Looking down, dropped hands, with legs too far forward.

Looking Down

This bad habit isn’t specific to riding.  Part of it is spending too much time hunched over a laptop, part of it is huddling under hoods trying to keep the rain out of my face, and most of it is probably too little core strength.

I do make an effort to sit or stand up straight whenever I notice myself hunching, but then something else grabs my attention and posture quickly gets forgotten.

Feet Ahead of Vertical

My feet aren’t directly underneath me – they’re ahead of the straight line that should be created from shoulder to hips to heels. This means I can’t put the proper amount of weight in my heals without being pushed back in the saddle.  Instead I have more weight in my seat than I should.

The extra weight in my seat makes it is harder for the pony to lift her back and step underneath herself like she should. This is part of the reason she is walking slightly inverted in this picture.  (She’s also still developing the muscles needed to carry herself properly with a rider).

Dropped Hands

The straight line that should exist from bit to elbows is very obviously broken by me carrying my hands in my lap.

This explains why I was constantly adjusting my reigns. With my hands so low, there is little room to give and take.  I’d lost the range of motion normally afforded by my shoulders, and so had to slip the reigns to adjust to her changing balance or stretching into the bit.

Of course whenever she raised her head again (as she’d just done before the picture) the reigns ended up loose and I lost my feel of her mouth until I shortened them again.

Posture Reset Exercise

I was hoping that exercising off the horse would have improved these bad habits, but obviously that wasn’t the case.  Thinking about it now, that makes perfect sense… I spent years practicing these bad habits, so they are what feels natural.

Thinking about posture reminded me of an exercise we used to do in ballroom dancing.  We’d start the class with an exercise designed to give us a feel for proper posture. Standing back against a wall, with our heads, shoulders, and heels touching we would get into the correct dancing posture.  Later in the class, while away from the wall, we could recall that feeling to correct our posture.

To improve my riding, I need to spend time practicing correct riding posture.  So I thought I’d try a riding version of the wall exercise.

Place two low blocks (I used hardcover books) half a foot from the wall at slightly larger than hip distance apart.  With toes on the blocks and head, shoulder and heels against the wall, lower into a comfortable squat.  Without raising your hips, imagine a thread from the top of your head pulling you straight up.  This will help get the right head posture.

Hang out for as long as is comfortable.

Core Exercises

Mastering the correct posture is only useful if I have the strength to retain it.  Most of my core workout was coming from yoga, but I had to modify my practice when I injured my shoulder. I was accustomed to doing poses like plank and bridge for my core, but my shoulder still isn’t standing up to those.

But there are a lot of other yoga poses that target the core and don’t put too much weight on the shoulders.  From now on I’m planning to add these poses into my modified practice:

1. Cat and Cow Poses – These are great for a gentle warmup, and don’t seem to stress my shoulder.
2. Dandasana – Sitting up straight is harder than it looks…
3. Salambhasana (Locust Pose)
4. Paripurna Navasana (Boat Pose) –  it’s easy to feel the core workout while doing this one.
5. Malasana (Squatting)

Half Halt

Before attempting to execute any lateral movements, the horse should be taught a good half halt.  The half halt is a wonderful tool to set the horse up for a new movement, rebalance a gait that is starting to come apart, or gently fix a distance on the way to a fence.  To execute a proper half halt, the following steps are necessary:

1. Lift your chest
2. Straighten your back
3. Shift your weight back onto your seat bones (in sensitive horses, this step is often enough)
4. gently squeeze the rains while adding leg.

When I was learning to ride, I think I had the most trouble with remembering to add leg while I squeezed with the reins.

Turn on the Forehand

When first training the horse to do a turn on the forehand, ask for 1 or 2 steps before praising and moving on.  As the horse begins to understand the movement better, you can ask for more steps. Be patient and train the full movement over a number of days.

1. At the halt, establish an even passive contact in both reins.
2. Put the leg you want the horse to move away from (left or right) slightly back and apply pressure to the flank.
3. Keep the horses head and neck straight in front of him.

As a rider it is important to sit square and upright during this movement.  There can be a tendency to collapse or lean over the active leg in an attempt to make the horse move away more strongly, but both of these negatively effect the horses balance, making it difficult for the horse to perform the movement correctly.

Leg Yield

It is easiest to start training this movement in the centre of a ring or field, where the walls/track/fence will not act as a distraction to the uncertain horse.

1. Start by having the horse move straight for several strides.
2. To leg yield left, keep the left leg at the girth and slide the right leg back slightly.
3. Ask the horse to step to the left by rhythmically squeezing with the right leg as the horse lifts his right hind of the ground.

Ask for only a few steps at first, and be sure to finish the movement by traveling in a straight line again before reaching the end of the ring or field.  The rider should keep the upper body straight and upright, and the non-active leg at the girth.  The horse should travel with a straight neck, head, and body.  A proper leg yield does not involve bending.

