Best excercise for weight loss?

Hi guys

I've been having health problems with my mare, and basically due to being lame 75% of the time reccently, she's been out of work and gained quite a bit of weight.

My vet things the extra weight is contributing to her problems, so she's now on a course of bute so that I can excerise her and get the weight off.

I'm just wondering what you guys think would be the best way to work off the weight. I'm going to start with lunging everyday as my vet recommends, but I want to try some other things so she doesn't get too bored or too hollow from repetitve lunging.

I want there to be a fairly regular routine, as knowing what she is doing helps with her confidence issues. I also want to try some excercises that are going to help build up trust and a bond between us.

I've thought about freeschooling or something like that, but i've never tried it before.

What do y'all think is the best way to get some weight off her quickly? Just after some opinions really.

Thanks guys!
A. Xx

Well, there are several lunging excersizes that you can do to work the mind and the body.

I would go ahead and do normal lunging for a couple minutes every now and then, but I would also do some of the 'lunging for respect' that Clinton Anderson is so famous for teaching. That has the dual purpose. Even if your horse respects you fine it's still good to really establish it.

Free schooling is good, too. What I would probably do is find a couple obstacles (Tarps, bridges, etc.) to try and drive him over. Is there anything he spooks at? Now would be a good time to figure it out.

Is he turned out in a big pasture? That also helps, so he can run around. Also, I would try just taking the halter off in the round pen and chasing him around for awhile. It gets energy out.


I don't lunge much, but this is what I did with my overly fat pony a few years ago. I'm sure there's more methods, so hopefully someone can elaborat eon those better than I have.

Thanks, that sounds like a good start, i'll look up 'lunging for respect', it sounds great. I don't have any huge problems, she's very sweet and doesn't bite or kick, but she has no spacial awareness or respect for my space, and tends to barge a little bit, mostly for food! So i'm thinking a bit more respect/bond can only help.

She's generally not spooky in the school, but she is out on hacks.

Also, she lives out most of the time and has a lot of space to run around, she just....doesn't. Lol.

This may be because it's starting to get a little muddy and slippy, but I think more likely due to being lame, so i'll see if there are any changes now she's on bute

When I spoke with a vet about what else I could do to get the weight off of my 30 yo lame/trippy Cushings mare, he told me that I was doing everything possible considering she wasn't able to be exercised.

This is what I did:

1. Hay in many small piles throughout pasture. Half to a full flake per pile. The more she has to walk for food the better.

2. A lower quality more mature hay.

3. Hand walking. I just took her on walks around the property. I occaisionally ponied her, but that stopped when she got too clumsy.

4. Only grain/feed was a ration balancer and she got the minimal amount of that.

She was actually a pretty good weight when she died. Probably 6 on the BCS score chart. Which is really good for a Cushings horse on free choice forage that cannot be exercised. It helped that she was in with a younger horse who moved her around a bit. He didn't abuse her, well not after awhile, but he would tell her to move from hay pile to hay pile.

Awwww, sounds like my old 30+ yo she also had cushings, and I retired her because she'd had such a hard life. Unfortunately she had the opposite problem, she was very thin, and eventually I lost the battle to keep putting weight on her and let her go. Bless my angel. Xx

But I digress. Back to the horse in hand, i've been hand walking her on hacking trails but she really doesn't enjoy it and my vet has told me to steer clear of roads and hills. I'm allowed to excercise her while she's on her course of bute, so I need to do te best I can within that time :) xx

My gelding was out of work for a while because of health issues and gained a bunch of weight. I put a grazing muzzle on him and lunged/free lunge and now ride him. To start with I lunged very lightly, maybe 10- 15 minutes a day for a while then gradually increased the workload.

Free lunging is great because they can have a little buck and play if they want and you can watch how they move from a distance. It's also great for building up trust and teaching voice commands. With my boy I get him into the small field we have and I let him walk around, have a nibble of some grass. I have a lunging whip with me and I ask him to walk around to warm him up a little, then I ask for trot and he does several walk/trot transitions in the space of roughly 10 minutes. Then he gets to walk around and maybe have a little more grass. Then we got the other direction. I've also been doing trot/canter transitions with him as he's working on his balance issues. He's getting very good at listening to the voice commands and when he stops for a rest he gets a nice scratch and then follows me for a turn around the field.

It's been good for him so he can stretch his neck out and use his back a lot more than if I was riding him (as he doesn't really know how under saddle yet).

Also, the weight loss should be gradual, I measured his every week and all in all he lost over 250lbs in the space of about 10-11 months.

You could get obstacles and play games with her, anything to keep her from getting too bored. Have you considered long lining her?