THD Equestrian

07/12/2024

Sometimes in my practice I come across an owner who wants to normalize something that isn’t normal.

This sounds like:

❌ My horse works out of the stiffness/lameness after 15 minutes under saddle.
❌ He always crow hops after a bigger jump.
❌She throws her head around in the arena but not on the trail (or vise versa).
❌He always makes a face when I do the girth up.
❌It usually takes me 15 minutes to catch her and I need food to do it.
❌The left lead is always harder to get.
❌She’s always weaved in her stall.

These kinds of statements are usually followed by “that’s just the way he/she is.”

This is your horse speaking to you, over and over and over again. Please listen, before they have to get louder. Stop and think about what behaviors your horse demonstrates that maybe don’t seem totally right to you but you’ve just accepted them as “normal”.

This is a question very much worth asking of yourself, then your horse, then work with your trainer/horse care professionals to get to the bottom of it.

Answer the question as best you can, and you build a deeper, more solid partnership with your horse. Why? Because you listened. And then you did something about it. And your horse knows it.

06/18/2024

An entire industry has been created selling you the idea that there is a method to fix every problem.

What is extremely popular is a video for every problem, and for every fix there are three more problems created, for which there’s a method to fix too.

I get asked nearly daily to create a video about specific problems (I saw your video on trailer loading, but what about loading a chestnut mare into an Adam trailer?). These can be helpful to see, but the mentality over time has shifted into specifics instead of looking at the big picture.

Good, all encompassing horsemanship creates a foundation wherein problems melt away holistically. If you understand how all things connect, you stop seeing things individually, but as a whole. You have to fix the whole and stop looking for quick solutions.

Teaching people to be actual horsemen, to stop looking for quick tips and tricks, to start seeing the whole and the connection of all things, means rewiring our minds from conditioning and marketing over the past decades.

So if you have a problem, it isn’t living in isolation. It’s part of a whole picture. And you have to look at, and feed the whole, for the symptoms to melt away.

03/18/2024

The WALK - mother of all gaits

Most riders spend little time at the walk outside of "cooling out" or "warming up".

Not realizing it is the gait that BIRTHS everything you do, and REVEALS everything you may need.

"The FEI rule book once stated that it was at the pace of the walk that imperfections of dressage are most evident"

Every issue can be felt and seen through the magnifying lens of the walk.

"François de Lubersac, a master from the legendary School of Versailles in the 18th century, recognized that in dressage training, the first gait in which to train is always the walk.

Remarkably, de Lubersac, trained his horses only at the walk, and when he decided that they were ready, his horses were able to do everything at all gaits."

The walk is an anchoring gate. To teach and refine the horses balance, collectabilty, lightness, refinement, propreoception, suppleness, relaxation, lateral gymnastics, and understanding of aids... just to name a few.

There is no better gait to school these concepts then the walk. Testing things up the ladder of movement; trot and canter, and then anchoring back to the walk to fix, progress, or prepare.

The walk is the gait you "polish the stone" of all these qualities, more than any other gait.

It is the gait you come back to again and again, where the root of it all lives.

And remember, as with any gait, there is more than "just ONE walk".

Tempo, balance, stride, and frame can change in so many ways within any single gait that it lends itself to many "changes of gait within a gait", based on what that horse needs at any given moment.

In my opinion, a classical rider can easily spend an entire ride at the walk, and the higher up they ride, the more time they may spend at the walk...polishing the stone.

Mindful footfalls live in the walk.

What is your walk telling you?

02/22/2024

Henri in the morning must! Thanks for the great picture Jamie Adams!

01/25/2024

What is the diagnosis?

This is a common question we are asked. It is a fair and expected question. The trouble is – I don’t always have an answer for you. Why? Body Lameness is complicated and is rarely clear. In order to fix the body we have to know and understand its complexity. We also must appreciate the concept of biotensegrity.

