A daily anxiety for many owners of senior horses is that there may be little time left for the riding and activities they have enjoyed until now. As a horse approaches and then passes the age of 20, good rides start to feel numbered. The swayback, gait irregularities, lack of energy… these outcomes seem to be only a matter of time. And without clear reason to do so, many owners start backing off, easing the horse into retirement. Ironically, this approach usually hastens a horse’s decline instead of delaying it.

Hot and humid weather can place significant strain on exercising horses, especially during intense work such as racing, endurance riding, or eventing. Because horses generate large amounts of heat during exercise and have relatively limited ability to dissipate it, researchers have increasingly explored whether cooling horses before exercise can help reduce heat stress and improve safety.

Groundwork can serve a range of purposes, from behaviour modification to physical conditioning, but over the long term its greatest contribution is its alteration of neuromuscular patterns. When a horse needs to adopt a new pattern of muscular activation, coordination, or balance, groundwork is often the quickest way to accomplish it. Using focused and brief groundwork sessions daily, many horses’ postural challenges can be rewired with far less tension and confusion than under saddle.

Three decades ago, stepping into the world of riding meant entering a system where pressure-based methods were simply the norm. Training approaches were built around negative reinforcement, and there was far less awareness of how horses think, learn, and respond. At the time, efficiency and compliance were often valued above understanding. Looking back, unlearning those habits — ones that had been repeated and reinforced for years without question — has been one of the most challenging aspects of my development as a rider.