Richland Show Horses

01/07/2025

01/05/2025

FUN FACT FRIDAY!

Are you familiar with the many adaptations that help your horse stay warm during the cold winter months?

🌾 Hindgut digestion of hay produces the most heat, acting as a small furnace inside of the horse. This is why free choice; good quality hay is so important in the winter.

💪 Horses have a huge muscle mass and muscle activity produces heat. This includes running and playing and even shivering if their body temperature starts to drop. It is important to remember that these activities also will result in a bigger caloric demand so free choice hay and in some cases, grain, is often needed.

🧥 To blanket or not to blanket is a constant debate but either way, as it starts to get cold your horse will grow a thicker coat. If you decide to leave your horse unblanketed you may notice that they look “fluffy”. This is due to a phenomenon called piloerection where the hair stands up to better trap air within. Two layers of the coat also help with warmth. The inner layer is softer and has air pockets to create an insulating layer. The outer layer is coarse and has oils that keep moisture from penetrating the insulating layer and keep the horse warm.

⚖️ Wild horses go into the winter heavier than ideal, and the fat serves as an extra layer of insulation. However, if a horse is going to be kept heavily blanketed and in a barn during the cold weather months this is unnecessary and can lead to obesity related issues.

🦵Their distal limbs (below the knees and hocks) are made of mostly bones and tendons, tissues that are resistant to the cold temperatures.

🦶The hooves have an alternative route of blood circulation through larger vessels that can be used in low temperatures. This is why horses can stand in snow without detrimental effects.

👃A horse’s nose has a robust blood supply and is rounded so that it is less susceptible to frostbite than a human’s nose.
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Courtesy of the AAEP Horse Owner Education Committee

09/01/2024

08/21/2024

What is the biomechanically correct movement for our seat bones in walk?

There is alot of pushing and shoving to be seen in watching riders ride their horses in walk. This extraneous movement is not only unnecessary, but is detrimental to your horse. One of the first things I do after a ride is to check the hair on my horses back. If the hair is ruffled, one of two things happened during my ride. My girth wasn't snug enough (I do not advocate over-tightening our girth)or I was pushing forward more than necessary with my pelvis. This is often the case for riders in both walk and canter.

How do we use our seat bones correctly in walk? Think of walking your seat feet (discussed in my last post), literally like they were little feet. The aim is to alternate individually going up and forward along the lines of the stitching on the seat of your saddle. This is a very small movement and requires significant tone around the pelvic girdle to stay feeling narrow enough to generally follow that stitching with your seat bones. I often tell my riders to imagine they are walking their seat bones along the edge of a balance beam. It's that narrow.

The biggest hurdle in this is learning to not engage the gluteal muscles that would pop you up. Noticing and practise will get you there.

Next time you ride, try this. As you walk to warm up your horse, notice if your seat bones move together, forward and back, or can you feel as though you could isolate them and walk them as described above. (Of course this is anatomically impossible to separate the pelvis this way but please try it before making any judgements). If you'd like to take it up a notch, notice if you are just following your horse's movements, or are you creating them? In 'Mary speak' we would say, "are you taking your horse or is he taking you?" Can you connect into your horses fascia (energetically not forcefully), and feel as though your seat bones could connect to your horse's feet and slow them?

The icing in the cake? Once you get this feeling, you will be able to take your horse in walk by walking and connecting your seat bones to the point where when you stop your seat bones and breathe out, your horse will halt!! I have worked with students who have always had to pull on their horse to get them to stop. We work through the above sequence and their horse stops on a loose rein, just through the use of their seat bone connection. I have literally had riders burst into tears when they realize just how easy this is on both the horse and themselves.

Give it a try and let me know what you find.❤️

Edit: Another of my awesome colleagues and I just worked out how to sit a human pelvis into my graphic, making it much mare accurate and realistic. Thank you, thank you Julie Malcolm

PS. My colleague Sally has a really great newsletter she sends out with weekly 'knowledge nuggets'. She discusses the biomechanics of riding in great detail in them and I highly suggest signing up for her very helpful, free advice. Visit her website at: www.horseandridercoach.co.uk