That's what I've succeeded in training. The first time I sent Katie a video to evaluate (last fall) she told me that Coriander was pokey and inverted; I've been trying to work on that ever since. We've gotten a little better on the pokey front, he's a more forward than he used to be, but he's still inverted.
The better-educated-than-me riders reading already know why this is a problem, but, in case you are emerging out of the tunnel of ignorance like I am, here's why riding an inverted horse is bad in a nutshell: It damages their body. Since I plan to ride this horse well into his twenties, I need to teach him how to carry himself better so his body doesn't get hurt carrying me around with poor posture.
This is how he looks under saddle right now: His back and neck are hollow, his weight is on the forehand, and his hindquarters trail out behind. You can watch us at work here if you feel like assaulting your eyes.
picture borrowed from http://www.classicaldressage.co.uk/
This is what I want him to be able to do when ridden: Pick his back up and stretch his neck down with the hind legs engaged.
Problem is, I have nary a clue how to achieve this. I've taken huntseat lessons for most of my life with instructors who didn't/don't seem to care that their horses run around inverted and hollow, so no one has ever taught me how to do this. Fortunately I found Katie who I know can teach me, but she lives awfully far away, essentially still leaving me on my own.
Yesterday I ran across this exercise at Sustainable Dressage, the shoulder-in volte. It's an in-hand exercise that's supposed to help horses learn to stretch over their backs. I introduced Coriander to this exercise last night, just the beginning part where you activate the inside hind to step up further, with dubious results. I made the mistake of trying to lump too many pieces together before he sufficiently understood what I wanted, now I'll need to spend a few days fixing that mistake. Anyway, I have high hopes that this exercise will help him to round instead of invert.
Has anyone tried this exercise? If so what were the results? Does anyone have other suggestions? My plans for him over the winter is to do in-hand work on stuff like this to help his posture, so having a few tools in the box would be helpful.
Disclaimer: I am not a physical therapist or a doctor, if you are in substantial pain you should contact an actual professional to help you.
When I was 26, after a year of ever increasing pain, I had to have back surgery. My L5 disk had herniated and was pressing on my spinal cord, creating tremendous pain through my back and down my right leg. During the episodes of acute pain and the subsequent rehabilitation I learned a lot about how to deal with back pain and how to prevent it from coming back.
There are two common causes for back pain: muscle spasms and disk problems. If you are having an acute muscle spasm (usually brought on by overuse), the best thing you can do is rest and massage until the muscle relaxes, at which point you can begin the strength exercises I'll talk about below. Making these muscles strong and putting them in regular work will help you avoid muscle spasms in the future.
If your problem is with the disks (pain down the leg is a tell-tale sign) then the very first exercise you should do is a very simple one: Lie down on your stomach on the floor with your hands next to your sides (a hard surface is very important). Seriously, that's it. What you're doing is putting the curve in your back, helping the disks move back where they belong. The next step is to prop yourself up on your elbows or a pillow, finally you can push yourself up on your hands to get the most arch in your back.
I can't tell you how much time I spent lying on my stomach before my surgery, it was hours and hours and at times was the only thing that gave me any relief at all.
If you aren't in acute pain, you can start to incorporate some low impact abdominal exercises. The first one you should learn is the pelvic tilt, it specifically targets the muscles of your lower abdomen and is not physically taxing. Start with one set of ten and gradually add more until you can can do three sets of 10.
When you are comfortable with this exercise and can do it without arching your back, you can start lifting your feet an inch off the floor with the tilts. Start very slowly and stop if you can't keep your lower back from coming off the floor.
The next low impact exercise you should add in is the "dead bug" exercise. This is a relatively easy exercise that will work your upper and lower abdominals together.
When you've built some strength from the dead bug exercise you can add in some curl ups for your upper abdominals. Again, start slow with a set of 10 and work up from there.
