Robinsons Blog

The super cold weather we’re all experiencing at the moment combined with your horse spending more time stabled in winter months, makes for a fun recipe of spooks and sharpness. This can potentially mean when you’re riding accidents may be more likely and you might end up in hairy situations more often than you anticipated!

To help control this behaviour, give your horse as much turnout as you can, if you can’t use a field, try to use the arena so he can still stretch his legs and burn off some energy. Lungeing can be a valuable form of exercise in winter, either before you ride to get rid of any initial sharpness or as an alternative form of exercise when riding isn’t an option. The use of a lungeing training aid can also encourage your horse to work in a correct outline and engage his hindquarters without the hindrance of a rider.

If you are able to ride, you may have to take things slightly slower than usual so use this time to work on your horse’s obedience and impulsion. The best way to do this is with transitions, transitions, transitions. Remember that we are all working to have our horses responding to the lightest possible aids whether that is the leg or hand. Any pace and transition you ride should be springy without being rushed and really forwards from your leg. This helps ensure your horse is listening to you, he will burn more energy and it helps to keep you and him really interested in what you’re doing. Plenty of serpentines, transitions, figures of eight and changes of rein are really good for getting your horse listening and then keeping his attention on his work. As well as this, lateral movements such as leg yield are great for keeping your horses mind on you.

Calmers can make a huge difference to your horse’s winter attitude, with loads on the market such as Global Herbs Super Calm and Mag Calm which are a daily supplement to keep your horse relaxed. These paired with regular exercise can really help to keep your horse chilled out and easier to handle. Most calmers manage to do this without dulling your horse or his personality, and just keep him with a controllable level of energy with more of a willingness to listen to you.

Instant calmers are also available, useful for if your horse gets nervous and stressed about a certain situation, such as going to a show, travelling in a horse box or being clipped. You could even use them if your horse is fine being schooled but gets fizzy when hacking; the instructions usually just say feed a few hours before the calming effect is needed as a one off dosage. These can be really useful and can cost less if your horse only needs a calmer as a one off every so often as it means you don’t have to feed it daily at a maintenance level.

Also make sure your horse’s feed isn’t too sugary and starchy. If you have a poor doer, there are still feeds on the market that aid weight gain without fizzing them up, and gut supplements such as Equine Gold help keep your horse digesting to the best of his ability and therefore getting more nutritional value out of his food, keeping weight on.

To help you stay safe through potential fizzy behaviour, you need to be thinking even more than usual about your safety around your horses which should be to a high standard anyway. If you don’t already use one, back protectors are an excellent investment for riding in, with level 3 of EN13158:2009 and BETA 2000 being the latest and highest standard. Despite common belief that back protectors are uncomfortable, restrictive and stiff, new designs and developed technology means that this is no longer the case and many now cater for various body shapes, with women in particular having protectors designed with the feminine shape in mind. There is no reason not to have one, and they can be life savers in some instances.

They are definitely worthwhile, even if you think you have the most laid back, bomb proof horse in the world who only spooks once a year, horses are still prey animals with survival instincts which don’t take your safety into mind.

Obviously riding hats are a must whilst you are riding and it is illegal in the UK for children under the age of 16 to ride on the road without one. When you are handling horses, though it is unfortunately not often seen, it is advisable to wear a hat, especially when leading your horse about, even more so in the ice and snow or if your horse is highly strung. By making sure your hat is up to standard, checked regularly and replaced if ever dropped, you are also increasing your standard of safety around your horses. Also wear good quality gloves when leading and handling as rope burns hurt and if you have to let your horse go because your bare hands can’t keep hold of him, he could end up in a nasty situation which could have been prevented. Also, when you lunge you should wear a riding hat and gloves as well as tough boots, not trainers or similar, these offer little resistance to a horse accidentally stomping on your feet! 

Even though some of these precautions are time consuming, mean you might have to buy something else new and may seem unnecessary, if they were the life saver in a situation, you would be grateful to have used them. In the same way, if you don’t use them and something happens, you are left with the “what ifs”.

If you follow this advice along with a good bit of common sense, a nice, safe and even pleasant winter with a saner than usual horse is likely, which will hopefully continue to help with the joys of spring until your horses are too hot in summer to be bothered bouncing about. Roll on the sunshine, and in the meantime do everything you can to keep safe and have fun!

