Schooling livery

kelvinsirrel

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If you sent your horse away for schooling livery to improve their flatwork for a few weeks, what would you expect their typical week to look like ie how many times in the school, hack, lunge?
 

MidChristmasCrisis

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It’s difficult to assess without knowing the horse its current ability and what the end goal is. But when I enquired about it potentially for my just backed mare the general approach seemed to be working 6 days a week..3 sessions in arena up between 30 to 45 minutes…hacks on the other days of different lengths. No lunging but she was very young and I wanted her ridden away. In the end though I opted for a trainer to visit rather than send away and I’m pleased with how she is developing with a less intensive schedule.
 

EventingMum

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What the schedule looks like should be agreed prior to the horse arriving at the trainers yard. I have a horse on my yard just now for schooling while the owner is on holiday. the owner has requested 2 lunge sessions a week and 3 ridden sessions so that is what we are doing. The content of the ridden sessions has been left to my discretion and so after assessing the horse I messaged the owner and gave her my opinion on what we should work on so she was "in the loop". Yesterday the horse worked well despite finding the work difficult and definitely took a step forward so today's work was a gentle hack round our fields while still asking her to do some basic exercises. Had I decided we had to work her hard in the arena today I suspect we would have had an unhappy, tense horse who would have struggled both physically and mentally. Hopefully, the next time we are in the school we can build on yesterday's work. In other words, the owner has to trust the trainer's judgement but equally the trainer should be open and truthful in their communication.
 
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