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JULY 2006 • VOLUME 11 • ©HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
 Better Bending
By Mary Debono
One of Jill’s complaints was that her mare, Kali, was difficult to bend to the right. This did not surprise me, because earlier we had discovered that Jill weighted her left seat bone more than her right one, causing Kali to favor going to the left. The unequal load also kept the mare’s back muscles, most notably on the left side, in a constant state of contraction, causing soreness and fatigue and preventing Kali from bending easily to the right.
The movement issues of both Jill and Kali needed to be addressed*, because when a horse has been compensating for a rider’s idiosyncrasies for a period of time, she often develops habits of body use that don’t automatically disappear when the rider becomes balanced. The bottom line: Kali needed to re-learn how to bend easily.
Before Jill met me, she had been doing carrot stretches with Kali, hoping that this exercise would improve the mare’s ability to bend. She would hold a piece of carrot out at various angles and the mare would reach for it, often stretching quite a bit in order to obtain the goodie.
But there was a downside to those stretches. The sensation of stretching drowns out other, more subtle, sensations that would allow the mare to learn how to bend easier. Kali was simply exacerbating the patterns of use that she already knew. Just repeating and/or exaggerating a movement will not improve it. In addition, because there was a carrot waiting for her if she stretched far enough, Kali stretched beyond what was truly comfortable, giving her nervous system the experience of limitation, not freedom of movement.
Since a horse will override signals of pain or discomfort in her attempt to obtain the treat, I did away with the food enticement. I wanted Kali to be more aware of her body, not less so.
I explained to Jill that instead of asking Kali to stretch, I wanted to engage Kali’s attention in the process of bending and help her learn new, more comfortable and efficient ways of doing it. |
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