Equine Massage

Excellent day yesterday, met some new people and got to see my favourite little Arab horsie :-D
Went to an equine massage demo by Megan Webster of Springfield Equus. She started off with a bit about how it all works on the muscles etc and showed us some massage mitts (including the one she referred to as a "porno mitt") then got us to do silly things with our ears

and massage each other, Tamzin seemed to enjoy hers!

Then she showed us how to massage the horse from head to tail, starting with the poll/ears area. Duke, our demo horse (a taller, very much cleaner version of Gandalf), doesn't like having his ears touched

but once she'd put on the mitt, he was happier with it....

She showed us stroking movements (effleurage)

and compression strokes, with hands or scrunched up mitt

and then concussion movements (not to be done on bony areas!)

More on the movements here

An interesting one that I'd never seen before was massaging the muscle down the front of the shoulder, and seeing if you can get your hand in and pull the muscle out slightly, many horses are really tense here and in the neck

Also, an often forgotten area is the coronet band, gentle palpitations here are good for the feet

After the demo, we got to have a go on the horses, I was really surprised by just how cold Duke's lower legs and shod feet were after being so used to my lot feeling warm....

We gave Ras a bit of a go with the mitt, but he was more interested in the mare next door than our ministrations, I suspect......

Megan is coming over to Tanya's on Wednesday to massage Polo and Sorcier, might take G over there for a workup too.....

First TREC of the year

Yesterday was fun. We went up to Beaumont again for a TREC special PTV competition. Ali got to ride Sunny, Tamzin's big bay horse and she also did a round on Ches. We got there a bit early so we had a sneak preview of the course, to show Ras, Tamzin's 5 year old Arab, that nothing was going to eat him......

Then Isabelle and the rest of the team showed up so we got the horses ready and the competition started. Tanya went first on Chester. He did his usual ambling along, tried to eat the gate, got his head down during the immobility and generally did the least amount of work possible.....he woke up enough at the end to actually jump the hedge though!

Polo went next and was fine, unsurprising given his gymnkhana background.....

and given his size the low branch wasn't exactly a challenge!

 

 

Then it was Ali's turn on Sunny. He is 16.3hh and not exactly skinny, so it's a lot of horse to hold together. There was an interesting moment at the gate opening.......here she is saying "what do I do now?!"

She got it closed in the end without dropping it though, somewhat unorthodox technique....

Unfortunately, the low branch was a bit too low for Sunny....

But he jumped beautifully, I think Ali might have enjoyed that bit!

She also managed to get on him from the ground, she's very bendy.....

Little Ras was funny, he did fine with most of it, then suddenly decided the gate was out to get him and shot off across the course, I had to dive out of the way after I'd taken this pic!

Then Ali did a round on Ches, who decided he was going to be scared of the carriage that came trotting up the road and leapt out of the middle of the ruelle he was supposed to be crossing.

So Ali came 6th on him, Hollie was 4th and Ali came third on Sunny. The winner was a girl on a Merens riding in just a headcollar, she was brilliant!

Looking forward to the next one......would love to take Kinna next time to see how she copes.