Day twelve

[glenatron]

Today was less about the riding, we began with a classroom session ( which those of us in the Donut Club were bringing donuts for -all four of us guys were owing by this point ) which was going to be about bits but ended up being about dentistry, shoeing and various other interesting topics- Martin is a mine of information on all things horse-related so this was really interesting. There was some interesting stuff about teeth and how they wear- because the horse eats with their neck and head stretched down it means the lower jaw tends to be pulled back a little, which means that you tend to have a problem where a hook forms at the front of the upper teeth and the back of the lower teeth, the latter being the really difficult one to get at. Another problem related to that can arise when you ask the horse to work on the bit, because that can put them in a position where their lower jaw is level or slightly further forward if their head is tucked in, at which point if you have anything like those hooks, or the teeth are too unevenly worn then it can be very hard for them to move over each other and cause other ridden problems. Also because a lot of nerves go through the temporo-mandibular joint a problem in the mouth can be pretty serious in terms of the horse's general wellbeing.

We went off to spend a couple of hours watching a cutting-horse trainer at work in the afternoon, which was interesting. But not the type of interesting I would necessarily want to see more of.

This evening we've been watching video of Martin riding in some NRCHA competitions in past years, which was very interesting- in spite of being at a high level competition there's no compromise in the relationship between the horse and rider, which was telling compared with the work we were watching earlier in the day.

Comments

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a decent way to spend a birthday, and maybe I will have to search for some old videos of Martin in competition...anytime people can compete and not compromise the relationship, certainly I enjoy watching...

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

His horse is gorgeous as well- apparently he was a cutting horse reject at the age of three, couldn't even look at a cow. The competition was a few years later, when the horse was eight. To see their herd-work and the cow control part you wouldn't know it at all.

Martin talks a lot about how horses get sour of competition, having to push that hard can damage the relationship pretty easily if you do it more than very occasionally. He says if he was making the rules he'd have it so that a single horse could only compete six times a year at most. More than that and he figures it's going to damage things.