Horse exercisers
I was raised in Louisiana, and I've spent some time on farms that raised and trained Thoroughbreds for racing. My cousin worked with the young horses, and I used to enjoy watching them exercise and train. I've seen different methods used to exercise horses, but I have to admit the horse exerciser I saw online today is in a class of its own, and very interesting.
Generally, the farm owners have had two options for exercising the horses that I have seen. One is to pay an employee to work each animal and assure that each one receives enough exercise. This is great practice for the horses, but expensive in terms of payroll. It can also be difficult to find enough employees that are light enough not to put more stress than desired on racers if the farm is a large one. The other option involves some kind of mechanical horse walker.
While some farms use a type of treadmill, the horse walkers I am familiar with have all been spokes radiating out from a central hub, with the horses each tied to one of the spoke ends. The horses walk around in their pattern, either with the machine turning, or else providing the energy to move the equipment themselves, but either way they had to be tied to the spoke.
This horse walker has such an innovative design, allowing the horse to move more freely because he is not tied at all. Instead, a partition is attached to the spoke and the partition is moved around the circle, which is enclosed by fencing panels, allowing the horse to walk naturally around the pattern. This freedom of movement is safer for the horse, alleviating the strain caused by the position the animal is brought into by being tied to the other type of walker. I can also easily see that this is the perfect conditioning for an animal who will need to be able to enter starting gates and to negotiate turns well.I was really impressed by the idea. Another great part of this is that these horse walkers are available for rental as well as purchase, so anyone who is considering purchasing some new exercise equipment, hiring a new exercise boy, or just interesting in improving his methods can easily try one out and evaluate it before committing to buy one.
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