Supported Rider Q and A

It is always a struggle juggling horses when you work full time – it just makes your days extra long! My general day starts with my alarm at 6am, then straight down to the yard to feed/turn out/muck out/sweep and prepare the stables for the evening, so that all my time after work can be taken up riding. I leave the yard at 8am for my days work. It’s then straight back down to the yard after work to ride and then bring in/feed etc. Then hopefully home by 8.30pm ish for tea and sleep!

As my time on week days is limited I feel I have to be quite succinct in the work I give the horses. A lot of people assume I must ride my horses for hours to get them 100mile fit, but I don’t – I guess they are trained much like a hunter x racehorse. They need to start off with some long slow work to strengthen them up, but then once they get fairly fit they do a lot of long slow cantering – an hour on the gallops once or twice a week along with some schooling / lunging / chill out hack will do them far more good than endlessly pounding the roads and putting needless miles on their legs. Whilst working full time, and being the only one who rides my horses, I think I would struggle if I had more than two in full work at a time.

I love the summer months because it gives me lots of time to ride and enjoy the horses. I love competing and summer is competition season so it instantly brings a smile to my face! Getting up in the morning is also much nicer when the sun is shining, and the horses always look so well and happy with the sun on their backs in lovely green fields. I do struggle leaving the yard in the summer as when it is daylight there are always more things that can be done. In winter when it gets cold, dark and wet the horses are put in earlier and I get home to collapse on the sofa earlier!!!

My first pony Trixie got me into endurance, we bought her for me to hack about on and do Pony Club stuff on. After a particularly painful pony club camp I decided pony club wasn’t for us. Trixie didn’t *do* jumping whilst I got very good at it, head first, minus the horse! From then on we were just hacking around the local lanes, and I’d tie her up to our gate and groom her. One day a lady called Gina Harris stopped on her horse and started asking me what I did with my pony, she said she did endurance and suggested I went along for an introductory day. I absolutely loved it, Trixie thought all her Christmases had come at once and just got stronger and stronger, and my parents loved the fact that they also had an important role in this sport as my ‘crew’.

After that first 10mile pleasure ride I never looked back, my mum said I couldn’t take Trixie who was a 12.3hh welsh pony in her mid teens further than 20miles as she felt it would be too much for her. However, Trixie came 3rd in 80km (50 mile) and 100km (60mile) races, including the Young Rider National Championships, and also got us on to the British Young Rider Team travelling to France for a 120km** in 2000. She even used to get placed 3rd, 4th and 5th in open races against these tall leggy arabs!! She was an absolute legend who just completely and utterly loved endurance, I have photos of us racing and we’re both grinning from ear to ear!

Endurance is a fantastic sport that anyone can compete in. You can compete at what ever level you wish to from 10mile pleasure rides to 100mile ‘race rides’, as competitively as you wish on whatever horse you own/loan/ride. There are trophies for natives/arabs/TB’s/unregistered /novices/retraining of racehorses and part-breds! It is open to everyone and is so friendly, welcoming and won’t break the bank. To start with all you need is a horse who is ridden a few times a week and some well fitting tack. We are right in the middle of the season now and I would urge everyone to go to at least one endurance ride this year to see what it is all about!

Click here to view the Endurance GB website which is full of useful information. If you would like to talk to an Endurance Rider in your area EGB will be able to put you in touch with your local group who organise social events, training days or even just put you in touch with someone to talk to. Offas Dyke group had a brilliant training day at my yard earlier this year for people who were thinking of having a go. It was really well supported and lots of fun was had by everyone as well as being a really informative day.

Yes! As endurance is such a seasonal sport (Feb – October) my horses are laid off over the winter giving them time to chill out and relax. They then come back into work at Christmas ready to start competing in March. Feed amount is adjusted accordingly at all stages depending on the horse’s workload, bodyweight and grass access.

Exercise is also amended throughout the year. The horses will probably do more work at home in Feb / March / April than at this time of year. As the horses have now developed their base fitness we just concentrate on our long slow canters to increase fitness and I also school them to keep them balanced in between their races. I think time off after a ride is crucial. After a 30mile ride they may have 3 or 4 days off, 50 mile a week off, 75 miles two weeks off and 100miles they’d have a month off. I think it is important for their physical recovery, replenishing their supplies and keeping them mentally keen. I work on the principle that if you made me run a marathon I’d be pretty peed off if I had to train again a day later!

My favourite Dengie product is a tough question! I really like Fibremix Complement, which Miyaz and Enigmatika are currently on along with Alfa-A and they look absolutely fantastic. If I had to choose it would probably be Alfa-A.

Before I started using solely Dengie feeds I had a problem with Falaina tying up when she was a youngster, it was a regular occurrence that I just couldn’t get to the bottom off. My vet suggested we put her solely onto a fibre diet, so I put her on Alfa-A, hay, and limited grass. That year she won her first 160km*** and was the fastest British horse over 160km that year. The rest, as they say, is history!

