Shared with Thanks to Manolo Mendez Dressage
What The Topline Says About Horse and Rider.
( a FREE, seven-page, amply illustrated downloadable article on what your horse’s body can reveal about his training and wellness is available from his website a link is at the bottom of this exert).
“….With every new horse I meet, I spend the time to observe its body while it is standing and while it is moving. Just by looking at it, I can already learn a lot about how it feels inside as an individual, how it willmove, and the reasons why it will not be able to bend well or extend or collect.
Its muscles patterns, how it stands, and how it organizes its posture and balance will give me the keys to how I must work with him/her….
In the following paragraphs, I will list some of the things I look at, and explain what I look for and what I consider good and what is not. I will review the horse’s topline and
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By topline, I mean all the muscles and skeleton parts that are above the spine – and include the hamstrings and the abdominal wall muscles because in my way of seeing the horse, the topline is one long chain of muscles woven into one another that starts right behind the ear of the horse and travels down its neck, over its withers, back and croup, and down to the point of its hocks.
I include the underline because it is impossible to look at how the topline functions without also looking at the base of the neck, the muscles that go from the head to the shoulder, the chest and pectoral muscles, the abdominal muscles, and the psoas muscles.
You see, a horse really is a whole and even for this article, looking at it in parts is proving impossible…”
extract from “What The Topline Says About Horse and Rider” published last in Equine Naturally. Thank you Equine Naturally for the layout.
You can now rent Manolo’s 3 hour DVD on intro to in-hand work on Vimeo for one year for $55. 95 – it contains a segment on evaluating your horse