What is a nicely sloping shoulder?

[nedzy]

Hi,

On my quest for a new horse, hopefully to do some Stressage, I been conscious of the 'shoulder needs to be about 45 degrees to enable horse to lengthen stride'. Now either I am looking at the wrong bit of the shoulder or there are a lot of upright shouldered horses! Anyone able to help, maybe with photos to demonstrate what the difference is please?

Many thanks!

 

[Paint it Lucky]

There are a lot of upright shouldered horses!

I will try and find a photo to help you....

 

[Paint it Lucky]

This horse has a good slope to it's shoulder

 

[Paint it Lucky]

And this one's not so good!

 

[Paint it Lucky]

Also just found this chap, he has a great shoulder!

PS: Sorry I'm taking over this thread!

 

[popsicle]

Is it the angle of the line from the bottom of the withers to where the underneath kneck meets the chest?

 

[Simsar]

Who is the chestnut?? Sorry in advance if I should know. Thought it looked like secriteriat (SP)!

 

[nedzy]

Is it from the base or top of the wither? Maybe it is easier to tell from some stances (Nice horse btw!)

 

[Paint it Lucky]

Not sure who chestnut is, might be Secretariat, just a ramdom picture I found on my computer!

Popsicle, if you look at the first phot there are two quite obvious lines going from the horses withers down to the front of his chest, this is the line of the shoulder. If you imagine another line dropping directly from the point of wither to the floor, the angle between these shows how open/upright the shoulder is. See how on the coloured horse it is a more acute angle, indicating he'll have naturally shorter strides than the other two.

 

[Paint it Lucky]

Top of wither, where wither meets the neck.

PS: I only own the skewbald.

 

[Simsar]

Oh bum, was hoping you would know. Its not Secretariat, he only had one front leg that was white, just had a look, and the grey is Rebelara RID unfortunately now deceased!

 

[nedzy]

Aah I see! I was looking at completely the wrong angle!
Thank you! Potential new horsey doesn't look so bad now!!

 

[popsicle]

Thank you PaintedLucky. Will look closely at my 2 tomorrow, but I think I can guess which will have the sloping shoulder. It will be Lolly as she has a very big movement. Would that be right?

 

[LeneHorse]

Interesting post, I'll be having a look at my girl's shoulder tomorrow! (Suspect it will tend towards the upright.)
Who is the grey ID stallion? He looks a bit like the Do-Ron, who used to do a lot of dressage/SJ round our way, though I think he was more dappled.

 

[wench]

I would say that a 17hh horse would generally have a longer stride than a 15.3 due to the length of the legs...

 

[j1ffy]

I'd say it's more down to the length of leg and slope of the shoulder than the height of the horse (if it's between a 15.3 and a 17hh - obviously a bit different if you compare a 12hh and 17hh!). I rode a warmblood recently who has long legs and sloping shoulder, and has been trained for dressage so can make the most of his conformation. On a hack , he seemed to take one stride in trot and canter for two of the other horses, even though some of them were a good 3 or 4 inches taller.

When I was doing my stage 2, the instructor said a sloping shoulder is good for dressage (as above) but a more upright one is better for show jumping as it's easier to get the bouncy canter. I'm not convinced that a horse with a sloping shoulder is a disadvantage for SJ, e.g. the RID stallion PaintedLucky put up!