Please Help!!!!!

kelz07

kelz07

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I bought a horse that has been competing pre-novice eventing in may as i wanted to gain experience to then bring my youngster on. The horse was getting ok dressage marks and was great sj and xc. All the dressage sheets said was needed to work through her back and from behind more. Since i have had her i have been working her on the flat quite alot to get her to use herself better. At the start she was very willing and i thought i was getting somewhere with her we were doing medium trot ect.... with the help of my trainer. But now all of a sudden she wont come down and round and find using her backend nearly impossible. My trainer has ridden her and say's she is a little stiff on the right side but nothing major. I have had her back checked, saddle checked and teeth checked... All that were fine and they couldnt find a problem at all.
I know i have been working her in a way where she is using muscles that she may never have used before but surley she shouldn't react in this way.
I'm not sure what else i can do with her to help her, she is the nicest natured horse and never has a paddy or gets angry when i am nagging her.
I just wondered if anybody had any ideas on what i could try with her as she is such a lovley horse.

So for going on but could really do with some help

Thanks in advance x
 
maybe she is bored if your doing allot of flat work, try maybe leaving of the flat work for a few days and take her hacking and you can still work her correctly but she wont be in the school and maybe more reseptive. or give her a few days off and then slowly come back to the flat work, only ideas anyway
smile.gif
 
thanks for your reply. I do alot of different things with her we Sj twice a week and hack out to baby sit a youngster. She is a bit funny when she has time off she doesnt like it and then when you get on her again its like she has forgotten everything.
 
What a good idea, always clever to do something different from time to time to distract young horses.
Also, do you have a chambon that you can lunge your horse on? That will encourage it to stretch down its neck and use its back more in a relaxing/loosening way which may be a good idea if its feeling stiff.
 
No i dont have a chambon but have been using a pessoa on her only lighly but to make her stretch down and use herself more. She goes like a dream in this and looks fantastic. It just feels like when i get on she sort of tenses up and won't stretch down. I try doing alot of loosening exercises with her and try nit to put much pressure on her but she just never gives in. Even my instructor has run out of things to try with her.
I think i am going to pull my hair out! ha ha!
Thanks for the ideas!
 
Will she use her back end properly when your trainer is riding her? If so, perhaps it is a rider problem and you need to work out what you are doing differently to your trainer. If she won't work from behind with the trainer on board either, then I would start thinking about possible physical problems in the hindlegs.
 
HI there, it's obviously not easy to say what the problem is with your horse without seeing her work in a school but one angle I would certainly recommend is to work on developing her balance, self-carriage and muscle development out hacking. Do lots of work up and down hills, especially in trot, making sure that you concentrate on keeping a good rythmn and getting her to really work from behind. You should be aiming for a steady, working trot with her really using herself. Work on rougher ground is also good, so using any fields/bridleways that you have access too - very the paces, do lots of transitions, always keeping a rythmn. Make sure that you break up the harder-work phases with short periods on a longer rein (where it is safe to do so).
 
Not now she wont, but the thing with her is she will work like a dream for a couple of weeks and then she will go back to being like this. It's like she thinks that because she is using muscles that she has never really used properly before then she gets a bit sore and tight and blames that and then refuses to work down and round then. I dont think its a rider error although i am never going to be a psg dressage rider i am not that bad and my other horses work fine for me.
 
I would be getting a vet to look too. When my daughters horse injured his hind suspensories he was like this. Never lame just "lazy" which progressed to reluctant to move forward over the course of a few months. I am ashamed to say we did not realise what the problem was until he was quite uncomfortable as he was not "lame". A loss of performance in a previously good horse is always worth investigating.
 
My instructor raves about Light Therapy. It can pick up points of soreness on your horse that a back specialist wouldn't treat. Not good at explaining it myself, but try googling it. Apparently NASA used light therapy to treat astronauts in space due to injuries not being able to heal in the space ships and now being quite widely used on humans and animals (who are not in space, obviously). Like I said, apologies for my rubbish explanation, I'm sure someone can explain much better than me!
 
We have had a lot of success with Mctimoney, even on horses that the traditional 'Back person' has declared ok. They check everything from ears to end of tail. It's amazing how the slightest mis-angle in the poll can throw out the whole horse!, worth trying, we pay about £30-£40 depending how many we have done and which practitioner we use so it's not expensive, especially if it 'fixes' your horse, she may just be trying to tell you her poll hurts or her hips are fractionally unlevel and working well with someone on her back is uncomfortable.
 
Definitely something that needs investigating! A horse that has previously gone well to suddenly "slow down" is always a worry. It might just be that she is a bit sore, but I would definitely get it checked out. We use a guy called Julian Midder - if you search on google he has a wesbite (not sure if allowed to post it on here) and he's worked wonders on our horses as he asks the questions and always finds the answers...

I hope you get to the root of the problem and it's nothing major
smile.gif
 
A friend of mine has had a problem with her dressage horse, not using his back end properly, he's not lame just lacks engagement.
Our vet's speciality is the under performing horse so he went to the practice & one of the first things she did was nerve block his front feet & he was a different horse. After x rays it turns out that his back issues are caused by a problem with his front feet. To relieve the discomfort he has been leaning back & this has damaged the joint where the pelvis attaches to the spine (sorry can't remmber the name, I want to call it the celeriac joint but that's a vegetable not a joint!)
It might be worth investigating the whole body not just the back.
 
I looked into this at work several years back. Uses infra-red LEDs (like in a tv remote control) but at several specific wavelengths. Definite proof that it helps with wound healing. Tried to get my own LEDs to make one (sad!!) but couldn't get the right wavelengths.
 
Celariac joint LOL. I think you mean sacroiliac (sp?) joint Turkana? My friend's eventer had a problem with this, and had fairly similar symptoms. Not lame, just not right. He went for a bone scan which discovered the problem.

Vet's advice was to just hack for a few months to allow it to settle down, but before they could bring him home he got colic with other complications so ended up being at the vet's for 2 weeks and off work for 6. By the time he came back into work the problem seemed to have gone. He has since been much looser over his back and much more willing to go forward. Maybe she just needs a bit of a break? Or ask the vet for a bone scan, think it's also known as scintigraphy(sp?).
 
annagain
yes you're right, I just couldn't remember the right name! I hoped that if I said a word that sounded a bit like the right word somebody would know what I meant!
I was surprised when the vet nerve blocked his front feet for a back problem but she obviously knew what she was doing, he's having treatment for his feet so hopefully he'll come right.
He's on danilon & can only be walked with a little bit of trotting in the areana & being out of pain has made a huge difference to how well he's going.
He also had to stay in until it had rained as the ground was so hard because he's not to have any concussion to his feet.
I transported him to the vet & I learnt such a lot that day.
 
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