Unfortunately the most important action in this movement, timing the squeeze with each stride, is impossible to practice from the ground.

Shoulder In/Haunches In

As with the leg yield, this should first be asked for in the centre of a ring or open field.  In a shoulder-in to the right, the rider’s active right leg bends the horse, keeps him moving forward, and stops him from falling into a circle.  The passive left leg keeps the horses haunches from stepping out.

In a haunches-in t the right, the right leg supports passively at the girth.  It still has the role of encouraging forward momentum.  The left leg should slide back slightly, and actively push the horse’s haunches over. Moving into the haunches in coming off a circle can be an effective way to easily get the correct movement the first time.

In both of these movements, the horse should be traveling in a straight line while maintaining a bend in the body.  The rider should sit upright and straight, avoiding leaning to either side and disrupting the horse’s balance.

Practicing without a Horse

The half halt sequence can be easily practiced in a chair.  The chair has the advantage of providing feedback as to where the weight is in your seat, and how evenly you are sitting.  I’ve discovered that if I don’t concentrate, I have a tendency to sit with slightly more weight on my right hand side, which if I were on a horse would encourage crooked movement.

Though the legs are not in the correct position, you can at least strengthen them by squeezing an inflatable ball between them.  The ball can also be held lightly between the legs in between practice half halts, which can be considered the equivalent to maintaing a steady light contact.

For the movements that require one leg to be passive and one to be active, sit in a chair with an inflatable ball between the legs.  Practice applying pressure with one leg at a time.  Pay attention to the weight in your seat, and make sure not to lean away from or towards the leg that is applying pressure.

Finally, stand with your legs slightly wider than shoulder width apart, your knees slightly bent, and your toes in line with each other.  Slide one leg back slightly.  Be sure to maintain square hips, and even weight through both feet.  Return to the starting position, and switch legs.

The second and third parts of the book talks about how changed was being instigated in the animal sheltering movement, and the steps necessary to keep more animals alive.

Changing Behaviour

The movement to create a no-kill America, an America where only dangerously aggressive or incurably suffering animals are euthanized, struggles to get the existing shelter community to change their behaviour.  Even with models of success to follow, the shelters stick to what they have always done though they claim they are working to save more lives.  Despite overwhelming evidence of the inefficacy of existing laws, they continue to push for new and tougher laws.  Because blaming the public has been internalized by the leaders in the sheltering and animal welfare, they keep coming to the same conclusions — they need stronger laws to punish the naughty public.

The problem of course, is that laws focus on the small percentage of people who are irresponsible; the same people who ignore the existing laws.  Laws can’t make people act responsibly.  What laws can do, though, is alienate people who would otherwise be willing to help the animals.  Laws that ban feeding of stray cats actively stop people from helping them live a good life on the street.  Laws that limit the number of pets in a house (put in place to stop hoarding) mean that even if people have space and time they may not be able to take in another animal.

As the author points out, to change behaviour, the animal welfare groups should focus on incentives instead of punishment.  Make it easy for people to do the right thing.  Honour and reward the people who are helping you out.  Focus on the ways the general public can help the animals, and make it easy for people to participate.

In most horse neglect and abuse cases animal shelters work with rescues, leaving seized horses in their care. Due to a lack of resources to house and care for them, the horses seem to get off lucky in comparison to dogs and cats.  They end up in the hands of people who have never been involved in animal control to have it impact the way they view the animals in their care.  In the horses case, resistance to change might be a weapon in their favour.  Though talk of euthanasia has become more frequent, it is still very much a last resort consideration.  Nobody wants to resort to putting down a healthy horse, and so euthanasia discussions always turn quickly  to alternatives. So far people usually seem to come up with some other option for that particular horse.

Confirmation Bias

How can people continue to believe false statements in the face of evidence?  They dismiss information that doesn’t agree with their beliefs.  This is called confirmation bias.  It is powerful, and it is hard to overcome. It may be impossible to overcome if the people around them continue to repeat the things they “know” to be true.  Things they have been told over and over again, and have come to believe.  They assume that there must be evidence somewhere if everybody is repeating it.  The statement can’t have come out of nowhere.  Unfortunately, many of these statements are ideas that spread because they sounded reasonable.  There is no evidence to back them up.

It can take more than studies and evidence to overcome confirmation bias.  Case studies are easy to dismiss as extraordinary.  Evidence can be suspicious, particularly to those who don’t understand statistics.  And statistics are often manipulated by both sides so that they end up claiming the same evidence shows completely opposite results. To overcome some of these falsehoods, it will need to be shown over and over again, in one visible case after another, that the “facts” are wrong.

Overpopulation?

The author says that pet overpopulation is a myth.  His evidence is reasonable.  There are plenty of shelters all over the place with empty cages.  Breeders, who are running profitable businesses, continuing to breed their animals.  Pet stores, also profitable, continue to sell pets. If breeding and selling pets is still profitable, and all shelters aren’t full and overflowing, can overpopulation exist?

