How 1 Hour Of Training Affects Your Horse’s Life
Good posture and healthy movement isn’t just for riders - it’s important for horses too. Anna Bonnage explains why
As featured in Horsemanship Magazine
In the last issue I discussed Atrial Fibrillation and how it has affected one of my horses, Apollo. Today, with Apollo’s help, I’d like to show you photographic evidence of how one hour of work with a horse affects the remaining 23 hours in that horse’s day.
How Exercise Effects the Body
Prior to Apollo’s diagnosis, he was retired for two years. See Photo One; a picture which was taken on the last day of his two year retirement in 2015. Notice his posture, the shape of his body. Then look at Photo Two, taken eight weeks after he had returned to work in 2015. Notice the change in his posture, the different shape of his body. Now look at Photo Three - a picture taken just last week, six months after he was retired for the second time. Notice how his posture is similar to Photo One.
Let’s talk about exercise before I discuss each photo. Firstly we need to consider how different types of exercise effect the body. For example: in humans, running tightens our muscles whereas with yoga, tai chi or pilates, we build core strength whilst lengthening our muscles. This is an exercise which helps riders to develop stability combined with agility and flexibility. So your one hour a week of chosen exercise effects the other hours in your week. This is exactly the same for horses. The one hour a day which we do with them effects them mentally and physically while they are in the stable or field.
From my experience of studying horse’s postures, the biggest influence which we can have on improving a horse’s physical health is helping a horse to be “responsive and relaxed” in their groundwork and ridden work. No matter what your chosen riding discipline, the quickest way to destroy a horse’s physical health (posture) is by allowing them to push against our aids caused by their lack of clarity, combined with stress.
Mental Resistance Creating Poor Posture
When a horse doesn’t have clarity of what we are asking of them ( with our aids / cues), they develop a mental and physical resistance thus creating a brace within their posture, an incorrect use of their body. The physical discomfort creates a mental stress which causes a horse to become distracted and show signs of displacement behaviour. A horse’s mind starts to want to be somewhere different from where their body is with the human.
To understand how a horse’s body starts to feel when they are lacking clarity in their work, please try this exercise. If you suffer from neck or back problems I don’t advise that you try the exercise. Hold onto the handle of a securely locked door, and imagine that the handle is someone’s hand and they are encouraging you to go somewhere which frightens you. Imagine the fear, and pull up against the handle slightly to resist going; feel how this even slight resistance affects your balance. Keep holding the handle, and keep your head towards the door in the same way that a bridle or halter would be directing a horse’s head in that direction. Now, keep your head facing the door, lean against the handle while you look away in the opposite direction, trying to mentally escape as you know that you can’t physically get away. Now imagine that you were being pulled slightly by the door handle and how your resistance would then increase. If you feel able stay in this position for just ten seconds, you’ll feel the mental stress build and feel the strain in different parts of your body start to develop. The stress, resistance and the lack of clarity becomes a form of exercise in itself. If this happened even minimally for an hour a day, it wouldn’t be long before you had a poor, unhealthy posture.
When Are We Exercising Our Horses?
Now we need to consider when a horse’s exercise is taking place. It may be a surprise to hear that every time you handle your horse, you are exercising them. Every time you ask them to step over so that you can muck out where they are standing. Every time that you put a halter on or take it off. Every time you lead a horse in or out from the field. All of these small things that we ask of a horse can either be done with correct or incorrect balance and posture. Balance and posture comes from mental clarity / understanding of our ask. When a horse moves away from us, an example would be that they may either fall on their forehand, push forwards and drift away (an unhealthy mental state and so an unhealthy physical posture), or they can attentively look at us, which takes their weight off their near shoulder as they step under with the hind leg on the same side. They support their body physically and the result of this is they lift and support their back. Every time you ask a horse to turn around at a gateway it is an exercise which is either developing a healthy mental and physical state or not.
When horses arrive at my yard for training, I like to take the time to watch them in the field for ten minutes after they are first turned out. In these ten minutes I learn a lot about each horse and how they do or don’t look after their body. Some horses have a strong sense of self-preservation; they are responsive to their environment, they play a lot with other horses, they stop with their weight on their haunches in advance of getting close to the electric fence, and they trot around bushes rather than brushing past them. All of this means that out in the field they are developing a healthy posture themselves. Through years of observing horses postures, I feel it is linked more to the health of a horse’s mental state and their level of self-preservation than it is their breed, which is why I train all breeds and sizes. Any horse, mule or donkey can be helped to improve their posture.
