With spring approaching (yes, really!), you’re probably finding your mindset shifting from frigid winter riding limitations to more balmy days and getting back into the saddle.

While weather and ground conditions may have kept you from riding, they’ve allowed you time to prepare for your spring liberation: You’ve repaired, cleaned and oiled each saddle and bridle, and washed saddle blankets and halters (right?). You’ve spiffed up the barn, stalls and paddocks (right again?). Yet what have you done to prepare your Appaloosa for his approaching trail time?

Here, Lori McCollom Hinkle, owner of After the Reins Massage Therapy for Horse and Rider in Tecumseh, Oklahoma, offers you the benefit of her 20-plus years of experience.

Her Appaloosa roots

Lori didn’t own a horse until she was about 30 years old, but before that she hung around the local stable, trading labor—cleaning stalls, polishing tack, grooming and massaging—for riding privileges.
Seeing the movie “Appaloosa” as a young girl sealed Lori’s Appaloosa fate. “I was smitten,” she says. “From that moment on, I dreamed of someday owning my own Appaloosa.”

That dream became reality in 1993 when “Mercury” entered her life. The gelding carried her ex-husband, Jerry, on several Chief Joseph and Apache Land trail rides. “I’ve always kept Mercury in form and healthy with massage,” Lori says. “He’s had more massage than many people!”

Lori owns three more Appaloosas, none of which was trail-ride ready in 2006, so she borrowed “Tex,” the newly retired 2006 southwest regional champion Appaloosa racehorse, from Kenny and Holly Griggs of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for the Chief Joe. “Tex had never seen or experienced anything other than a racetrack,” Lori says of the powerful 6 year old. “I asked everything from him on those trails and he gave me far more.

“Tex remained balanced emotionally as well as physically, and part of the success of our experience together was due to the massage I gave him at the end of each day’s ride,” Lori adds.
By Diane Rice

Full-text version printed in the February 2010 issue of Appaloosa Journal.
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