JK Equestrian

12/29/2023

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CAME OUT TO THE JK EQUESTRIAN CHRISTMAS PARTY TONIGHT!!!!! It was so great to see everyone in one place at the same time!!!! It was truly amazing to see the huge crew that make up what I once called my “small” program!! I’m thinking I need to change that to “A big program in a small place!” 😆 🥰
And a HUGE thank you to Bear Creek Wine Company and Brewery for hosting our large group!! Super awesome place and even better food run by a fantastic top notch family that I get to call clients and friends!!!!!! Im so very thankful to have each and everyone of yall as a client and friend!! Those who came out tonight plus the ones who couldn’t make it! I appreciate each and every one of you!!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!! 🤎🎉🤎🎉

04/17/2022

Definitely worth the watch!!

Why the hoof wall shouldn't carry everythingThe coffin bone is suspended by the laminae inside the hoof capsule. Right? So many of us have been taught and in...

04/15/2022

04/14/2022

Boots and bandages - are we harming our horses as we try to protect them?

Bandaging and booting our horses is becoming more and more popular, especially with the popularity of matchy matchy sets. But are we doing more harm than good? Most people will have come across the articles in magazines and comments from vets saying they are, and yet still they become more and more popular. Why is that? Why do riders still cover their horses in thick fleece bandages or fluffy boots despite the dangers? Tradition I suppose. Wanting to fit in. Or just habit, some will feel like they haven’t finished tacking up if they haven’t put the boots on.

I know this isn’t about dentistry (for which I apologise) but I am a vet first and foremost, and as a dressage rider I am asked why I don’t use bandages all the time. I’ve written about this several times now and no one pays attention, so rather than stating facts and quoting research, I’d like to take you through my journey of discovery, please bear with me. Facts and papers are at the end.

Rewind 12 years and I was in my final year at vet school. Prior to and during vet school I had a horse and we did dressage. I had planned to ODE but this horse pulled every tendon and ligament known to vet kind. He spent more time out of work than in. Each time I would up my game with the latest boots/bandages on the market. From fluffy boots to wraps to sports fetlock boots, fleece bandages to gamgee and cotton to the half fleece/half elastic bandages. I learnt new techniques for better support, figure of 8 bandaging to cradle the fetlock etc etc. I’d been there and done it. My collection was extensive.

Right at the end of vet school I had my rotations. I chose Equine lameness as one of my options. During in this I very vividly remember a wet lab with Dr Renate Weller where she had a skinned horses leg (showing all of the tendons and ligaments) in a machine that mimicked the pressures a horse applies to their limbs. She took us through walk, trot, canter and gallop, loading this leg so we could see the inside workings of the horses leg without the skin. It was fascinating I can tell you, and I very clearly remember thinking about my horse and wondering how on earth we are suppose to support this limb when it undergoes these incredible forces! Half a ton of animal pushing down a tiny spindle of a leg held by tendons barely thicker than my thumb. Craziness!

Fast forward just a few short months and I was a fully qualified vet in the big wide world. I attended my first BEVA Congress and during the break I wandered around the stalls looking at the latest inventions and technologies companies bring to these gatherings. Here I came across a company with the Equestride Boot which caught my eye. Now if you haven’t seen this boot, it’s wonderful and I’ve since used it a few times in rehabbing very severe tendon and ligament injuries with great success. The boot is a carbon fibre boot that stops the fetlock dropping, which stops the tendons and ligaments being fully loaded while they heal. This boot is super strong. You couldn’t ride a horse in it as it is limiting the range of motion so much, but they can move about easily enough at the lower settings to rehab etc. The guy on the stand (I’m afraid I can’t remember his name) showed me their research and in the straight talking Irish way explained the stupidity of expecting a thin piece of material to support a horse. And of course it can’t! Literally no bandage or boot (short of this very expensive carbon fibre rehab boot) is capable of reducing the amount the fetlock drops. Thinking back to Dr Weller’s demonstration, I could very clearly see how ridiculous I had been to ever believe a scrap of material could do anything to reduce or support that pressure.