Alfa-A is just a great all round feed which seems to really suit my horses, either on its own or mixed with the Fibremix Complement or Naked Oats. I am also a fan of Dengie Naked Oats, which we have used successfully on Karaanza who just needed a bit of controlled ‘oomph’! We used this along with Alfa-A with Karaanza who is a very good doer so doesn’t need too much of anything! They are all swapped to Hi-Fi Lite over the winter months.

We are currently training an unfit horse, SG Enigmatika who has just come back from being broken in. Ennie has the opposite problem, in that she lost a bit of weight when being broken and we now need to put that back on whilst she is being ridden away. Ennie is still learning about life so we need to make sure she doesn’t get fizzy so she is on 1.5 scoops of Alfa-A and half a scoop of Fibremix Complement twice a day, and so far this seems to be doing the trick. I think it is important when starting a young horse, or increasing workload in an older one, to strike a happy balance between achieving what you set out to, but without overdoing it, confusing them or making them ‘sour’.

With exercise and weight loss first check your feeding is correct and you aren’t overfeeding, or that they aren’t on too much grass. Regarding a fitness regime it would depend on the work the horse is in currently. I stated above that I like long slow canters rather than endless miles on legs, but if you have an overweight horse, or an unfit one you need to gradually increase the workload and I would probably do more slow work with it than I would once it is fit.

Enigmatika is currently working 5 days a week and she has a 50/50 split of hacking out and schooling. Our schooling sessions are limited to about 20 minutes. This is mainly due to concentration as I don’t want her to get bored but also as her little unfit, not-entirely-balanced probably body couldn’t cope with much more. I’d rather we did 20mins of good quality schooling that makes her work and that she understands what’s being asked of her than we did 30mins of bad schooling where she got bored/overworked and took a step backwards.

If trying to lose weight at a basic level I would suggest trying to gradually increase the amount of work, so if your horse is only worked 3 days a week gradually increase to 4 or 5 days. It is important to vary the work, lunging, schooling, hacking etc as this will help to keep your horse interested and ‘challenge’ the body in different ways.

On hacks make your horse walk out and properly in an outline, don’t let them slob along for the entire way. Getting your horse to use their body properly will keep them working a bit harder. If your horse is fit enough and you have some hills near you, hill work especially at a faster trotting pace is a great way to build fitness.

For further information The Blue Cross Fat Horse Slim pack contains advice regarding exercise for weight loss specifically targeted to the overweight horse.

My ultimate horsey goal would to be either number 1 in the FEI world Endurance rankings or win a World Championships. We got to number 21 in the world rankings so have a bit of a way to go!

My season has been slightly altered as Karaanza has suffered an injury - we were preparing her for a 160km*** at the time so it is very very frustrating! The aim now has been shifted to preparing Enigmatika for her first endurance ride. I’ll be documenting our progress and ups and down on my rider blog on the Dengie website so keep an eye out for our latest updates.

Falaina took to Dubai instantly – she thrives in the heat. For my part I had to ensure we were both fully hydrated, for me this involved drinking Isotonic drinks as well as water to provide my body with the right fluids to function. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. You can’t tell a horse it needs to keep itself hydrated because it’s going to race 100miles in the desert next week!

The problem we had was the water at the stables was laced with sand so had a very different flavour and texture to her stable back in the UK. To combat this we use a small amount of Dengie Alfa-Beet soaked in her water bucket or a drop of liquid molasses in the water, as the water then tastes like her feed. On ride day she also had this mixed into her water, and we also were ‘crewed’ more often and more intensely than we would be in the UK.

In Dubai the crew cars can drive next to you for the whole route. When I felt Falaina was getting too warm the crew get a few hundred yards ahead of you, jump out and hold ice cold bottles of water at arms length. At a canter we will take these bottles out of their hands, and whilst cantering pour it all over the horse to keep her cool – this would be done every mile or so in the heat of the day in the desert. I have to admit when it started getting a bit too hot a bottle or two was used over my head or down my back to keep me cool too!

Miyaz, my little yearling who is Enigmatika’s son, has turned into a cracking little lad. I’m aiming Miyaz, as a homebred horse, to be the horse that I get to achieve my ultimate horsey goal on!

With Endurance horses there is not much you can do with them before they are 5-years-old, so there isn’t a great deal of point rushing them. I also want them to be strong and fully grown before they start work. Like Falaina, I want them to compete successfully at the top for a number of years so it is important not to push too hard too young. I guess we will break Miyaz in as a 4 year old and take it from there. We may do some in hand showing before he is broken to show him the world and start some novice endurance when he is 5-years-old. I have high hopes for this little lad, and I will be putting 110% of my effort into getting him to 160km***.