We encourage all of our riders to come out daily to visit and care for their horse, wether they are on Full Day Care or not… it is always best to keep a first hand view of your partner! Hacking a minimum of 5 days a week is also encouraged to keep them as fit as possible, which helps prevent injuries that come about from fatigue and unfitness, especially as the fence height goes up.
That being said, it is also appreciated by your horse that they get out of the ring, hacking in the fields, even walking is so good for their minds. For some of them, this gets very exciting, and due to this, we want all of our riders to go out with a buddy- and obviously keep it contained… we have had them start prancing and dancing which never leads to good things…start with just walking the hills, which is great for conditioning and great for their minds.
When you do hack in the ring, try to never go around the ring more than once without a circle, bend, transition, half turn, or something to keep their mind as well as their body active. Mindless round and around is boring and the lack of stimulation sometimes creates a horse who then “looks” to find something exciting to do… i.e spook… Should go without saying though, no lead changes, and no jumping on your hack days, flat work and field work only.
For those who are half leasing, note that you have your mount for a maximum of three days, with your shared partner also having 3 days. For those sharing their horse with Cedarhill, note that during the school year Cedarhill has Saturdays and you have Sundays. Occasionally there needs to be a change- IEA shows, C shows that take the entire weekend, etc. When this is the case, all parties will know ahead of time. Do not assume that if your half lease horse isn’t listed on the Saturday lesson schedule that you can come out and ride. Often times a late change is made, due to unsoundness, lost shoes, etc. Also note that occasionally we use your half lease horse more than once that day. Since we have both the best interest of both the horse and all riders involved, trust that this is okay… it might be because the horse in question was too fresh and needed to be ridden and schooled by a stronger rider a second time that day… or it might be that we really need that horse for a special situation. Our policy is to keep our horses fit but not over done. If we do need to use one more than once that day, and it wasn’t because they were fresh and needed schooling, we will be mindful of giving that horse additional time off later that week.
During the summer, most weekends become available for our half leasers to choose which day they come to hack. Again, they have three days, presumably two of them are scheduled with lessons, leaving them one of the weekend days to hack. If you can, come out the other day and treat them to a spa day… they will appreciate it, especially if you hold them out on the grass to dry….