Cause & Effect/Chicken & the Egg

["Kathy Mayeda" <kathy_mayeda@atce.com>]

Bob,  I hope everything turns out okay with you and your back!

 

I spent a couple of years chasing down undefinable body imbalances and lameness,

both for me and my horse.  There would be times when I would be riding for months,

then take a Centered Riding clinic or lesson, finding out the my body felt injured

and my horse couldn't track straight.  What pain my horse and I block out on the

trail becomes so obvious when we do arena work!  By that time we have both

compensated for each others imbalances that it becomes so entangled that

whatever the original source(s) of the imbalances are becomes so buried within

all the secondary problems, we had to unravel everything one by one.

Believe me, I know and it's so totally frustrating.  I just learned that you can't

always pinpoint the exact source of the problem, but you can work at each issue

one at a time and then you could eliminate the source(s) one at a time. 

 

I was lucky enough to have the right guidance with horse health care with Diana

Thompson and my Centered Riding instructors.  Diana was able to run down all my

horses' body imbalance problems and solutions within an hour's time, giving me

a whole checklist of things to work on to get my horse straight.  When I took a

Centered Riding clinic with Mary Fenton, we just plain had to address the body

issues as part of the riding clinic because I couldn't physically ride straight.

 

Horse:  High/low front hooves (club vs. long toe), extreme dental issues, upward

fixation of the patella, total gait abnormality in left hind hock, lumbosacral subluxation.

 

The only item that was diagnosed by the veterinarian was the upward fixation

of the patella, and that was only because Nancy Elliott, DVM requested that a regular

vet do a lameness workup before she examined and treated with chiro/accupuncture.

The vet just recommended regular uphill trotting to build up the quads.  But the problem

really never went away until I addressed all the other issues.  I think that this was the

secondary cause to all of the others.

 

Me:  Scioliosis, missing ACL in left knee, bad right hip.  Right bad hip is probably

because of my horse!

 

So:

 

1)  Dental work for horse.

2)  Chiropractic care for me and horse.

3)  Muscle building for both of us.  Sometimes that means having someone else

ride my horse, and I ride another horse so that we aren't compensating all over

the place.

4)  New saddle, yeah!!!!

5) Corrective farriery (was over a course of a year - now normal farriery).

 

yada, yada, yada.  (As Abby says: TTT)

 

I spent all of last year P&Ring at rides and marveling at all those lucky

riders that never had to deal with any of these problems.

Now after a couple of years of trying to compete and not having a sound horse

(and sound rider) we are finally competing successfully.  Did quite well at our

third 50 at Quicksilver. 

 

 

Kathy Mayeda

Equine Body Worker

 

 

 

 

 

 

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