Repairing Mistakes - October 6th

Fortunately, nothing serious. I went to Karina to the pasture and took her to the stableyard. She came with me eagerly, on a loose lead rope (must try one day to take her without rope). I groomed her, inspected the thrush hoof and treated it with hoof spray. The ground has dried now, and I hope that it won't be raining for a next couple of days, so Karina's hooves will improve.

Anyway, I dressed her up in a cavesson and we went for a walk. I stopped her a couple of times and worked on stelling in a standstill. Karina tried to bend her neck in an 'S'-shape, and I didn't know why (at the moment, because now I know). Fortunately, I managed to correct it. I did some backing up, which is still improving (baby steps, but nevertheless some progress), and I'm thinking on starting backing up over a pole (front legs first), and backing up in a labyrinth (TTEAM methods).

Then we went to the riding arena to work on poles and cavalettis and of course that cross-rail obstacle. Since that was a problem for Karina, I broke the exercise up in three parts. But first I did some warming-up on poles. There were four of them this time, all on the ground at first. Then my husband lifted fourth pole just a little (some 10-15 cm), then the second one, and then all of them. After that we put a cavaletti at the end of the poles and finally we got to the cross-rail. At first, there were only the standards and one pole, hanged asymmetrically between them. That Karina accepted easily. Then we hanged the pole asymmetrically in the different direction, and when that was accepted, we added a second pole. This time there was no problem with the obstacle. Karina trotted over it easily and I stopped training at that. I know that there is still much more to work on – we crossed the obstacle only once, and towards the stable, so I used a little trick here; I made horse's natural motivation work for me. I don't know how would it work if I asked Karina to go over the obstacle the other way. But that may come in time. Now it is important not to loose Karina's interest and motivation. She is pretty eager to work in that way.

Then we went to the roundpen to work on our LFS. This time, just as I've said before, I focused on the L of LFS, that is the lateral bending. First I started with stelling in a standstill. I've noticed that Karina's hip on the inner side of the bending (when she bends to the right) is much lower than on the outside, which is great. That means that she's stretching her side muscles, which is the goal of this exercise. I failed, however, to notice if on the left side it works as well. Then we moved to work in walk, and I've noticed that Karina's self-carriage has visibly improved – but on the right side. She is no longer leaning on her right front leg, and she manages to keep herself on a circle instead of falling inside. I'm not sure, however, if that is because the size of the circle we're working on corresponds the degree of her crookedness to the right, or is it due to our ST progress. Because according to Marijke, I may expect severe changes in the horse's asymmetry – even that the horse will display symptoms of precisely the opposite asymmetry. If I only knew which case this was...

Anyway, circles to the left are much worse. Karina doesn't seem to support herself with her left hind leg. I know that this leg is weaker, I know that she avoids putting much of her weight on it. On the longe, in the canter, she was always falling outside with her left hip. People often think that this is caused by insufficient engagement of the inner hind leg, but it is exactly the opposite. It is because the inner hind leg is so strong and pushing, that it pushes the hip outside over the weaker outside hind leg. Karin Blignault in her Equine biomechanics for Rider. The Key to the Balanced Riding confirms that it is so.

It occured to me also that Karina may be avoiding the stretch of her short, stiff right side muscles. Well, that tells me only that I need to work on that. And if I caused Karina's asymmetry to change, it only means that we're getting somewhere.

And about that S-shape neck bending: it may not necessarily be that I caused it by some unconscious directions that I gave Karina (as I feared at first), but it may be that she is just trying, just as all animals do, to get release in an easier way, by putting in less effort. It is pretty common in horse training.