The current weather conditions are a nuisance to everyone but to the horse owner they mean an extra headache. Do we allow our horses in the field for a chance to relax and move freely or do we keep them in their warm stables? Many owners understandably choose to keep their horse stabled rather than risk walking them out over the ice rink conditions of a tarmac yard. Fields, too, can be icy or at best rock hard with uneven surfaces that can cause injury and strain on your horse’s legs. How then, do you keep your horse occupied when he is spending a much longer period of time than usual in his stable? For some horses this can become too much and they may start to display bored or stressed behaviour, from just not being able to settle or appearing unhappy in themselves to developing permanent and damaging stable vices.

One answer to this is kitting your stable out with plenty of horse toys and distractions to keep their mind occupied thus keeping bored behaviour at bay.

There are loads of stable toys out there, with one of the simplest sorts being toys which hang from the stable roof, such as the Jolly Apple and Horse Play Stable Ball. The horse knocks the toy with his nose but can’t usually get hold of them, as hard as he might try. This is especially effective with the Jolly Apple as it is also scented so he thinks it could be food and tries his hardest to grab it. Some horses with the right type of personality can get quite enthralled with this type of toy others can find it frustrating so its best to monitor your horse closely when you first introduce this type of toy.

Other good types of stable toys are those which have edible distractions. There aren’t many horses out there whose stomachs don’t rule their heads, so food toys tend to be good for occupying equine minds.

A simple and cheap yet effective stable toy is something like the Best Mate or Likit Holder hanging treat, these have an outer holder which hangs from the roof of the stable or a tie ring and holds the treat. This can keep the food obsessed horse happy for hours and can last for ages depending on how greedy your horse is!

A similar hanging toy is the Likit Boredom Breaker, which is a hanging attachment for your stable, holding 3 likits, 2 small ones and one large one. This means the toy moves around as the horse tries to lick the treats, and as you could have 3 different flavours in there if you wanted to, gives a variety of tastes therefore making him less likely to become disinterested. The Likit Tongue Twister works on a similar theory as the Boredom Breaker. It’s a door or wall attachment which holds 2 little Likits, giving a variety of flavour, and spins round when the horse tries to lick it, making it a difficult task which a horse can easily get enthralled in.

Other stable toys are for use on ground level, which puts the horse into a natural, relaxed grazing position which can help relax the stressy types more than a treat dispenser above the ground. Most of these come in the form of feeders, such as the Snack Ball that you fill with treats which are released as the horse rolls the toy. For more intelligent and highly strung horses this can be an excellent way of keeping them occupied.

For those who are even more clever and can empty the easy rolling ones within half an hour, there are strangely shaped ones available such as the Rock N Roll Ball, Equine Decahedron and Amazing Graze, which are all designed to be more difficult to roll and don’t roll in the direction the horse wants them to. This makes the horse think a bit more, and sometimes have to forage for the treats as he isn’t just picking them up as they fall out right in front of him. These may last longer than ball shaped feeders, but the horse may also become disinterested if he doesn’t have the attention span or patience for them.

Tub licks are also good for boredom breaking, such as Paddock Likit and Five Star Lick, which are a tub that can be put on the floor and your horse can use them as he pleases. Again this encourages a natural and relaxed posture, good for calming horses down and distracting them from boredom or stress inducing factors. They can also have medical benefits such as the Respiratory Stable Lick, so have more advantages than just keeping a stressed horse calm.

For the horse who craves other equine company and needs the feeling of security he gets from being in a herd, the best idea is to keep him where he can see, hear and touch other horses to try and keep him happy. However this is not always possible and some horses even get stressed if they can hear and smell other horses but can’t see them, as in some stable situation where there are full walls separating horses. Stable mirrors are an excellent way of solving this problem and can calm even the most herd dependant animals if they notice their reflection.

For horses with short attention spans and horses who get easily stressed when stabled, a combination of ground feeders, hanging toys and stable mirrors could be the only way to keep them happy until they’re next turned out.

Stable toys are always a good idea for the stabled or partially stabled horse as even if they may seem quite happy in the stable, toys help promote a healthy and busy mind, and can keep horses calm, happy and vice free.