I don’t know about you guys, but I tend to get a little sad when the snow starts to fly and the trails are too icy to venture out. If you live in one of those nice warm places like North Carolina where you can ride out most of the winter, well.. I’m trying to not have hostility for you right now when it’s gray, icy, and cold up here in Vermont. Although I do love working with my horse in the indoor and brushing up on our dressage skillz…
… we can both get a little stir crazy spending all of our rides in the indoor freezing our butts off. However, winter doesn’t have to be all perfecting 20 meter circles or whatever you’re working on with your horse. So, what can we do to break up the winter tedium?
Well, for one, when we get nice big fluffy snowstorm, we ride in it as much as possible!
Snow canters are the best!
We also do a lot of groundwork over the winter, especially on those days when it’s too cold to consider tacking up. What we do are basic things like moving my horse’s feet, some free lunging, backing, turns on the haunches and forehand, having him follow me while walking over poles, and some basic trail challenges. Some things that I do are having my horse walk over a tarp (bonus points if he will follow me without even a halter on!), walk over a piece of plywood (our mock bridge), having him sidepass to me, and weaving around cones.
And you can even train your horse to stack cones! Or.. throw them if your name is Prophet.
I also like to spend some time riding bareback, often with his blanket on the really cold days. I usually ride him in his halter when we ride bareback, but this winter my hope is to train Prophet to ride with a neck rope. We tried it for the first time the other day. It mostly went well and we were able to figure 8, halt, and back up. However, we also accidentally jumped a crossrail bareback because the steering was not perfect (and then several more times on purpose because it was fun!)… so, there is still room for improvement! I don’t pretend to be an expert on neck ropes, but I am still leaving his halter on with reins attached as a backup for the neck rope until we are actually good at it.
We also make sure to mix up our dressage rides with jumping and poles. If you don’t jump, no problem! Whether you want to jump or not, poles are great training tools and, not only that, but they also keep your horse engaged and encourage your horse to really flex those joints that can get stiff in the winter cold. Some pole-related things that I like to do are:
- Groups of walk, trot, and canter poles of tighter, normal, and longer distances.
- I like to scatter a bunch of poles around the ring and make random patterns at a walk and trot
- Shorter poles (maybe 5′) can be used to improve your accuracy. Try making small groups of walk, trot, and (if you’re feeling really confident) canter poles.
- Raised poles or cavallettis are also great for getting your horse to really engage their hocks. You can also only raise one side of the pole to do something between fully raised and on the ground. Pro tip – you can use those little kid’s potties (which should definitely now be known as a “Trotty Potty”) for raised poles and they work great (and are cheap!).
Trotty Potty!
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My absolute favorite pole configuration is this one:
The trot poles are spaced about 5′ apart and the diagonal poles are about 4 or so strides from the trot poles in the middle. You can start with the diagonal poles farther away and move them in gradually.
It’s simple, it doesn’t require a ton of set-up, and you can do a lot with a little. I like to think of this exercise as “Choose Your Own Adventure”. Here are a few of the patterns that I do:
I use the poles to warm up before even going over them. You can do this at a walk or trot.
Then I start with some simple patterns. Again, you can do this at a walk or trot.
Finally, you can really work on maneuverability and precision with these patterns.
Now if you want to be super awesome, you could do this with short poles! I do these with the standard 10′ poles usually.
My general pole spacing is usually about 2.5′ for walk poles, 5′ for trot poles, and 10-11′ for canter poles. My 17 hand horse has a large stride though, so you may want to make them a little tighter if your horse has a shorter stride.
Hope these tips help keep the winter blues away! What do you do to keep things interesting in the winter months?
Happy Trails!
Kerrie