You might be ready at this time to add in some more intensive lower abdominal exercises like the one below. BUT- I recommend doing this exercise with a bent knee, not a straight leg like the video shows. That's really hard!
This last exercise works the upper and lower muscles of your back at once. As with the others start slowly and deliberately, begin with 10 repetitions before working your way up.
My current ab routine consists of 60 curl ups, 40 leg lifts, and 200 back extensions 3-4 times a week. I'll be doing these basically until I'm dead, since if I let my abs go I'm in pain. Period. Sometimes I'll add in some abdominal twists and a medicine ball for some added punch but I didn't do that until the early exercises built up my core enough so I don't hurt myself.
Okay? If you try these (for at least two months) and they don't work, then you can complain to me that your back hurts. If not, well...
My thanks to Grey Horse Matters, Rose Valley Ranch, Minus Pride and TBA for nominating me for this award. It's nice to be appreciated, consider yourselves nominated right back.
New-to-me blogs I'm recommending (most of these are on my sidebar):
Reflections on Riding - this is my dressage trainer's new blog. Her help with Coriander's training has been invaluable. We don't agree on everything, but life would be boring if we did, right?
Eventing-A-Gogo - Gogo is breathing her last breath today. Head over and give Andrea your support, it's been a very difficult road for them.
A couple things about me you don't already know:
I am obsessed with zombies and the fall of civilization. In my mind they are the same thing, in the case of a zombie attack civilization as we know it would end. If civilization fell we would be protecting ourselves against our fellow human beings in much the way we'd protect ourselves from zombies.
I get headaches, A LOT. I've always wondered if maybe it's because my neck knots up like boat rigging. While we were in Hawai'i I got two massages and they really worked on my neck, softening up those knots, then I took over and worked on it myself. The good news is I've been mostly headache free for two weeks now (a record!) just by keeping those knots at bay.
Speaking of that here's a little trick I was taught to stretch your neck: Lie on your back and put your hands behind your head, lift your head forward until you feel resistance and then press backwards with your head using 5% strength for the count of 15, relax and pull your head forward again. Repeat this three times and you'll find that your neck has stretched significantly further between the initial stretch and the last one. Pushing back against your hands is key.
My favorite food right now is a turkey submarine sandwich with lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayonnaise, spicy mustard, and provolone. Yummy.
My biggest pet peeve is people complaining to me about their back pain. I've had back pain, I've had back surgery, if you complain to me I will tell you what you need to do to be pain free. If you hear my advice and give me a bunch of excuses as to why you can't do some simple situps I can only assume you like the pain and will therefore ignore your complaints (This just happened to me again recently, just do some core exercises, darn it!).
I have a large white streak in my hair due to vitiligo on my face, it's underneath so it's only noticeable when I put my hair up. When I was a kid I would tell people I was struck by lightning. Most people nowadays just think I do it on purpose, it does look kind of cool. Sadly it raises my risk for skin cancer to something like 100%. Sunscreen and hats are my friends.
I have very long toes, they are so long that people like to call them monkey toes. I can interlock my toes like you'd interlock your fingers, some find this a bit disturbing...
I don't know the origins of that term, but it sure is fitting for today. I was supposed to have a two day clinic with Alexandra Kurland but she had to cut it short due to a horse emergency at home, so I ended up with a free day to spend with my Quarters.
It was too hot to ride and they were both over-due for a trim so that was the task of the day. Plus it gave me a chance to get a pic of those nasty frogs I was telling you about.
Here's Gwen post-trim:
Left fore
Right fore
I'm aware that the left looks better than the right. There was some bruising under the bars on the right and I think that made her a little sensitive, she didn't want to stand still for long. I'll have to go back tomorrow and tidy that foot up a bit more.
Can you see the black lines around the hoofwall on that foot though? That's the left over crummy foot from last winter- when she wasn't on any supplements. That cruddy wall connection is 100% caused by diet. I think that in a month or two that nastiness will have grown out and she'll have nice, tight white lines.