Photo Comparison
So what can the photos of Apollo can teach us? When I observe him in the field, he rarely breaks into a canter and only occasionally a trot. He takes his time coming down the field for his feed, he meanders between the water trough and his hay, and he retires in the afternoon sun simply observing his friends. If he does run somewhere across the paddock, it’s usually for a brief period because he has been frightened by a noise in the hedge; so his head is high in the air to increase his vision, causing his back to be braced and tight. Due to all of this, when Apollo isn’t in work with me, his posture deteriorates.
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3
In Photo One, after he had been retired for two years, we can see that his back is dipped behind his withers along the dorsal vertebrae in the area where we would sit. His abdomen sags directly in correlation with the sagging of his dorsal vertebrae, showing us that he hasn’t been regularly using his abdominal muscles to help lift and support the structure of his back. His flank has an appearance of being flatter than it could be and even dipping in. Some horses develop a bump in front of the wither area which can correlate with a sagging under the neck. Every horse is different in the way that they carry themselves and Apollo hasn’t developed that here. I feel that these are the most prominent and import areas to observe in this example.
If we now look at Photo Two, we see a significant lift through the dorsal vertebrae, creating a rounded shape over his loins (behind where the saddle would sit). His abdomen has a slight upward curve from the girth area back to his flank, showing where he has been using his abdominal muscles during the four weeks of 30-60 minutes a day, four times a week, in hand work followed by four weeks of the same amount of time in ridden work since coming back into work after his retirement.
Then when we look at Photo Three, taken six months after he was retired for the second time. Again his dorsal vertebrae has dipped, his abdomen is returning to sagging, but he has maintained some muscle by his flank due to only being retired for six months unlike Photo One where he had been retired for two years.
You may remember from the last article that Apollo’s main job out in the field, now that he is retired for the second time, is to babysit the youngsters I have in for training. Even though Apollo is an energy conserver by nature, partly due to being a cob, I watch him turn at gateways, turn to move a youngster out of his way, or turn to come for his feed in the morning - all with correct posture. Usually, even during his periods of retirement, in a steady fashion he rocks his weight back onto his haunches, and lifts his back while lifting up through his shoulders to be able to bring his forehand through for a tidy turn with his feet under him supporting his body, before pushing forward from his quarters to walk off. Unfortunately, these turns his does out in the field by himself aren’t enough to maintain his posture. In observing this, I started noticing how long it would take a youngster - who didn’t have good balance when they arrived - to go from falling around their turns in the field and stumbling onto their forehand to turning like Apollo did. I would say on average it takes about 10-15 sessions of 30-60 minutes of me handling the horse for them to start turning correctly in the field 50% of the time. The opposite is also true. After 10-15 sessions of someone pulling even slightly on a horse’s leadrope or reins, and not giving a horse clarity of what that pull was for, contributes to a horse’s lack of balance and poor posture out in the field when they are on their own.
Mental State Equals Physical Posture
I believe that it is a mistake to focus on just moving parts of a horse’s body during our training. As you may have experienced in the exercise talked about earlier, if you are mentally stressed this causes a deterioration in your posture. I believe that we cannot separate a horse’s mental state from their physical posture. If a horse feels relaxed and attentive mentally they naturally use their body in a better way. This is why my approach for training horses is based on working with a horse’s thoughts and attending to changing how they feel for the better, as it directly affects their physical health.
I would recommend that you ask your horse to stand as square as possible, by a plain background, on as flat as possible surface with their head in a neutral position - not raised and not low. Observe the photo and then take another in exactly the same place and posture a few months later, and notice any changes for the better or worse. This is a great way to learn directly from your horse and train your eye to observe this important information. You can train yourself to look at any horse in the pasture and understand that horse’s life; how they have been trained, or not. I visited a new client just last week and after about five minutes of watching them work with their horses, I asked them if their recent trainer was a local trainer who I knew of. After giving them a name it was funny to watch their faces as they wondered how on earth I could tell who their trainer had been. The horse tells us; through their posture, responses and how they feel
