One thing that has put me off some of the western trainers is how long they think it's OK to sit on a young and recently backed horse for. There was a clinic described on here a couple of years back where there was a 3 hour session and someone was expected to be on the horse's back for that entire time, using it as a seat to watch the others when they were not themselves doing an exercise. A friend goes to a very experienced Western trainer and was happy to be told that this expert had sat on her 4 year old for 3 hours while he was training other people, to teach it to stand quiet while things were going on around it.
There doesn't seem to be enough understanding in the Western riding world that standing still with a weight on its back is not effortless for a horse and needs just a much conditioning as moving around does. Or am I generalising from too small a sample?
And yet when I first bought a horse, in 1981, they were described as "aged" after 8 years and lost value from 10 years onwards because of the short length of time it was expected they would stay in work. It was impossible to insure a 15 year old, they were deemed too high risk.
ETA - forum has muddled up the quote but was just responding to posts about track systems. I had thought ours was well thought out - with trees, shelter, natural water etc but it didn't work for us really. I think there are important considerations too if you are trying to give each individual horse the 'best' within your constraints/their needs.
This! We spent considerable sums of money setting up a track system at our last but one yard and I had hoped this would mean that horses could be out 24/7 with plenty of movement and enjoyment. It was incredibly hard work to maintain (as in poo pick), 3 out of the 5 horses literally spent all day at 1 or other hay station in the winter looking miserable. Either that or they just stood under some trees snarking at each other! The other 2 did move much more but they never looked particularly relaxed or happy in the winter; they moved from one hay station to another fairly relentlessly. Without full hard standing on the length of the track it became very compacted or muddy/slippery (I had palpitations watching horses cantering on this at times); where there was hard standing the horses would just stand there! They refused to eat the foggage in the centre of the track - maybe that would have resolved in time once they were accustomed to it but I didn't want them to wait the weeks to eventually agree to eat something that was clearly quite unappealing so it cost a fortune in buying in hay when we could have grazed that bit earlier in the year etc.
The track itself meant that parts of the field that were tracked, were utterly ruined; compacted and like concrete or mud soup. My OH, who has spent his life looking after grazing land, found that painful and non-sensical and after 2 years in fact the standing water was an issue.
We moved on to more of a mob grazing system/strip grazing and that seems to work so much better. My current system is the best I have found for relaxed and healthy horses but each horse needs specific consideration and management. I have a large open yard with communal area for lying down, several hay stations under cover, room for a horse to be confined/isolated and turn out in fields that are cross-grazed by sheep and kept relatively but not excessively short. It is much more 'traditional' than I would have thought would work. But the horses are relaxed, healthy, not over weight and clearly appreciate being able to come 'in' to the yard. I would not try a track system again as I think there are really easier and 'better' alternatives but I have a stable herd of horses that can have a good degree of individual management.