11/08/2026
I’ve posted on here before about Lexi my Spanish horse who I bought with dreams of her being a good quality horse that would be fairly straightforward! I bought her as a weanling so I could make sure she had the best of everything because when you buy something older, there’s a chance something has happened to that horse along the way that you didn’t know about. When I started to back her last year as a five-year-old, I realised something wasn’t quite right.
She could be quite explosive and dramatic in her reactions, despite having had the best care through her life so it wasn’t a horsemanship error. The reactivity told me there was something more going on, and after a vet examination we discovered she had bilateral chondromalacia in her stifles, she had surgery in 2025.
Since then, I’ve had the challenge of trying to start a young horse with physical limitations. It has meant me having to rethink my normal process.
Usually I like a young horse to be confidently walking, trotting and cantering on the lunge before I ever think about sitting on them. I want them to understand how to go forward confidently, it’s such an important foundation. Even as I’ve learned more about horsemanship over the years, backing has has always involved some lunging, groundwork patterns and movement to help the horse both physically and mentally. But I had to be careful with how much lunging and tight turns I was going to do with her. An explosive horse that you don’t want to turn or yield the quarters can be a head scratcher!
I did teach her to lunge trying to keep to
Going large as much as possible but most times I lunged her, she’d lose her balance, rush, tighten through her back and become more anxious. The more unbalanced she became, the more strain she was putting through her stifles, and it just became obvious that lunging wasn’t helping her mentally or physically.
So I have spent many hours working her Inhand. Helping her learn how to organise her body again. How to balance. How to simply turn a corner without rushing. How to carry herself in a way that doesn’t overload her joints. Everything is slow and controlled. Just as you would rehabilitate a person after surgery, I’m trying to build strength in a controlled range of motion before asking for anything bigger.
We’ve worked on straight lines, backing up, moving the shoulders round on a square, tiny amounts of shoulder-in, and lots of straight transitions. Not to produce fancy movements, but to help her discover a body she’s never really known how to use. Her front end has spent years compensating for her hind end, so I’m asking her to slowly trust that she can use herself differently.
She’s naturally very wobbly, typically Spanish, and because of that she actually doesn’t need more flexibility, she needs stability. She needs strength. She needs confidence in her own body. The lack of confidence causes her anxiety and pain causes dramatic reactions.
She’s forced me to put on my thinking cap and think outside the box rather than simply following the usual process. There are still plenty of ups and downs ahead I’m sure, but each week is improving so I’m happy with that.
I actually think this is a much better way to start a young horse. Instead of asking them to carry a rider first and hoping they figure it out, I’m giving Lexi the opportunity to learn how to use her body before I add the weight of a rider. We know that most young horses naturally collapse through their thoracic sling and tighten their backs when a rider first gets on. If I can give her the tools to carry herself well before I ask her to carry me, then I’m setting her up for success. She’ll feel more comfortable, more balanced and she’ll already understand the aids that can help her find a better posture. For me, in-hand work has become a far more valuable way of preparing a horse for ridden work than simply lunging or long-lining.
When you think about it, it makes sense. If you walked into a gym to learn a new exercise, you wouldn’t start with the heaviest weights. You’d start with no weight, or very light weight, learn the movement pattern, understand how to perform the exercise correctly before gradually increasing the load. So why don’t we approach starting young horses in the same way?
I often think that with horses, we rarely get the horse we thought we were getting or even the horse we wanted on paper. Instead, we get the horse we need. Every horse that comes into our lives teaches us something. It’s up to us whether we take the time to figure out what that lesson is and whether we’re willing to learn it.
