Equine Massage Horse Age

Video Transcript

"So one of the things that you need to keep in mind, again before you start to work on your horse, is the age of your horse. An older horse like Ice-Man here and Ice-Man is 25 years old, they're going to have issues, no matter what kind of a good healthy pampered life that they've had, like Ice-Man has had, they're most likely going to have some issues like arthritis, maybe back here in the stifle or in the hock area. They're going to have some stiffness issues. You're going to notice that it will take them a little bit longer when you're riding or lunging them to get warmed up and get comfortable. So you want to be paying attention to that when you work on them. An older horse is probably going to appreciate lighter strokes for a longer amount of time when you get started and then you can move on to heavier strokes but the flip side is working with a young horse. Younger horses are going to have better muscle tone overall but their attention span is most likely going to be shorter. It's going to take them longer to get used to the idea of being massaged and you're going to need to do it in short chunks and give them a break in between."