On occasion I have to work pretty hard to get him to really engage.
Saturday: Light ride. More of the same stretching, big circles, lots of bending and flexing. We may throw some ground poles in there too, just for fun.

I'll try and post some pictures later. I have some pretty awful ones from last year, most of which show Ernie on the forehand and swimming his way through life...not what I really call quality.