Horse overpopulation is definitely an idea that gets repeated frequently.  It is blamed for horses going to slaughter, it is blamed for rescues being full, and it is used as a reason for groups managing wild mustangs to round them up.

It is a fact that horses are getting slaughtered.  It’s hard to know if that can be blamed on overpopulation though.  Facts that speak against overpopulation being the reason for horse slaughter are:

1. Some rescues use calls of imminent shipment to slaughter to raise funds and place large numbers of horses.  At one point these appeals seemed to come weekly, and every week they claimed to save all but one or two.
2. Less horses seem to go to slaughter these days, but  not because there are less horses available.  The “kill buyers”, people that buy horses to ship to slaughter, have their pick of the auctions these days.  The slow down seems to be a result of a decreased market for horse meat, instead of a decrease in the available horses.

As to rescues, they are frequently full.  Even with wide fostering networks, rescues often have difficulty finding space for new horses that need help.  It’s hard to know if this is because of overpopulation, though, because many of the rescues do a bad job getting the information about these horses out.  They put the horses on their websites, and expect the adopters to come to them… but many in their local horse community don’t even know they exist.  Some also have a problem with unreasonable adoption requirements, which is discussed more below.

I don’t know that much about wild horses and how they are managed, but I plan to look into that in the future.  I do know that horses tend to get rounded up when they are eating down the land alloted to them and have to roam farther afield to eat.  Less horses would need less land to survive, so it’s possible that this is a valid case of overpopulation.

Unadoptable

Some animals are being put down at shelters because they are considered unadoptable.  What makes an animal unadoptable?  It seems to be a matter of judgement. There are no well defined guidelines on what is unadoptable.  It is a judgement call, which is dangerous if that judgement is not based on fact.

It’s true that animals sit in shelters for days unadopted… does this mean they are unadoptable?  not necessarily. Part of the problem is that the adoption process is too difficult.  Adoption centres with limited hours, hostile staff, and out of the way locations decrease the number of animals that get adopted.  It is a type of unadoptable that has nothing to do with the individual animals, and it is this type of unadoptable that appears in the horse world.

Almost all horse rescues require adopters to sign an adoption contract.  These can range from short and reasonable, to long rambling and overly demanding.  Many rescues don’t transfer ownership of the horse right away, some don’t transfer it at all.  Some of the craziest rescues not only do not transfer ownership, but add into the contract the right to seize the animal if they decide you aren’t caring for it to their standards.  Usually unreasonable standards that the rescues does not even live up to when the horses are in their care.

Some adoption contract clauses that can make it difficult to get horses into loving homes include:

• Horses must have a minimum number of hours of turnout per day:  While ideally all horses would get to spend most of the day outside, this clause can be a deal breaker for people who board.  Boarders don’t have control over paddock time. And plenty of horses live happily and healthily in programs that involve less turnout, especially when their owners who make sure to get them out of their stall in other ways.
• Horses must have a stall:  Again, this can be a deal killer for some people.  There are plenty of pasture board situations with adequate shelter where horses thrive.  Stalls are a convenience for humans.  Many horses happily do without them.  Requiring a stall cuts out a large group of potential adopters who would provide wonderful homes.
• Horses remain property of the rescue:  This scares off people who have had horses yanked out from under them in the past, as can happen when leases go bad or school horses get sold unexpectedly. It also chases away people who hear about rescues taking horses from others for reasons like a lack of stalls where other shelter is available.  If the rescue retains ownership of the horse, they can take back control over an unrelated dispute.  In a community rife with rumours and unreasonable grudges, it is understandable that people want a chance to own the horses they care for, even if there is a mandatory trial period first.
• Restrictions on use:  In cases where horses have chronic injuries, the rescues often define what the horse may and may not be used for in the future.  While I understand the reasons behind these clauses, they become a problem when they are based on temporary injuries.  Some rescues write usage clauses as though horses never recover.  These clauses also show a lack of trust in the judgement of the adopter, which considering the adoption approval process they go through, is an insult to them, and the vets, farriers, and professionals that act as their references.

The adoption approval process, while important, reduces the pool of available adopters even before weeding out the bad ones.  Adoption approvals require references, which can make it difficult or impossible for first time owners or those returning to horse ownership after a long break.

Helping the Horses

There are a few things in the last sections of the book that could be used to help horses and horse rescuers going into the future.  There traps that rescues need to work to avoid, and there are programs that rescues could use to bring their load back under control.  Programs that would free up space and resources so that they can stop worrying that the next horse will be the one they don’t have the resources to help.

Things to watch out for

Myths: It is important to examine common assumptions to make sure that there are facts behind them.  Things to constantly examine and keep an eye on are the ideas of horse overpopulation, the spaying and birth control options for mares, and what in horse care is a requirement that should be written into adoption contracts.

