My horse recently underwent surgery to remove a bone chip from her hock. She was not in consistent work for the 3 months leading up to the surgery, but I did ride her at a walk once or twice a week - mostly so she would not forget that she's a riding horse

Her rehab program so far has been 10 days of stall rest. Then 3 weeks of stall rest with daily hand walking. Then 3 weeks of stall rest where she can start "controlled exercise". Right now we are 2 weeks into the hand walking. My plan is to start the controlled exercise phase by getting on and walking her (I was told this was ok). I suspect if I turn her out she'll be silly. So after all this time which totals about 8 weeks, I can ride her for real.

So I'm wondering at this point, what my fit up program should be. Anyone have any suggestions. Ideally I'd like to be able to show in the green hunters this summer.

Looking forward to your suggestions!

A girl I ride with and I are conditioning a horse that had the exact same surgury I believe but the chip was in a different place. It's taken us around 2 months or so to get up to a lap of canter each way.

But we started out at just a 5 minute walk each way. Then we gradually got up to 10 minute each way.

Once we did that for a few weeks we started a 10 minute walk 3 minute trot 5 minute walk 3 minute trot them a 10 minute walk cool off.

Once he was doing that for a few weeks we kept adding on minutes of trot and spliting up the time a bit 10 min. walk 5 min trot. 5 min. walk change direction 5min trot, 5min walk, 5 min trot 10min walk.

We always make sure the horse is confortable doing it's current exercises before adding more time onto the trot and walks and canters. So it isn't showing signs of stiffness or he's starting to have a bit of pain. It's a really long process but it's so much better than hurting your horse again because your rushing.

This website http://www.atlantaequine.com/pages/client_lib.html

has a bunch of great articles on conditioning in 30, 60 and 90 day time periods. There are other good articles as well...maybe you will find them useful!