Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i Practical Horseman

After reading two stories in this month’s issue, our profile on eventer Tamie Smith (page 28) and Tik Maynard’s feature on the 2015 Thoroughbred Makeover (page 42), I’d planned on doing some natural-horsemanship training, a topic touched upon in both articles. I was going to start simple and see if my offthe-track Thoroughbred would follow me around the arena at the walk and trot, something we used to do years ago before my daughter arrived and free time became scarce. But instead I ended up riding because it was a beautiful December day in the 70s, so we went on a trail ride. Given the unusually warm weather, the trail ride probably made sense, but my decision had me thinking about how easy it is to put off or dismiss…

Based at Fox Covert Farm, in Upperville, Virginia, Jim Wofford competed in three Olympics and two World Championships and won the U.S. National Championship five times. He is also a highly respected coach. For more on Jim, go to www.jimwofford.blogspot.com. Sometimes my clinics are more fun for me than they are for the participants, especially during the question-andanswer sessions. I like to have Q&A at my clinics and seminars whenever possible because that means I am talking about something that interests at least one other person in the room. It’s better than delivering the same stale, canned lecture I gave last week (and the week before)—and the questions keep me up to date on issues that are currently hot topics for the general membership. Most of the time, I have…

Laminitis has claimed high-profile victims. The best known in recent years may be the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who fractured his right hind leg in the Preakness Stakes and was euthanized eight months later after developing supporting-limb laminitis. Such cases have helped spur efforts to find better treatments. Laminitis research is ongoing at over a dozen universities and equine centers in the United States, Australia, Britain and other countries. The American Association of Equine Practitioners, the Animal Health Foundation, Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation and many other groups are supporting the work. And the efforts are getting results. “In cryotherapy, we have the first treatment ever shown to be effective in septis-related laminitis,” says Dr. James Belknap. “We are getting there on endocrine-related laminitis. We know that it’s insulin related,…

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George H. Morris is the former chef d’équipe of the U.S. Equestrian Federation Show Jumping Team. He serves on the USEF National Jumper Committee and Planning Committee, is an adviser to the USEF High-Performance Show Jumping Committee and is president of the Show Jumping Hall of Fame. 1 This looks like what I call a vintage southern hunter ride where riders from the South had a good feel and eye but were never taught the American classic position that riders in the Northeast or Southern California were. When I judged riders like this in equitation, there were some very good riders, but they didn’t have the form, and I was always hard on them. The wing is covering this rider’s leg, and the photo is dark so critiquing it is…

Shoulder-in is the first true lateral movement. In leg-yield, which lays the sturdy foundation for the lateral movements, the horse moves sideways as well as forward. But leg-yield itself isn’t technically a lateral movement. The distinction? In leg-yield, the horse stays straight from poll to tail. For a true lateral movement, his body bends evenly from poll to tail around your inside leg. That even bending through the body is what you’re going to teach your horse with shoulder-in. In this pattern, his outside shoulder comes in off the track and aligns with his inside hind leg so he’s on what we call “three tracks.” If you watched him coming toward you, you’d see his outside hind, his outside fore directly in front of his inside hind, and his inside…

The pride in Tamie’s recounting of 2015’s highlights mingles with disbelief over how close she’s come to what she began dreaming of in 1984. She was watching Olympic eventing on TV and realized, “That’s what I want to do!” She had little idea what that entailed. “The blood, sweat, broken bones, the really good horses, the not-so-good horses, the broken-down trailer by the side of the road and the ‘How am I going to pay for that broken-down trailer by the side of the road?” Tamie reflects with a smile. “I certainly had a false sense of what it took to become a top rider.” She and Heather Morris, now her business partner, grew up riding with Kim Scheid of Spring Creek Training in Temecula. Surprisingly, Tamie was timid. “I…

The best way to show a horse he can travel straight down the rail with his haunches on the track and his shoulders off is with a movement he already knows: leg-yield. But instead of asking Cassiano to move diagonally across the arena while staying straight through his body and parallel to the rail, I’m asking him to stay straight through his body but to move parallel to the rail and at an angle to the track. I set him up by riding a 20-meter circle, which required almost no bend through his body. As I approached the rail in the corner, I asked for a few steps of spiral-out—with the feel of pushing his haunches further out than his forehand—to position him on about a 40- to 45-degree angle…

… and I can’t re-create it within one stride by using a little more indirect rein, sitting a little deeper on my inside seat bone and pushing more strongly with my inside leg, I immediately circle 10 meters. I relax my inside indirect rein and my inside leg, turn my seat so it’s again parallel to my shoulders and perpendicular to the 10-meter circular track— and Cassiano circles. As we come back around toward the rail, I’ll repeat the process of setting him up for a shoulder-in.…

It’s dinnertime, but your horse isn’t pacing his stall or waiting at his feed bucket. He’s planted in a corner with his front feet parked forward, shifting his weight from one to the other. When you check his front hooves, they feel warm. He’s showing signs of laminitis, a potentially devastating disorder in which the bond between the hoof wall and the main bone of the foot weakens or gives way. Laminitis can end your horse’s career or cause such severe, unrelenting pain that euthanasia is the only choice. The statistics are grim. Surveys show that this disease affects about 1 percent of all U.S. horses at any given time and leads to death or euthanasia in about 5 percent of cases. Its victims have included renowned racehorses, backyard ponies…

6 Things to Do in FEBRUARY JOIN Pony Club members and volunteers in Orlando, FL, for the USPC Annual Meeting and Equine Symposium, Feb. 4–7. Highlights include educational workshops, lectures by industry experts, presentations by Pony Club members and an extensive trade fair; www.ponyclub.org. LEARN training techniques and more at the Horse Expo Pomona, Feb. 5–7, in Pomona, CA. Clinicians include Clinton Anderson, Pat Parelli and Richard Winters. Also featured: a trail symposium and the Super Horse Challenge; www.horseexpoevents.com. CHECK OUT the debut of FEI week at HITS Thermal, where equestrians will compete in the $350,000 FEI Grand Prix CSI*****, Feb. 7, in Thermal, CA; www.hitsshows.com. FOLLOW top show jumpers as they attempt to qualify for the upcoming Longines FEI World Cup™ Jumping Final. Subscribe to www.feitv.org for up-close coverage…