Blame: Demonizing a group of people for all the problems in the horse community means that people who could be helping with the problem walk away in the face of hostility.

Laws/Punishment:  Resorting to punishment is never an effective way to handle managing an effort that will require large numbers of people cooperating.  Instead horse rescues need to focus on ways to reward and encourage the kind of behaviour that will help horses end up in loving homes.

Programs to Implement

Volunteer PR: Some rescues already rely on volunteers to help get the word out about animals.  They choose advocates for a certain horse, and that person is in charge with keeping up to date with foster homes, having pictures and videos available, and putting the horse in front of as many people as possible.  Most rescues do not do this… instead they post the horses only on their websites, expecting those looking to come to them.  More rescues should look into recruiting volunteers who can help them get the animals out the door.

Animal Retention: The author suggested an interesting program for pets that to my knowledge is not used in horse rescue.  An animal retention program is designed to help people find ways to keep their animals.  In horses, this might mean sending out volunteers to help new people overcome behaviour problems, it might mean nutritional advice or advice on thrifty horse keeping practices (something rescues have tons of practice at).  Basically the idea is to help keep horses in their homes, if at all possible, so that they don’t need to end up at a shelter.

The goal is to reduce the number of horses that need to be brought into the shelters, and to increase the number of horses going out the doors.

Though the book focusses mostly on the fate of cats and dogs in United States shelters, it’s inspired a lot of thoughts about the current state of horse rescue in North America.

I’ve just finished the first section of the book, entitled “The controversy of saving live”.  This section of the book recounts the birth of the humane movement in America, and discusses how the humane movement got mixed up in animal control (and why that was a huge mistake).  More interestingly, it discusses how organisations founded on promoting animal welfare ended up endorsing policies that lead to many healthy animals being killed in shelters.

I am particularly interested in how this happened, because while putting down healthy horses has always been fairly rare, I’ve heard it mentioned as a possibility more and more frequently since the economic downturn.

Blaming the Public

Whenever something goes wrong, people start searching for a reason —  something to blame for the problem, and hopefully something to fix. According to animal welfare groups, their shelters were overflowing because of irresponsible pet owners, and it was because of them that they had to come up with a solution for crowding. Irresponsible pet owners don’t sterilize their animals and they allow them to roam.  The when faced with the ultimate results of that roaming, litters of new kittens and dogs, they dump them on the shelters.  Somewhere along the way, the general public was labelled irresponsible, and the shelters decided that the only way to deal with overcrowding was to put animals down.

In horses the blame is assigned rather differently.  Horses aren’t generally left free to wander, and when they are free, it is usually because they broke out.  Loose horses are quickly caught by their owners or neighbours in most situations.  Occasionally they end up in suburbs or on major traffic routes and there is huge commotion until the horses are caught and carted back to safety.

The horse community needed someone else to blame for the horses without owners, and so “backyard” breeders started being blamed for causing overpopulation by producing too many horses.  Backyard doesn’t literally refer to people raising horses in their backyard, of course.  Instead it’s a derogatory term created by the horse community to refer to people who breed their horses just because they happen to have a mare and a stallion.  The people that breed horses that are not particularly nice examples of the species, and that are not necessarily a good match.  It has also come to refer to people who breed because they want to have a foal.  Then, when that foal grows up and is no longer cute, they do it again.

Legislation, Education, Sterilization

With blame assigned, it was time to come up with a solution.  For the animal shelters, they needed to find some way to fix the public.  A three-pronged approach to pet overpopulation was suggested: legislation to force people to control their animals, educate the public on responsible ownership practices, and encourage sterilization to end accidental pregnancies.

Legislation

The animal welfare groups worked hard to get legislation in place that forced people to keep their animals inside or on leashes, or  face fines and punishment.  In theory, this would stop the roaming.  Afraid of the consequences, people would start caring for their pets responsibly, and the problem of roaming would be solved.  Of course things never work that way.

All that happened is that responsible pet owners continued to care for their pets responsibly.  Irresponsible owners ignored the laws.  And when their loose pets were rounded up, they abandoned them in order to avoid paying the fines.  Laws don’t make people act responsibly, unfortunately.  The new laws meant that animal shelters ended up paying people to enforce the laws, which took money and focus away from the animals.

In most places horses are considered livestock.  They are fairly unregulated, especially compared to pets, but there have been attempts lately to change that.  The horse community has fought long and hard against proposed laws, designed to register and track every horse.  These laws are designed with food animals in mind, and have been proposed as ways to control disease.  Many horse people are not comfortable with the idea of horses as food, so laws that treat them like animals destined for consumption face both practical objections and strong emotional objections.