But the boots/bandages don’t actually cause any harm do they? Surely it’s ok to use them on the off chance they might help and if we look good in the meantime, great! Well, not long after this, research started appearing that got me very worried about my bandage collection. Heat. Anyone that uses bandages and boots will not be surprised to see sweat marks under their bandages/boots after they’ve been removed. They trap a lot of heat. The horses body and legs generate a lot of heat when working. The tendons/ligaments in the leg, along with an increased blood flow generate ALOT of heat. Fleece bandages/boots in particular, hold this heat in the horses leg. Very few boots and virtually no bandages (especially if you use a pad under) allow the legs to breath adequately. This heat is easily enough to kill tendon/ligament cells. Each tendon/ligament is made of thousands and thousands of cells all lined up end on end and side by side in long thin spindles. They stretch and return to their original shape and size like an elastic band, absorbing and redistributing the pressures applied from further up the leg and from the ground impact below. All of these cells must work together as one to do this effectively.

Just a little side step here to explain how tendons/ligaments heal. A tendon/ligament cell can not be replaced like for like. They always heal with scar tissue. This is why reinjury is so much more likely if a tendon/ligament is blown. The fibrous scar tissue doesn’t stretch, it isn’t capable of stretching or absorbing the impact of a horses movement. It will always be a weak spot. In a full blown sprain/strain the whole (or most) of the tendon has been damaged. But this heat injury might just kill a few cells at a time. Those few cells are replaced by fibrous scar tissue, then next time a few more etc etc. Like a rubber band degrading over time the tendon/ligament loses its elasticity and eventually goes snap. Then you’ve fully blown a tendon/ligament. The injury didn’t start to happen at that moment, but that was the final straw. The damage adds up over time, each time thermal necrosis (vet word for cell death) occurs.

So if using boots/bandages can not offer any sort of support, and using them generates heat that slowly damages the tendons/ligaments until they give way. Why use them? Protection. This is the only reason to use boots. To stop the horse brushing, injuring themselves catching a pole or over cross country. But for goodness sake make sure your boots are breathable! If the horse is sweaty under the boot but not above or below, the boot is not breathable enough. And don’t use fleece bandages just because you like the colour. These fleece bandages are the worst at holding heat in the leg, way above the threshold for thermal necrosis to the cells of the tendons and ligaments. If your horse doesn’t need protection, don’t use boots. I haven’t for the last 12 years and *touch wood* I haven’t had a single tendon/ligament injury in any of my horses. I will never go back to boots or especially bandages now. I don’t use them for schooling, lunging, jumping, travelling, turnout, stable, in fact I don’t use them at all. Ever. But I don’t hunt or XC.

I hope you have found my story useful and can make informed decisions on boots and bandaging going forward.

For more information on the Equestride boot and their research into support offered by boots and bandages, visit http://www.equestride.com/ and https://www.equinetendon.com/services/equestride/

The horses leg under the compression machine at the Irish Equine rehabilitation and fitness centre https://fb.watch/cmVMt6-iOJ/ (I highly recommend you watch this incredible video. It clearly shows the amount of force the leg goes through and demonstrates the real purpose of boots)

Other relevant papers-
https://equimanagement.com/.amp/articles/horse-skin-temperature-under-boots-after-exercise
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8f15/0ea480edca142260d01f419f80d2e7e7fb29.pdf
http://www.asbweb.org/conferences/1990s/1998/59/index.html

Edit 1 - I am getting asked about stable wraps very frequently. This post is about riding, the tendons and blood flow create heat which is trapped by bandages/boots during exercise. This doesn’t occur in the stable stood still. If the horse has a strain/sprain resulting in inflammation, then there is an increase in blood flow and there is heat being created. In this situation you should not be bandaging. But if it’s cold and an old horse needs stable wraps to keep the joints warm and improve sluggish blood flow (filled legs) you can use the heat trapping to your advantage. But you need to be careful in summer.

