Do your routines with the horses change with the seasons? As autumn moves into winter (HELLO MUD, I really hadn't missed ya!) many equestrians will begin to make changes to their horse's routines.
So what about my autumn and winter routines? I wouldn't say that I have a routine for autumn and winter that differs a lot from the rest of the year. In the summer, our horses go out 7am and come in sometime in the afternoon and then I ride closer towards the evening when it's cooler. In autumn, the horses go out later - around 9am - and come in sometime around midday, but this depends entirely on the weather. On gloriously beautiful sunny autumnal days they are quite happy to stay out well into the afternoon, but on wet, windy and cold days they want to come in by 11am. Throughout the year our horses are stabled over night, and this will never change. In our family only our youngsters and retired horses live out 24/7. Our horses are all about routine, so making things the same for them every day in makes everyone's life much easier.
Does my exercise plan for the horses change over the winter? Not really... I mean, of course I've not able to take the horses out for a long hack yet because of the busy roads, or enjoy the back field for our canter work instead of the arena, but overall how much work my horses do doesn't actually change. I aim to work all of the horses five days each week with 2 x school sessions, 2 x lunge sessions, 1 x training session and 1 x canter in the field/hack/arena walk hack. This doesn't change much between summer and autumn!
There are no big changes but I make small tweaks here and there just to make it that little bit more easy to get through the winter months!
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