Re: RC: re: Stride Length

[Tivers@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/22/99 8:41:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time, CMKSAGEHIL 
writes:

<< I think there is a certain amount of parallel, but there are some other 
variables.  In my experience, the horses with a long, low, "daisy-cutter" 
stride can have a fairly long stride without being particularly prone to 
injury.  The horses that I see coming up lame are the ones with long "big" 
strides that really catch your eye--the ones you watch trot and say "wow!"  
My thought about them is that there is a lot more concussion, which, of 
course, would go hand in hand with the increase in vertical acceleration.  
(What goes up must come down, and all that.)  And yes, they don't tend to be 
100-mile horses, which would indicate that they also expend too much energy 
just getting 50...
 
 Heidi >>

I'm a little foggy on this, because the discussions were so long ago, but I 
talked to either Jim Rooney or George Pratt about this. What they were 
talking about is a kind of "dwell", where the forefoot extends forward so far 
that it has to at some point "catch up" with the hind legs, slamming down and 
impacting before the leg orientation is vertical. We were talking about 
Quarterhorses and LTLH shoeing at the time. The idea of the long toe low heal 
shoeing technique, in the minds of the primitives who use it, is that the 
stride is lengthened. It's been shown that this type of shoeing encourages 
foreleg injury in racehorses.

ti 


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