Education

Education is always an admirable way to attack a problem. Education takes aim at the source of the problem, hoping to cut it off and remove the problem in the future.  To combat pet overpopulation, animal shelters started sending employees into schools with messages about responsible pet ownership.  Whether these are effective or not is hard to know.  There doesn’t seem to have been any formal development of these programs, or any study into their impact.  Of some concern is that these programs are usually run by the same shelter staff who are being told over and over again that it is the irresponsible public, with whom they are working, that causes all the shelter problems.  That may impact their attitude and ability to connect with the people they are trying to educate.

Horse education is not mandated, of course, since there are far fewer people who own horses than cats and dogs.  For horse people, education is normally something that people seek out, so of course it is the responsible owners reaping the benefits of available education.  Some rescues run events in fairgrounds that better reach the general public, but these are major investments and fairly rare.

Sterilization

Sterilization is a solution that has a big measurable effect.  Sterilization means less births, which means less animals coming back to the shelter.  Even when pets roam, those pets are no longer copulating and producing more animals.  Of course, this assumes that the shelters are adopting out animals that already sterilized.  Most do now, but apparently that wasn’t always the case.  There was a time where sterilization was strongly encouraged, but not handled by the shelters themselves.  Without affordable sterilization options, it didn’t get done.

Gelding is a fairly common operation in the horse world.  With the size of horses, an uncontrollable animal can be extremely dangerous.  Gelding of males usually done because without all the testosterone, they are a lot easer to handle.  WIth the advantages of a safer, easier to handle horse in mind, most people happily spend the money to geld their colts.  Most horse rescues also require horses to be gelded before they will let them be adopted.  This gelding usually happens on the rescues property (or in foster homes), though it might be paid for by the adopter.

Mares are rarely sterilized though.  Spaying a mare has, until fairly recently, been a costly, risky, and invasive procedure.  When I started around horses it was spaying was not considered unless there was a medical reason that made it worth the risks to the horse.

It seems there are new methods now that greatly reduce the risk and the cost of the procedure.  Mares can now be spayed laparoscopically while standing.  This means that no general anesthetic needs to be used, meaning that it is much safer, and the smaller incision means reduced infection risk and faster recovery.   I’m not sure how many horse people know about the safer option, but in some places vet’s have started suggesting spaying as viable options for some mares. The downside is that it is still a very expensive procedure.

Cost aside, it seems like there might be a possibility of spaying becoming a viable option for more mares in the future.  If more mares are spayed, it will remove the temptation to breed, and hopefully stop people from breeding their mares in the hope that it will improve their personality. The same people that complain about there being too many horses are the ones suddenly considering breeding their mare when they have a career ending injury. Most importantly, if spaying becomes a viable option for mares, rescues can start adopting out only sterilized animals, making sure that the animals they deal with don’t contribute to the problem.

Justifying the Killing

Nobody goes into animal control or rescue with a desire to kill animals.  Putting down healthy animals is extremely difficult emotionally, and in order to deal with it, people are constantly justify the killing.  They tell themselves that they’re saving these animals from an uncertain fate. That this is a necessary evil, caused by an irresponsible public causing pet overpopulation.

The animal shelters are full, and the only way they can serve new animals is to clear space.  Nobody wants the animals (at least that is the theory — in many cases people would take the animals but for having to deal with the shelters, but that’s a thought for another post).  Therefore, the only way to clear space is by getting rid of the animals they have.  The animals can’t be released (that uncertain future thing), and so they must be killed to make room.

For dogs and cats the uncertain fates imagined are car accidents, disease and starvation.  Not pleasant ways to go, and situations that may involve a lot of suffering before death.

The uncertain fate horses usually face is slaughter or starvation.  Horses are found starving while in the care of humans far too often, and these cases generally mean a huge influx of horses all at once, putting strain on the already full rescues.  People used to use auctions as a last resort to get rid of horses they could no longer afford to keep, but these days auctions are turning away horses that are too skinny to sell, leaving people holding a horse they still can’t afford to feed. People are turning their horses loose on public land and hoping for the best, some are stashing them away in back pastures where they starve to death out of sight, and some people caring for their horses and have been surprised to find extra horses in their pastures —  horses that have been dumped by people that can no longer afford them.

Horses aren’t currently slaughtered in the US, due to some law that passed the cost of the required inspectors off on the plants, the but they are slaughtered in Mexico and Canada.  This doesn’t mean US horses are safe from slaughter, of course, it just means they travel farther to be slaughtered.  And there are fairly few slaughter houses in Canada that handle horses, so even within Canada horses are being shipped long distances to slaughter.  The issue of slaughter isn’t one I want to get into here, except to say that it is a very real possibility as an end for horses, and few people are willing to accept slaughter as a possible fate for the animals they love.

The rescues are full, and they are forced to turn away animals. Some rescues are struggling to come up with the money to feed the ones already in their care.  Still, whenever a new horse in need comes to the attention of the community, people rally.  They do what they can for the horses they hear about. They dig deep, make sacrifices and somehow come up with money and food.  But sometimes it feels like there is a never ending stream of horses in need, and people worry about all the ones they can’t help.  They worry about the ones they won’t be able to help in the future because of the ones they are helping now.  And talk starts to turn to euthanasia.

