Guiding Starbuck: rollkur

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Trail Ride Vids

I'm still on a GoPro kick - I figure when I'm old and grey and can no longer ride (or just in the winter when it's rained for two weeks straight) it'll be fun to look back at these moments. I also find it tells me interesting things about my riding - the video is much more jarring at a seated trot than I'd like. Anyhow on Sunday we went out on our classic two-hour, 8 km trail ride and I strapped on the camera again - I guess the camera only records for an hour because about half the ride is missing. Anyhow the part that was recorded is in my opinion the best part and we'll go back soon anyway so I'm not worried.

Anyhow in case you're interested in the type of terrain we ride through I've uploaded a couple of the prettiest bits which also happen to be spots where we trot and canter. And if you're interested in seeing more including Starbuck's stellar behavior on country roads, you can see all the videos from the trail ride here.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

To Flex or Not To Flex

So after thinking a little more about the video I posted the yesterday and wondering a little about training Starbuck to flex laterally at the neck, I realized that I didn't exactly have an expressible reason for wanting to work on this. I guess since yoga, pilates and other flexibility exercises make me feel better and have less muscle aches after working out it just seemed like a no-brainer to me that the same would be good for horses. I also felt like it would be a good way to work on submission, being able to handle her head and getting her ready for work with the bit.

So I started reading a fair amount about flexing online and saw that there’s a little bit of a polemic as to whether flexion is safe, necessary and / or natural for a horse, especially regarding vertical flexion (lateral flexion is bending the neck to the right or left, vertical flexion is bending the neck downwards). There’s even a practice called Rollkur once used by Olympic dressage riders but which is now banned by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports which basically refers to the use of force (vía harsh bits, double reins and similar mechanisms) to cause a horse to overflex vertically, like in this photo:

I’ve ridden horses who had previously suffered this type of systematic abuse and know that it takes a long time to rehabilitate them to where they are free from pain and at all comfortable being ridden and would definitely never want to cause this type of problem for Starbuck! To soothe my worries, I found lots of articles and videos which praise lateral flexion techniques as helping horses to stay supple, including from the US Equestrian Team’s horse masseuse (see below). But what most set my mind at ease were photos like these which show horses doing the exact same kind of movement in the wild when completely relaxed. So I'm determined to keep working on lateral flexion from the ground and also when I start riding (for example with the one rein stop). Enjoy the photos!