Edit 2 - the other thing I’m being asked about is compression. Compression DOES NOT control inflammation. The inflammation still occurs, but the swelling can not escape the bandages and the increase in internal pressure reduces blood flow, causing ischemic damage. Like laminitis within the hoof. The hoof capsule prevents swelling so the inflammation expands inwards and cuts off the blood supply. This is why laminitis is so painful and difficult to treat. Compression is only useful in the case of leaky vessels, for example reduced blood pressure, reduced movement so the blood isn’t being pumped backup the legs, or osmotic imbalances eg low protein with diarrhoea. In these situations, compression of the legs can encourage blood to return to the vessels and continue circulating.

04/10/2022

A great read!!!

03/31/2022

Definitely something worth reading and trying for sure!!

03/30/2022

The Seat Explained

The seat has two meanings.
One is the specific area of contact that extends from the lumbar
back down to the knee, in other words, whatever moves from the lumbar area down to the
knee is the rider's seat.
But in a broader sense, the rider's seat is everything because its influence is entire, from the top of the head, which should be the highest point, of course, to the bottom of his heel.

The seat should be a cohesive unit that comes to the horse as a communication medium and as a transformation medium, one that is communicating cohesively and as a unit rather than in bits and pieces. I would like to say that even when a teacher gives specific directions to the rider to do something with his arms and with his legs, those directions
influence the rest of the rider. Because the rider is one person, he must communicate as one unit, one seat.

Riders should have balanced, deep, adhesive seats that allow them to make independent aids. Riders who remain adhesive to the saddle and their horses do so because they
understood and they learned that when the horse impacts on the ground the two points of
absorption are in the lumbar back and ankle. Riders who stiffen the ankle paralyse the toe
outward or downward, or push themselves away from the saddle to some degree. Riders
who cannot absorb the horse's movement in the lumbar back will, of course, pop loose of
the saddle and part from it.

Correct riding is done with the abdominal muscles, not with the back.
The rider's lumbar back should always remain relaxed. It should act as a hinge that allows
the pelvic structure to float forward with the horse's motion. The lumbar back allows the rider to remain isometrically toned - not tense -- in his torso while letting the buttocks and thighs remain adhesive to the saddle. The buttocks, the pelvic structure, should not slide on the surface of the saddle. Nor should the buttocks wipe or buff the saddle but rather "stick to it to allow the pelvic structure to surf the “wave" produced by the motion of the horse's back.

In contrast to the loose and supple use of the lumbar back, the torso above it should be
turned into one isometrically toned "cabinet." The rider's “cabinet" is a complex isometric unit.
For its formation, the rider should circle with the points of his shoulder back and down until
both shoulder blades are flat in the trapezius muscle of the back. This action will stabilise the posture of the torso. It will allow the front of the rider to lift the rib cage high, out of the abdominal cavity. It will broaden the chest, straighten the shoulders, stretch the front of the rider, and give him the feeling that the lowest ribs have been lifted, and the waist is more slender.
The rider's upper arms should then hang from his shoulders perpendicular to the
ground. This, importantly, stabilises the arms, hence the hands of the rider because in this
position the upper arms and elbows hang weightlessly. The earth's centre of gravity places
them. The direction of the upper arms and elbows will point to the rider's seat bones, and past them, to the ground. The stability provided by this upper-arm position is at the heart of riding - from the seat to the bridle, rather than wrongly, riding with the hands. For the vertical position of the upper arms is, indeed, responsible for the transferring of the seat's effects to the bridle.