Right now euthanasia to control horses is a rare, but if people start finding ways to justify it, and it starts happening more often, I’m worried that rescues might caught in a destructive cycle where euthanasia ends up being turned to more often than necessary.  Not because they want the horses to die, but because they have had to find a way to personally justify euthanasia in order to deal with desperate times.

No-Kill

In this first section of “Redemption”, Winograd recounts some inspiring tales of successful animal shelters that managed to greatly reduce their death rates.  These were shelters that went against recommended and common procedures to save the animals.  They engaged the community, instead of blaming it.  And they sterilized all animals that went through their doors before that was common practice, and they relied on the public instead of blaming them.

Horse rescue doesn’t have the same difficulties to overcome, having started as rescues instead of animal control organizations.  They already make extensive use of the community to foster horses, which is one of the program that played a huge role in reducing killing for the successful shelters featured in the book.  Perhaps because the general community is not blamed for the current state of things in the horse community, only the “backyard” breeders take the blame. This makes it easier for people to work with rescues, because they don’t feel like they are being blamed.

Most rescues already geld all the males in their care, though plenty let go of pregnant mares who might end up having colts with no way to ensure they are gelded.  Contracts usually specify no breeding, but of course once the horse is out of the rescues hands, they can only only hope they have chosen the adopters well.  Mares traditionally aren’t spayed, but until recently that was a question of feasibility.  It is definitely something to explore for the future, and responsible rescues probably already have it on their radar.

I’m hoping that the next sections of the book will focus on how no-kill shelters can be achieved on a large scale.  Perhaps there will be tips that can be applied to horse rescue, so that it doesn’t fall into the unhappy position of euthanizing healthy animals.  If it never becomes a justified option, it is less likely to be turned  in the future.

Read Part 2 of Reflections on Redemption

There are a number of events that lead to the injury, so I’m not entirely sure which caused the actual tear, but the contributing factors were:

• Running along with the Olympic torch relay in walking shoes (lesson learned, they right shoes are very important)
• Enjoying the 6 week challenge in EA sports Active More Workouts.  Perhaps it was a bit too much jumping all at once.
• Getting too cold during yoga.  I was warm when we started really stretching, but the room was cool, and I cooled down too much during the last half of class.

For the first day I thought about ignoring the pain, and seeing if it would go away, but then I was thinking I should treat myself as well as I would a horse.  I’ve certainly seen what can happen to bows that the owner doesn’t notice right away, or to bows where the owner tries to bring the horse back too fast.  I also know that with proper treatment the tendon can be as strong as it was originally.  With improper treatment it can cause trouble for life.

With that in mind, I’ve restarted the recovery process (having just re-injured things just as I was planning my slow comeback to  normal exercise).  I’m treating myself much like I would a horse, starting first with ice and rest.  Doing as little walking as possible, and wearing an ankle brace for support when walking is required.  I’ll be wearing the ankle brace around the house from now on, too, since you never know when you’ll take a bad step.

In the meantime, I’ll have to return to exercises that don’t require standing or stretching the ankle at all.  On the plus side I should have a pretty solid core when I get back into my normal schedule.  Hopefully I’ll also have more time for my horse anatomy study.

I haven’t been able to find any type of cardio that doesn’t stress the ankle, which is a bit of a bummer.  Perhaps it’s a good thing though, since it will be harder to push myself too hard during the come back phase if I am also unfit.  Or at least that’s how I’m trying to make myself feel better.

I already have equipment planned for the comeback.  Good running shoes… the ones I should have been using to run with the torch relay.  A heel lift to make sure the tendon doesn’t stretch too much when I first get back into real walking, then eventually running.  Leg warmers to make sure my ankle stays nice and warm during stretching as I work to regain flexibility and range of motion.  But those are all for the future.  For the next week (at the very least), I rest.  And Ice.

Commuting by Bike

Back before the winter weather started, I was riding my bike to work a few times a week.  Because I’m lucky enough to live in a city with good bike routes, the morning commute was only 10 minutes longer by bike than by bus.  The commute home was actually faster (it’s downhill on the way home).  I added about an hour of cardio to my days without losing any time. When the weather clears up, I plan to get back to biking as soon as possible.

For now I’m substituting walking up and down the stairs of the office building and my apartment building.  It’s just not the same, but at least my legs should be a bit stronger come spring.

Passive Strength Training

Okay, passive is perhaps not exactly the right word, because done properly it definitely burns.  I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer for work, which had me wishing I could somehow use that time to get stronger and fitter.  Turns out there are plenty of leg and core strengthening excercises that can be performed discreetly while you work.