Small areas of dysfunction can cause lameness and dysfunction in completely different regions of the body. I struggle with periodic left foot pain. I randomly (i.e. no specific event, sound familiar?) get a sharp pressure and pain in my left heal or arch of my foot. It feels like plantar fasciitis. I bought the insoles, I changed shoes- I got mild improvement. I was a 2/5 AAEP lameness. It wasn’t until I saw a human physio that I had relief of my foot pain. She quickly looked at me and explained my foot problem was due to a lower lumbar mild subluxation (my back did not hurt!) which lead to a pull on my fascia and change on my medial tibia which lead to the foot pain. Within one session my foot pain was resolved. I likely would have blocked to my foot. I would have definitely had a response to hoof testers. If I were a horse I would have been offered farrier changes and coffin joint injections, likely with mild improvement. My foot was a secondary issue but a primary concern. My back was the primary source of pain and yet a non-clinical issue. Until you discover the root cause, you will never truly resolve the pain.

Horses are the same. I treat horses based on my clinical exam and diagnostic imaging (to the best of my abilities). However, the important part is treating them based on their biomechanical failure points. It’s important to recognize that the body works as a whole and not individual pieces. If there is one region of pain or dysfunction, you must treat the entire area- not one spot. You also must consider how a horse’s biomechanics and biotensegrity play into their movement, posture and overall athleticism. If they cannot sit and use their lumbar-sacral junction correctly they cannot relieve tension in their thoracic sling. If their shoulder girdle is dysfunctional, you need to treat the entire region- the neck does not work independently from the first few ribs or shoulder. It all works together and in balance of each other. Additionally we must consider things like nutritional deficiency/toxicity, diet plans, exercise routines, saddle fit, gastrointestinal issues and muscle diseases. Often horses have some combination of all of these things. To get the best results or treat the difficult cases, we have to look at all areas.

On top of these concepts, we cannot image everything. The assumption that there is only an issue if you can image it, is ignorance. Necropsies have proven this to me repeatedly. We find so many things- nerve impingements, muscle changes, fascia changes, scar restrictions, disc problems, boney changes - all can be clinically significant and not found in the live horse. This doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the problem. The body can frequently compensate with little things over time, and then with age and addition of injuries sudden decompensation occurs- leading to acute pain on a chronic issue.

So when clients ask me, what was the diagnosis? I frequently say things like shoulder girdle dysfunction, lumbar sacral dysfunction, neuritis, rib cage dysfunction. I may sometimes be able to pinpoint specifics like T16 articular facet arthritis or lumbar intertransverse joint stepping. However, I know these individual things are part of a much larger picture of dysfunction. I treat the dysfunctional segments as a whole and that’s how we can get big results, where owners have been struggling. That’s how we can take a behavioral horse, who passed lameness exams but wasn’t right and turn them quickly into a happy relaxed working horse. Results matter to me more than individual diagnoses.

Image below is the brachial plexus- cannot be imaged well, cannot be blocked out, yet can be a huge source of pain and lameness in a horse. It’s frequently affected by other areas causing incorrect pressure, pull or tension on this region. It can be treated. Until you solve why it’s under incorrect forces, you will never resolve its pain.

01/24/2024

12/14/2023

Spook is just the bestest barn kitty! This cat is always with me around the barn, he even watches me give lessons, lunge or ride my horses. He is one rail bird (cat) that is always welcome!

12/01/2023

We had the perfect amount of rain last night. Arena footing does not get better than this!!!

10/26/2023

Dearest Riders,

Please let me remind you of something very important. Horse showing, riding and training are insanely difficult. If you have a crappy ride, a less than stellar show ring result (or if you made your trainer want to pull their hair out today), it just means there's more to learn. The people who had good rides today are not exempt from disappointing rides tomorrow. They also have bad days and, if they're very experienced riders, they've had a whole bunch of bad days.

There will always be someone out there on a more talented horse, someone with a bigger bank account, someone who never struggled to learn to sit the trot...life isn't fair. You probably can't win the lottery or grow 5 more inches of leg. You can, however, wake up every morning and be thankful that you're able to ride horses. Work hard at becoming the best rider you can be with the body and the bank account that you have right now. Work at being the rider your horse wants up there on his back. Your horse's opinion of your riding is more valuable than any judge's opinion could ever be.

09/27/2023

Today baby Spook said now I want to get on the handsome buckskin! Right away went to making biscuits, Henri liked it better than Davidoff! 😻🐈‍⬛

09/26/2023

Look who also wanted to ride Davidoff today! 😂😸😻
Baby Spook is the best barn kitty!

09/12/2023

The grass is so good at THD Equestrian this time of the year. Such a luxury to have this right in the city! The west valley is getting so developed/commercialize, almost all the farmland around is gone but THD remains such a piece of heaven in the middle of it all.