I didn't get any pics of Coriander's feet because he was even less willing to stand still when I was done (Mark was working in the barn overhead and I think he was getting nervous) so you'll have to settle for these pictures instead.
Here he is playing with Butch (cleverly hidden behind Gwen)
And here's a not-so-great condition photo
Here he was last fall for comparison- he put on some more muscle this year!
A couple of super sweet people nominated me for an award too, I'll get that post up later this week.
The Quarter's frogs look like CRAP again. This is so disheartening. Over the past year I've gotten the nutritional aspect of thrush hammered into me over and over and over again. Sometimes, if not most of the time, thrush is a side affect of what goes in the horse's mouth and not what goes on the horse's hooves.
Let me just say that again: Thrush is not only a product of the horse's environment, poor nutrition is a deciding factor
I put my horses on California Trace in April and started seeing results in May, it was working and I was happy. BUT my horses didn't like it and I had to mask the flavor with anise seed powder to get them to eat it. Since it's also pretty expensive and only available over the internet I decided to look for some other options.
I went looking for something local, found DuMor Hoof (which I chose over Farrier's Formula after looking at the ingredients), and they ate that for about two months.
I don't know if my horses are especially hard keepers or what, but all the frog growth they'd gained while eating California Trace was lost while they ate the DuMor- and that was with me spraying on oxine and dusting with No Thrush nearly every day. Basically the topical treatments just kept the thrush from eating the live frogs, it didn't helped the callused frog grow out at all. The only good thing about it was that the Quarters liked the taste. Basically it was a giant waste of money, time to move on.
While I was in Oregon somebody recommended the Figuerola products to me so I decided to try out Equinesaver.
They've had this for the past month, while their winter coats have started growing in nicely and they love the taste, I haven't seen any sign that their frogs are improving (still treating with topicals, mind you). Knowing that copper and zinc are super important for coat and hoof growth I took a closer look at the ingredients on the bucket. Holy crud! The amounts of copper and zinc in Equinesaver are miniscule at best, no wonder their feet haven't been improving!
So after kicking myself for taking them off something that was working, last night I bought some more California Trace and should have it by the end of the week.
The moral of the story is that I've decided I'm tired of taking wild guesses about my horses' nutritional needs and have signed up for Dr. Eleanor Kellon's NRC Plus course. The class runs from November 7 through January 9 if anyone is interested in taking it with me.
I thought you might enjoy seeing a few pictures from Hawai'i:
What I did in Hawai'i:
Ate little bananas
Ate Spam
Had a massage
Swam with dolphins
Went snorkeling
Took a surfing lesson
Took a gazillion pictures
Lusted over orchids
Got a violently red sunburn
Had a great time!
We got home around midnight on Friday and the first thing I did was go out and check on the Quarters. My husband thought I was a crazy person, but priorities are priorities. It took me a while to find them in the dark, but once I did I brought them up to the barn to eat and get their body checks. They are A-Okay!
It comes out that I left at the perfect time- I snuck in a ride on Thursday before I left and tacked up Gwen to be ponied. She was feeling a little on edge and actually bucked and pulled the rope out of my hand while we were cantering. I asked for a canter again a little later and she pulled the rope out of my hand again. Apparently somebody was going into heat that day, I can't think of a better time for me to check out than when she's feeling hormonal. She was back to normal again today. I didn't ride Coriander because it's been raining like crazy here lately and the ground is horribly wet and muddy, but since my rides on her don't go anywhere I got on her. She had some slight bobbles, like forgetting that leg pressure means go forward, but for a week off she was really good. I was happy with our short ride.
Coming home from Hawai'i really brought home how close we are to winter, I figure I've only got about a month of daylight left where I can work with her during the week. It'll be interesting to see how far we get before daylight savings time. In the meantime, I'll be busy catching up with what everyone else did while I was gone!