Here are a few of my favourite random exercises to perform at my desk while working:

• I lift my feet off the ground, and hold them up for as long as possible.  Obviously you need a conventional chair for this exercise.  As long as possible means I’m still trying to hold my feet up when they hit the floor, and my core muscles are screaming “no more”.
• I do Toe/Heel lifts:  I alternate between lifting my toes as high as possible and my heels as high as possible, holding each position for a few seconds. The lower leg muscles get a good workout, and I just keep it up until I feel tired, or get so immersed in what I’m doing that I forget to keep going…
• I do alternating leg lifts:  I start by straightening one leg so my foot is out in front of me, hold it, then put that foot down and straighten the other leg.  Repeat until tired.  This works the same core muscles as lifting both feet, but also seems to given the butt and thighs a bit of a workout.
• I fidget… okay, this I just can’t help, but it must do something, right? I’m constantly changing positions in my chair, or shaking my legs, or rolling my ankle… I don’t sit still very often. When I’m not typing, sometimes I’m wiggling my fingers in the air, or I’m taping them against my thigh (quietly).

None of my coworkers have ever commented about this craziness, so I consider it discreet, but then again my coworkers are a rather quiet bunch…

At home I still spend  lot of time in front of the computer.  To work on my core strength and balance I have replaced my computer chairs.  I alternate between a physio ball, and one of those ergonomic kneeling chairs.  In order for sitting on the ball to be effective, you need to makes sure you aren’t leaning on your arms or slouching.  It’s easily the lazier of my two sitting options when I want it to be.  Used properly, it certainly has a noticeable effect though, plus it allows me to move, which tones down the rest of the fidgeting.

The kneeling chair is definitely my least favourite of the two, but it also has it’s uses.  It makes you sit up tall, and some of the weight is transferred from the buttocks to the legs, much like is necessary when seated in the saddle.  It can be hard to find a kneeling chair that adjusts properly though, and a poorly adjusted one can cause harm by tipping you onto your knees, so choose carefully if you decide to try this route.

From the outside, the hoof looks deceptively simple. The smooth hoof wall grows down from the cornet band, making up the majority of the outside of the hoof.  The bottom provides a few interesting features to look at including the sole, the frog, the bars of the hoof wall, and the collateral groove.

The Hoof Wall

Regions of the Hoof Wall

The hoof wall can be divided into three major regions, the toe, the quarter, and the heel. It is thickest at the toe and thinnest in the quarters. A healthy hoof wall is dense, and free from cracks and visible rings.

The hoof wall is one of the major weight bearing features of the hoof.  It is made of hard keratin, a structural protein that is continually produced in the coronary band. The hoof grows down from the coronary band and must be trimmed or worn down on a regular basis for the hoof to function well.  As well as supplying support, the hoof wall protects the internal structures of the hoof.

When horses are shod, the shoe is attached to the hoof wall.  The hoof wall is not sensitive as it does not contain nerves or blood vessels.  Because the heel is thinner than the toe, the hoof is more flexible in the heel area. This is important to the concussion absorbing properties of the hoof, so shoes should not be nailed past the quarters in order to allow the heel to move freely.

The Sole

The sole of the hoof is should be slightly concave. Generally horses that live on harder ground have thicker flatter soles, so that the soles can bear some of the weight along with the hoof wall. On softer ground horses will grow a more concave sole, which helps provide traction.

The Frog

The frog is the triangular shape between the bars of the hoof.  Like the hoof wall, the frog is a weight bearing structure. The tip of the frog is called the apex.  It also has a central groove. The frog is separated from the bars of the sole of the hoof by the collateral groove; there is no clear delineation between the frog and the bulbs of the heels.

The frog plays an important role in absorbing concussions and also in the horse’s circulatory system.  When the hoof hits the ground, the force causes the hoof wall to expand which puts pressure on the frog compressing it into the digital cushion (inside the hoof). This movement of the frog forces blood from the hoof back into the muscular parts of the limb, where the veins can bring it back to the heart.

I started riding at summer camp.  One day, I remember the older kids setting up an obstacle course in the arena.  They got out the two lesson ponies and decided we’d split into teams and have a race.  Bareback.  At this point I hadn’t been riding long and I’d never fallen off. I had seen someone else fall off though, and since they’d immediately burst into tears, I was pretty sure it was a horrible experience.  One of the obstacles set up was a raised trotting pole.  I went first, since I was the most inexperienced rider on the team.  When I got to the pole, the pony gave a little hop. I was unseated slightly, and even though I managed to scramble back on, the experience sprouted a little seed of fear. 

It took a new riding school, solid school horses, and an excellent coach to finally get me past the fear.  Though I had no idea she was doing it at the time, she helped me address the basis of my fear by helping me develop a more solid seat, than gave me the extra push I needed to give jumping another try. 

As a rider, fear can do so much more than hold you back; fear can quickly create dangerous situations.  Your tension passes to your horse, your horse starts spooking, you get frustrated that nothing is going right, your horse gets more worried… and you end up in a downward spiral that takes all the joy out of riding.  

