#equine physio

[adam-the-horse]

Hello I've made video with Adam with draw reins vs no draw reins. To compare his body and movement. I wanted to depict how terrible is the influence of the draw reins on horses body. Enjoy!

https://www.instagram.com/tv/COGUoasBqUE/?igshid=1tkemg739d033

[kcdressage-blog]

Back down to earth with a bump (not literally!)

After a few weeks of the big man really feeling better and the tightness issue in his right hindleg getting better, to the point where the physio had said there was very little difference between the left and right leg, I went on holiday for a week and got engaged (yipee!). Came back, jumped on big man on the Saturday excited to start thinking about competing again, and he was lame. And I mean really lame.

On the left rein it was ok but he broke canter and that is very out of character for him, he loves a good canter and would go everywhere in canter if he had his way. On the right rein we tried a little trot and I jumped off almost instantly, it felt so awful I couldn't stay on him any longer. He was really dragging his right leg, it felt so tight and stiff so I came straight off.

All a bit disappointing really, we had made good progress since the end of April but unfortunately we went back to square one, perhaps even worse than he was back in April. I am wondering if it may well be the lack of exercise for a week that really stiffened him up, or perhaps he was just hooning around the field as per usual and tweaked something. Who knows.

Anyway, rode all last week and very little improvement, right rein was still terrible and he had no interest in just walking and trotting on the left rein working on 'long and low'. Eventually we got the odd transition from walk to trot where he remained long and low but that was about my biggest achievement for the week!

Then comes the weekend, Saturday was same as before but Sunday, well I think there was either an overnight miracle or the change of the saddle from the dressage saddle to the GP has had an effect. Denby's owner and I were talking and thought it might be worth seeing if the saddle was having an effect, the dressage saddle was a second hand one and never fitted to Denby specifically so we got the trusty GP out to see if there would be a difference. And low and behold there was, the lameness was almost gone!

We are going to get the dressage saddle checked off the back of this, this will require a jaunt out in the new wagon for towing the trailer so time for us to get over the loading hurdle as well! Will keep you posted on progress, if big man remains sound for the next week then I'll pop out to the local comp venue to do their summer dressage league on 22nd June.

Let this be a lesson for everyone - get your saddles checked! This injury was caused by something else a long time ago but it seems very likely that the saddle was making things worse, so lesson learnt the hard way in this instance!