![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Dino] First osteopath visit!
Jan. 12th, 2013 03:15 pmWe have lovely young man called David (http://www.davidpowers.co.uk/ for the curious) who comes and see Pico every 3 months to keep him working well and let us know which new bits of stiffness have appeared. We figured it would be a good idea to get him to have a look at Dino - not because there was anything wrong, but just because it's always useful to have as much information at your finger tips as you can. We knew Dino was a bit one-sided, all horses are to a degree (well, all everything is to a degree) and we've done no serious work to start evening him out, so we were expecting him to find that but it was kinda fascinating to get some more details about exactly *what* is stiff and what is 'jammed up'.
The summary was there are no serious issues (*phew*) but there are a few things we need to work on over the next few months (EDITED after![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kekhmet reminded me what I was forgetting/getting confused about):
- his hip adductors on the left hind are short meaning he pulls that hind leg over slightly when he picks it up
- he bends the joints on his right hind more deeply than those on the left and drops the pelvis slightly on that side when he moves - David 'tweaked' him to adjust this a bit today which was a process Dino found a little disconcerting!
- he's a bit jammed up through his lower back/loin area which David also tweaked
- there is some tightness in the upper part of the neck on the left hand side and the right side of his neck is generally pretty jammed up.
[This will not make sense to non-horsey types most likely!] The plan is, first off, to work him more. We should concentrate on circling him on the left rein and working a bit more on the left side than the right. And we should teach him 'quarters in' (excuse Wikipedia - just to give the curious an idea of what I mean.) on the left. The circling should free up the neck a little but more importantly we need to get him to bend that hind deeper when it takes weight to even up the pelvis.
Also, once this is going well we should work him (in trot eventually) over poles, probably 5, starting with them flat and then once that's established raising the ends of them (alternating right-left-right-left-right) to get that pelvis working properly [This girl is cantering over raised poles - this is not what we're going to do but this is what I mean about poles raised on one end). The idea here is to get him properly lifting the right hind so the pelvis remains flat and he gets used to using the hinds evenly.
David will see him again in 6 months to see how its going :o) I'm really glad we got him looked it as it makes it so much easier to tailor a work programme to make sure we don't compound and issues and work through them properly instead. Should anyone ever need an osteopath in Hendon I'd highly recommend David!
The summary was there are no serious issues (*phew*) but there are a few things we need to work on over the next few months (EDITED after
kekhmet reminded me what I was forgetting/getting confused about):- his hip adductors on the left hind are short meaning he pulls that hind leg over slightly when he picks it up
- he bends the joints on his right hind more deeply than those on the left and drops the pelvis slightly on that side when he moves - David 'tweaked' him to adjust this a bit today which was a process Dino found a little disconcerting!
- he's a bit jammed up through his lower back/loin area which David also tweaked
- there is some tightness in the upper part of the neck on the left hand side and the right side of his neck is generally pretty jammed up.
[This will not make sense to non-horsey types most likely!] The plan is, first off, to work him more. We should concentrate on circling him on the left rein and working a bit more on the left side than the right. And we should teach him 'quarters in' (excuse Wikipedia - just to give the curious an idea of what I mean.) on the left. The circling should free up the neck a little but more importantly we need to get him to bend that hind deeper when it takes weight to even up the pelvis.
Also, once this is going well we should work him (in trot eventually) over poles, probably 5, starting with them flat and then once that's established raising the ends of them (alternating right-left-right-left-right) to get that pelvis working properly [This girl is cantering over raised poles - this is not what we're going to do but this is what I mean about poles raised on one end). The idea here is to get him properly lifting the right hind so the pelvis remains flat and he gets used to using the hinds evenly.
David will see him again in 6 months to see how its going :o) I'm really glad we got him looked it as it makes it so much easier to tailor a work programme to make sure we don't compound and issues and work through them properly instead. Should anyone ever need an osteopath in Hendon I'd highly recommend David!
