Saturday, August 22, 2015

Warm-up work and P's teeth update

Once again, apologies for not blogging for so long! I've been extremely busy at work and also trying really hard to put in more pony time. It's not easy and sometimes I just want to sit down and not do anything!!

But I think it's important to keep P moving as much as possible. She has 24/7 turnout but I think regular exercise helps her a lot. I've been doing a lot of warm-up exercises at the walk such as circles and serpentines and figure-eights. I do this on the ground or in the saddle and I also do a variety of leg-yield exercises on the long sides and the quarterlines. If anyone has any suggestions on warm-up patterns, please let me know as I'd love to try them out.

P has also been having more trouble with her teeth. She quids her hay more often, including chopped hay, so I've been looking into other forage alternatives for her. I tried one brand of hay stretcher in the past and didn't think it soaked very well - there may be other brands out there that work better.

I'd like to keep her on something as close to hay as possible. She's a pretty easy keeper, so I don't really want to feed a lot of alfalfa, but alfalfa cubes are really common around here. I know they make a nice soaked mash. I've also seen alfalfa/timothy cubes which would be less alfalfa. I'm not sure that I've ever seen straight timothy cubes. Does anybody feed straight timothy cubes? Has anyone tried any other forage alternatives for horses with bad teeth?