Extract from Dressage Principles Illuminated by Charles de Knuffy p.140

Image:
To understand how to use your lower back to develop an adhesive seat, sit at the edge of a chair, and place
your feet on the floor in line with, and under your hips.
Thrust your pelvis forward so that you lift the back legs of
the chair off the ground. Then rock the chair forward and
backward to various different tilting angles and at different
rhythms without dropping the chair's back legs to the floor.
As you ride the walk, trot, and canter, this action simulates
the movement of an adhesive seat by emulating the pelvic
activity necessary to follow the horse's movement.

03/21/2022

The Seat Explained

The seat has two meanings.
One is the specific area of contact that extends from the lumbar
back down to the knee, in other words, whatever moves from the lumbar area down to the
knee is the rider's seat.
But in a broader sense, the rider's seat is everything because its influence is entire, from the top of the head, which should be the highest point, of course, to the bottom of his heel.

The seat should be a cohesive unit that comes to the horse as a communication medium and as a transformation medium, one that is communicating cohesively and as a unit rather than in bits and pieces. I would like to say that even when a teacher gives specific directions to the rider to do something with his arms and with his legs, those directions
influence the rest of the rider. Because the rider is one person, he must communicate as one unit, one seat.

Riders should have balanced, deep, adhesive seats that allow them to make independent aids. Riders who remain adhesive to the saddle and their horses do so because they
understood and they learned that when the horse impacts on the ground the two points of
absorption are in the lumbar back and ankle. Riders who stiffen the ankle paralyse the toe
outward or downward, or push themselves away from the saddle to some degree. Riders
who cannot absorb the horse's movement in the lumbar back will, of course, pop loose of
the saddle and part from it.

Correct riding is done with the abdominal muscles, not with the back.
The rider's lumbar back should always remain relaxed. It should act as a hinge that allows
the pelvic structure to float forward with the horse's motion. The lumbar back allows the rider to remain isometrically toned - not tense -- in his torso while letting the buttocks and thighs remain adhesive to the saddle. The buttocks, the pelvic structure, should not slide on the surface of the saddle. Nor should the buttocks wipe or buff the saddle but rather "stick to it to allow the pelvic structure to surf the “wave" produced by the motion of the horse's back.

In contrast to the loose and supple use of the lumbar back, the torso above it should be
turned into one isometrically toned "cabinet." The rider's “cabinet" is a complex isometric unit.
For its formation, the rider should circle with the points of his shoulder back and down until
both shoulder blades are flat in the trapezius muscle of the back. This action will stabilise the posture of the torso. It will allow the front of the rider to lift the rib cage high, out of the abdominal cavity. It will broaden the chest, straighten the shoulders, stretch the front of the rider, and give him the feeling that the lowest ribs have been lifted, and the waist is more slender.
The rider's upper arms should then hang from his shoulders perpendicular to the
ground. This, importantly, stabilises the arms, hence the hands of the rider because in this
position the upper arms and elbows hang weightlessly. The earth's centre of gravity places
them. The direction of the upper arms and elbows will point to the rider's seat bones, and past them, to the ground. The stability provided by this upper-arm position is at the heart of riding - from the seat to the bridle, rather than wrongly, riding with the hands. For the vertical position of the upper arms is, indeed, responsible for the transferring of the seat's effects to the bridle.

Extract from Dressage Principles Illuminated by Charles de Knuffy p.140

Image:
To understand how to use your lower back to develop an adhesive seat, sit at the edge of a chair, and place
your feet on the floor in line with, and under your hips.
Thrust your pelvis forward so that you lift the back legs of
the chair off the ground. Then rock the chair forward and
backward to various different tilting angles and at different
rhythms without dropping the chair's back legs to the floor.
As you ride the walk, trot, and canter, this action simulates
the movement of an adhesive seat by emulating the pelvic
activity necessary to follow the horse's movement.



Credit Xenophon Equus Centre

03/19/2022

03/19/2022

03/19/2022

So incredibly proud of these students schooling at Hope Acres on this lovely morning!! Everyone did amazing and I couldn’t be more proud of them!!! 💕💕