Question
Come July and you decide to round up your horses
from the farm, and they are huge and you think it’s
about time to start walking them… When is the
time when you must reduce their feed ideally in
order to reach your objective? And what feed do
you give them?
E.T. What you say is very reasonable. I remember
the time when the Coronel Suárez team had asked
themselves this: why let the horse get too fat? And
I remember Alfredo and Juan Carlitos catching up
their horses to play the Belgrano Cup with Coronel
Suárez and then let them loose again, so that they
shouldn’t be so long with no exercise.
Question
What is your opinion of walkers?
E.T. Quite frankly, I’m not a fan of walkers. I think
the circle is too short and the horse gets bored. I
think it healthy to exercise on the track where it is
more open and not to be squeezed on to the same
foreleg… In my case, where I am able to exercise
at a club, I try to exercise the horses on the track
one way and then the other during pre-season.
“There are three very important
things in my opinion: first to
take each horse as a separate
individual; then interaction
between player and horse, and
respect for the time it takes
each horse to learn.”
Pite Merlos.
262
P.M. I think the walker appears when there is a
structural problem. Either we have too many horses
or too few staff. I find the walker a solution during
the first stage because I use it to make the mares
lose weight; with half the amount of staff you can
do the same job, because while they walk, you can
go out to exercise other horses. I also understand
the problem of it being in the same place and it is
not the healthiest method, but I use it a lot during
the first stage, and I’m quite happy with it.
PRACTICES
E.T. Once the pre-season is over, we go on to the
next stage: molars… and we begin with the gymn
we want them to do in future and start playing slow
practice matches, using our common sense. You
don’t suddenly take them out to play tournaments;
you start slowly and go increasing the speed as
you go feeling that the horse is becoming fit… the
order of this is: we shoe them; de-parasite; shoe
them again; thirty days go by and we shoe them
again; file their molars so that the gags don’t prick
them too much, and little by little go speeding them
up according to what is good for the horse… all this
aimed at trying to achieve the best performance
from the horse as it goes nearing the objective.
Question
Tell us about water management through all this.
E.T. In my case I have thought for a long time that
permanent clean water is the best way to do it.
P.M. I think the same, they have water permanently.
The only time in which water is cut off is when it is
up against great effort, and that depends on the
groom and demands made upon it. And if it’s very
hot, you take a bucket along with you to the field
and let it drink during the match.