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Injuries and Surface you work your horse on.

Injuries and the surface:

Have you ever thought about what surface your horse works best on? Ever thought about conditions that you think might be detrimental to the health of your horse?

This is a very important issue to look at, as we all tend to now work and compete on synthetic surfaces. Very rarely do we do road work, or even work on grass. Does your horse move better on some surfaces better than others? Why is this? Often we think that the gait of the horse can affect the surface they prefer. A high knee action horse will often cope better with a deeper surface while a flat moving horse in front will prefer a shallow surface that may even be described as hard.

Often horses will prefer one surface over the other due to conformation, and their gait. It is also important to think about this when you are competing, as if a horse is not comfortable with the going they are unlikely to be able to perform to their best on that type of surface.

The other issue, is that certain surfaces we are finding are tending to produce more injuries than others. Ensure that you ask around and speak to other people who have the surface before installing the new surface at home. So it is important that you are very careful how you manage your work surface and ensure that it is well maintained to ensure the health of your horse.

So maybe next time you look at an arena, or work surface stand back and think is this a good surface for my horse.... or is it detrimental to my horse, remember one missed competition is a lot better than an injury enforced layoff.

All the best until next time. Merely the musings of an equine vet!