Roadwork schedule for strengthening bones

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stimpy

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Hello all

My eleven year old pony has been diagnosed with sesamoiditis and my vet wants her worked only on hard ground with bute as required to go through the process of strengthening her bones. So I have to come up with a programme of roadwork but I am a bit unsure where to start. Unlike the normal situation where you are starting with roadwork when bringing a horse into work my mare is already fit and has been used to being ridden 5 times a week for anything between an hour and two hours with plenty of cantering. She is the type who wants to go everywhere at top speed so the idea of starting off with ten minutes walking is definitely going to turn into an exercise in containment.

How much roadwork do you think I should start off with and what rate of increase should I be aiming for? Obviously I will be reviewing how her body copes with it, I just don't know whether I should be starting at ten minutes, 30 minutes or an hour!

All thoughts and advice gratefully received.
 
We used to get our horses hunting fit on the streets of London!
They where used to being routinely ridden for 2 - 4 hours but normally only at a walk with short trots on the roads.
We would find routes with a hill on them and trot them up the hills on the road increasing the number of hill trots as time went on over a period of about 6 - 8 weeks.
By the time we took them hunting (including on the Quantocks and Exmoor) they where really fit and quite capable of staying out all day.
 
Thanks for the info. I imagine your horses were completely de-spooked as well as jolly fit :-)

Mind you, dunno what's worse, riding on the streets of London or riding round country roads full of eejits who drive in a manner that assumes there is never anyone else round the next bend :-(
 
Yes, that really is the obvious answer!

I did and she's to start at 30 minutes, building fairly quickly from walk to short bursts of trot. Apparently it's a case of getting her skeleton to adapt so she needs to do small (controlled) bits of everything she would normally do on hard ground to force it to adapt. Now I just need to convince her that this does *not* include cantering on the roads....
 
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