Getting horse fit?

[rallan15]

At the moment my 6 year old Welsh D only gets ridden 3 times a week. We don’t have an arena so we just hack out and occasionally we go to the odd competition.
Next year I am taking him on his first hunt. I am going to up his ridden work to 5 days a week and I am going to include a mix of hacking and schooling.
I was wondering if anyone has any tips on what I should be doing? I know I can’t gallop around the whole time but should I be walking and trotting for a few weeks then slowly introducing canter?

 

[Orangehorse]

There are books available with advice and programmes for getting a horse fit. Having regular work he will have a basic fitness, but if you are going hunting he must be at least fit enough to do hunter trials and cross country courses. One piece of advice I recall is that to increase fitness you need to increase the heart rate.

Actually getting them fit is harder than keeping them fit, because once you reach a certain level you only need to continue at that level of activity, i.e. hunting once a week and hacking/schooling, and you don't need to keep building on it.

 

[hottoddy]

Have sent you a pm rallan15