How many hours does an R/S horse work ?

Ours do no more than 2 hrs a day during the week and about 2-4 hrs over the weekend. You do need to bear in mind that many of these hours are spent being a large moving chair rather than actually working in the sense you and I work our horses!
 
In the winter they don't do much during the week - the most used horses will maybe do three or four half hour lessons in the whole week, while others don't do anything - but then at the weekend they do a lot more. How many lessons they can do depends on their fitness and how demanding the lesson is, but I suppose they're used for about 3 hours Saturday and a bit less on Sunday or vice versa. This is just lessons - most are also ridden by their owners and some are schooled by yard girls too during the week, so they are all quite fit. In the summer they will do a bit more during the week because of the lighter evenings.

I don't think any of our horses are overworked - they are loved and cared for like our own (most of the girls that work there also own horses on working livery, so they actually are our own!) and they are all happy, healthy and in great condition.
 
Do they have a set day off or does it tend to be when its quiet ? R/S where I sometimes goes uses the school horses 3 days a week for about 2-3 hours a day. Though most of the teaching there is on owners private horses and the school horses are semi-retired eventers.
 
At the RS where I used to work they would be used for 2 hours in the evening during the week and then about 4 hours on a Saturday and Sunday, with a day off on Monday. They would try to work it so the horses got an even mix of being in the school and out on hacks.
 
Ours do all get a day off each week, but they are on different days so the RS is open 7 days a week.

We don't do hacks (insurance nightmare, and we don't have any decent hacking anyway) but most of them get a mixture of beginners walk/trot lessons and more advanced canter/jumping ones, and obviously their owners can hack them out too.
 
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At the RS I used to go to the horses were used for 2 x 1 hr lessons 4 evenings per week and then 2 x 1 hr hacks on weekend mornings and 2 x 1 hr lessons on weekend afternoons. The RS was closed on Thursdays and that included the liveries - they were not allowed onto the yard! (This was about 20 years ago!).

Bear in mind though that a lot of the lessons were simply walking and trotting around the school - not really being 'ridden' in the way that we would school our horses!

And they pretty much all lived out 24/7!
 
I have experienced riding school horses being worked at three different yards.

Yard 1 - Very busy, horses worked anywhere between 1 and 3 hours during the week and anything up to 5 on weekend days. Some of the horses were only used in the school and some only used for hacking. A lot of the lessons were beginners lessons so some of the work wasn't too strenuous. Just about all of the horses worked hard during the summer though because the yard ran pony camps and day rides. Horses lived out during the summer and in during the winter.

Yard 2 - Not that many horses, most of them lived out all the time. At the weekend they worked up to 4 hours per day and during the week they worked an hour or two at the most and a lot of them got the whole week off. None of the work they did was very strenuous though as just about all of the lessons were beginners lessons.

Yard 3 - All horses lived out 24/7 with field shelters. There were only a couple of private lessons during the week and the any evening lessons could only run during the summer as the outdoor school didn't have floodlights. During the weekend they worked a maximum of 2-3 hours which was a mixture of hacking, jumping and lead rein lessons.
 
They seem to have it pretty cushy! I tend to think that working horses, handled by professionals with a routine, exercise and the opportunity for turnout with their mates in a good riding school, have a good life on the whole.
I was interested in the amount of work they do in order to compare the amount of exercise mine get.
Do you get much laminitis ?
 
Our lead rein ponies do an hour each sat and sun, the rest of the ponies do no more than 2 hrs on the bounce and 3 hrs max per day sat and sun, as said before, most of these ponies are big moving armchairs :D The big horses do a max of 2 hrs sat and sun, they are the ones who do the jumping/advanced flatwork lessons.
During the week, we have lessons tues, weds and thurs, and the horses used varies from week to week, so one might do all three nights one week and then nothing the week after.
The younger horses and horses that are required to do more advanced work are often schooled by the staff during the week, to keep them towing the line :D

During the summer we run pony club days, have XC lessons (we have a course on site) and offer hacks and pub rides, so the ponies are a bit busier, but still only get ridden for an hour or two at most each day.
 
2 hours a day. MAX. This applies to both the weekend and week days. They have two days off during the week, and generally the ponies have more as all the kids are at school during the week :)
 
My horse certainly didn't have it cushy for the brief period he was on working livery :(

He was being jumped pretty much every day, sometimes more than once and was doing 3-4 hours work most days. He was miserable as sin, lost loads of confidence in his jumping because he was being messed around and went dead to the leg :(

This was at a fairly posh BHS place - never again!! I am still skint, but just do without everything now so he doesn't have to tolerate that :(
 
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