Horses quickly taught me to settle my nerves before ever putting a foot in the stirrup.  Even so, after my last longish break from riding, I found myself facing some of the old fears again when it came time to start jumping. 

Since this break has been even longer, I expect the fear may appear again.  This all came to mind when I came across an excellent blog post called: “How to Build Confidence and Destroy Fear”.  Not everything written there is transferrable to horses, but there are definitely things that I’ll need to keep in mind when I start riding again. These highlights in particular:

1. “Don’t dwell on failures”:  Of all the many fences I’ve jumped in my riding career, the majority of them have gone right.  Of course when fear starts to crop up, these successes are not the things that come to mind.  I guess this also falls under “Keep things in perspective.”  I need to keep in mind that I am far more likely to have a good experience than a bad one, and that even the majority of the bad ones aren’t that bad.  The good experiences are definitely worth it.
2. “Don’t seek perfection.”  I don’t expect it from my horse of course, just myself.  But it is a bit unrealistic to expect perfect distances to every fence when I’m out of practice.  And since I’ll start again with small single fences, it’s not like it will be a disaster to get there a bit long or a bit short.
3. “Don’t compare yourself to others.” Or in this case, don’t compare your current self to your past self.  Even if my brain knows what to do, it’s bit unfair to expect my body to do it completely out of practice. 

The Rider’s Fitness Program contains 74 exercises arranged into 18 strength training programs that seem to slowly ramp up in difficulty. There are also suggested warm up exercises and stretches, but not much guidance on when to use them.  To complement the strength  training workouts, the book suggests adding some form of cardio exercise.  You’re on your own to determine what type of cardio to do, but there is a recommendation of how much to do.

Gym Access Recommended

To get the most our of this program you’ll definitely need access to a gym or a good set of home equipment.  The workouts incorporate a lot of machines, and though many of the exercises include descriptions of machineless alternatives, some do not.  If you can’t get access to a gym, there is still a lot of useful information in the book, but you’ll definitely have to get creative to complete some of the workouts.  A bit or research should help you find alternative exercises to replace the ones that require heavy equipment.

Difficulty

The workouts seem to ramp up in difficulty as the weeks progress… though since I’m not that far along yet, this is simply an impression based on flipping through the book.  

As with any exercise program, you’ll only get as much out of this one as you put into it.  The exercises do suggest a number of reps, and the intro suggest doing 2-3 sets.  Also, for the exercises that require weights, you’ll have to figure out what weight is appropriate for you.  If you’re finishing your sets/reps without getting tired, then you aren’t challenging yourself enough.   Try increasing the amount of weight or the number of repetitions to get better results. I always want the last few reps to be difficult, but not impossible.

A handy little chart in the back of the book helps you keep track of how many reps and sets you do for each exercise, and of the amount of weight used.  Though there was apparently an online version of this chart at one point, it is no longer available.  One of the perils of printing urls in books, I suppose.  It is easily recreated with a spreadsheet if you want an electronic version to track your progress.

Overall Impressions

The book is a great starting point for rider’s wanting to get fit.  Exercises are arranged into whole body programs, and the schedule offers plenty of time for your muscles to rest and recover.  The exercises are easy to follow, with a clear description and pictures to help you perform them properly, and each exercise includes a description of how it will improve your riding.  

One thing that was slightly odd about the organisation of the book is that is that the workouts list exercise numbers rather than page numbers, which means I occasionally find myself flipping to the wrong page first some times.  The introduction also provides inspiration and suggests ways to improve your riding that go beyond the exercise program offered in the book.  So far I’m enjoying the program, but it will be a while before I can test its effects.

When I got a chance to remount after the one year break, I was a little shaky.  Though I settled in fairly quickly, there were definite signs that I was no longer the strong confident rider I had been.  My muscles were a little weaker after spending so much time inside at a computer, and my confidence wasn’t great.  Which is why with the end of my current hiatus finally in sight, I realised I’d better do something before I try and ride again this time.  It hit me that I would jump on an unfit horse without first preparing it through ground work, and yet here I am letting myself sit idle.

There are a lot of things we can do from the ground as riders to improve ourselves.  Through this blog I will share some of the things I am doing to improve as a rider during my time out of the saddle.  Topics will include:

• Exercise:  A look at what muscles are important to riding, and the best ways to strengthen those muscles.
• Horse Anatomy:  By understanding how horses are built, I can get a better understanding of how they move. 
• Equine Diseases and Treatments:  Keeping on top of current research on equine diseases and treatments will come in handy when I own my own horse again.  Though I hope for a healthy horse, it never hurts to be prepared.
• Training:  Now seems like the perfect time to read about others training ideas and regimens.  There are a lot of opinions and ideas out there on the best ways to train horses.  Though there is only so much that can be learned by reading…

I hope this blog will be a useful resource for other riders, whether they be on unexpected hiatus themselves, or just looking for ways to improve their riding.