Okay, this is what our October looked like! Second daughter married, lives in Phoenix.

Secrets of Collection II clinic with Tina Watkins
Saturday, November 10 at Flying Colours Stables

We started out the morning with a review of equine anatomy. With the help of couple of extra hands, Tina painted a horse with bones on one side and the major muscles on the other. Tina brought several skeletal examples as well. This made the discussion of the biomechanics of collection much clearer as we could see the relationship of the boney examples to the muscles painted on Billy. The emphasis of the morning was how the bones and muscles worked together to produce collection.

After lunch in the stable, we headed back into the arena for examples of gait analysis and how it relates to collection.

We had 7 demo horses and riders available to examine. Tina placed dots on the horses at specified joint intersections and we observed any left/right or up/down asymmetries. We then discussed how we would expect the asymmetries to affect gait and ultimately collection. Tina then tested the flexibility of each horse to be able to lift the shoulders, sit behind and move the rib cage left/right. Tina then pointed out any asymmetries with the riders hips, shoulders and neck and discussed how that might affect the horse’s way of going. Once we had assessed both the horse and rider, we observed the regularity of the walk. The rider then mounted and we observed the ability of each horse to collect.

By the time we had worked through 7 horse/rider examples, the afternoon was done. We had lots of hands on time to make sure we could locate and place the measuring dots and know how to apply the correct pressure to test the lift and sit and rotate on the horse.

It was a wonderfully full education day.

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