Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2020 från Practical Horseman

I was at a local hunter/jumper show several years ago with my green horse, getting him used to the atmosphere. A fellow boarder’s horse was being playful at the ends of the hunter ring, pulling her petite frame out of the saddle. She asked if I could school him in the next class for her. I hadn’t jumped a course in a while, so I was a little nervous. After schooling over a few warm-up fences, we went into the ring. As I picked up the canter to make my opening circle, I reminded myself to focus on creating a forward pace and steady rhythm and NOT on seeing the distances. After each line, I rebalanced the horse’s canter and then rode forward to the next fence. We placed first…

When I was a younger rider in the jumper ring, I felt like I saw every distance perfectly, but I still could have eight faults. I’d watch other riders’ rounds, and sometimes their distances were too long or too deep, but they were jumping clear rounds. The reason was because they created a good canter, giving their horses a chance to gauge the jumps. I think that the biggest myth in the American system is the need to find perfect distances. At an early age, we become so fixated on finding the perfect “x” on the ground to take off from that we’re willing to throw the canter out the window just to get to it. That is not the best chance for success. If you watch top riders on…

Managing any equine athlete, regardless of where you are based in the world, is a challenge. Horses are complex creatures, each with their own individual needs—ranging from dietary requirements to corrective shoeing to joint injections. Even in countries with a large equestrian community, finding the right support for a performance horse can be difficult. In Bermuda, island life—with white sand beaches and warm weather—comes at a price. The geographic challenges add a new layer of complexity to the horse-management puzzle. For example, though there are equine professionals like veterinarians and farriers on the island, there aren’t many. That means if your horse requires a specialist, such as a bodywork professional or even a saddle fitter, they must be flown in from another country, often the United States or England. In…

Banging your horse’s tail—making a horizontal blunt cut to the bottom of it—is one of the simplest things you can do to make it look fuller and neater. Although you’re most likely to see this sharp look (forgive the pun) in the event world, it’s also fairly common in the dressage and jumper rings. But this handy technique is not just for competition. Banging a thin, straggly tail prevents the longest (and thus weakest) hairs from breaking, while making the tail appear thicker and healthier. I often bang tails the day after the last competition of the season to encourage them to grow in thicker over the winter. One important consideration is the tail length you’re aiming for. This can vary from discipline to discipline, horse to horse, and even…

PracticalHorsemanMag.com Countdown to the Kentucky Three-Day Event It’s almost time for the best weekend all year: the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event, April 23–26 in Lexington, Kentucky. In addition to bringing you on-site reporting, photo galleries and social-media updates during the event, we’ll also be sharing insights in the lead-up, including preview articles, photos and profiles. PracticalHorsemanMag.com Visit PracticalHorsemanMag.com for exclusive online content on training, health, lifestyle, news and competition. Lauren Sprieser’s Shoulder-In Guide On page 58, Grand Prix rider and trainer Lauren Sprieser explains how to ride renvers, as well as the purpose and benefits of the exercise. For more lateral exercises from Lauren, check out her online article, “Where Real Dressage Begins: Shoulder-In,”a precursor to learning renvers. Don’t Miss the FEI World Cup™ Action in Las Vegas! Can’t…

To enhance the horse’s movement in collection, the rider needs to become more precise in the timing of the aids. It can be compared to a basketball player dribbling (bouncing) the ball. First the ball needs some push to start bouncing, but then the player controls the ball with a slight touch of the fingertips with perfect timing and feel. Similarly, the rider can use her weight aids to encourage the horse to “bounce” more off the ground and develop more cadence. The second image that can explain this is that the horse’s movements should be supple and the horse should move with a “swinging” back. When you sit on a swing at a playground for the first time, you need someone to push the swing first so you feel…

Feel is the complement of leg, seat and hand aids that a rider develops over time. There’s no perfect percentage of leg, seat or hand—it’s situational. Using the aids in that order in differing amounts and with correct timing will develop with time. It is helpful to work with a professional to hone in on this skill, but it’s something you need to be conscious of. You never want to feel like the horse is ignoring your aids. Put on your leg and give your horse a chance to react to it. If he doesn’t and you need to increase your leg, then go back and do that again. It’s the same thing with your hands. If you try to just lock on a strong horse and pull, the horse…

Bermuda native Annabelle Collins, who earned her ticket to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, is living proof that big dreams can be born on small islands. She grew up in Bermuda until the age of 14, when she left to study abroad and later attend university. At the time, her brother Tim Collins was eventing successfully at the international levels—eventually competing at the Badminton Horse Trials and the Olympics—and Annabelle was also on an eventing trajectory. “When my brother was competing at the World Equestrian Games in The Hague [1994], I wandered over to watch some of the dressage competition and I watched Anky [van Grunsven] and Isabell [Werth] and I was completely hooked,” she said. “And then I decided that was the avenue I wanted to follow, but I really…

Q How can I keep my senior sporthorse healthy? How should I organize a fitness program with the goal of keeping him fit and interested? A The first step in maintaining the health of a senior horse is recognizing when your horse has reached senior status. This can be tricky since the definition is not simply based on age. Rather, horse owners and veterinarians must watch for the physical signs of aging and declines in body system function. Manage His Diet One of the first facets of a horse’s care that needs to be adapted for his age is diet. Through a combination of loss of dental integrity and the natural aging of the intestines, older horses lose their digestive efficiency. They can’t absorb the nutrition released from the food…

Want more from Susanne von Dietze? In her video series “The Rider’s Seat,” Susanne takes us through additional unmounted and mounted exercises that help us understand and improve our balance in the saddle. Watch her mounted demo that offers great insight to how she teaches as well as an unmounted lecture that gives you a look at the theory behind her teachings. Enjoy these free videos at ondemand.dressagetoday.com and watch the entire series, plus more than 1,700 others, by taking advantage of a free trial membership with DT OnDemand at ondemand.dressagetoday.com.…

The shoulder-in’s fickle and elusive cousin, the renvers, positions the horse’s body in a similar way relative to the rail, but asks him to bend in the opposite direction. In a correctly ridden renvers, the horse’s shoulders move to the inside, off the rail, while the haunches continue to travel along the rail. Unlike the shoulderin, however, where the bend is toward the inside of the riding arena, the horse’s body bends toward the outside of the arena in the renvers, and his chest faces forward, at a right angle to the long side. Whereas the shoulder-in is performed on three tracks, the renvers is performed on four tracks. The horse’s front legs follow their own individual tracks, which are both to the inside of the two tracks of the…

It’s spring 2020. When was the last time you evaluated the effectiveness of your horse’s deworming program? Is your approach successful? How do you know? Recent recommendations from the equine research community can help guide your efforts as you review the particulars of your strategy and consider changes. Here’s what you need to know to bring your horse’s deworming program up to date. Upending Tradition “For several decades the general goal of deworming was to eradicate parasites from horses,” says Martin K. Nielsen, DVM, PhD, DipEVPC, DACVM, who is the Schlaikjer Professor of Equine Infectious Disease at the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center. “This not only was impossible but also counterproductive because aggressive deworming efforts resulted in widespread levels of drug resistance.” As Dr. Nielsen explains, rotational deworming—the…