gymastic homework

I have borrowed this picture from Simon's article crookedness.  It illustrates Remi's current tendancy to lean on his left shoulder, and weight his left fore, to look right, and to be quarters in right. This has improved massively with body work and straightening work.

 

Elaine has set us various homework exercises to try and physically straighten him. When encouraged to realign his body and straighten, Remi  seems to relax and snort and move better. Despite the wonky feet, there seems value in doing work in improving Remi's musculature and alignment.  

 

Exercise one - walk poles on a circle

 

 

Can have alternate ends or one end of pole raised. Raising just the outside end of the pole encourages Remi to stretch his outside.

 

I tend to set up two different lines of raised poles. And do five repetitions of each on each rein. Remi finds this quite hard work. I notice that his movement on the lunge improves after this work.

 

 

 

Exercise 2 - poles end to end

 

This involves a line of poles (3 poles) end to end. I walk Remi parallel to the poles and get him to gradually step across them with his front legs, and then each back leg in turn. This is hard work for a horse like Remi that is very close behind, and plaits behind. Remi thinks this exercise is silly! But he tries to figure it out. (Ignore the steep lines, we only do the shallow ones in this exercise.)

 

Exercise 3 - Giravolta

 

Like full pass on a circle. Hind legs cross, front legs cross. Starting with quarter circles.

 Simon again