Spiral Exercises for suppleness & strength

Spiral Exercises – support balance & suppleness in the horse

The Spiral Exercise, done correctly on the longe line or under saddle, has the potential to teach softness and create better balance in the horse. It must be built up in intensity over a gradual period since the movement itself requires strength and lateral stepping that is both tiring and stretches the musculature deeply.

On the longe, your horse needs to have the basic discipline of circling you at even paces, remaining at a set distance from you on a consistently round circle. To spiral in, you drive for a bit more energy by stepping slightly toward his haunches as you shorten the line just a bit – asking him to make a smaller, concentric circle just inside the base circle by stepping half his energy forward, half his energy sideways.

Do this in stages at first, maintaining the next size circle once around, then ask for a bit smaller bend – until you have brought the horse to a smaller, but not tight circle (the tighter the circle, the more stress there is on joints, especially the stifle – so build up gradually to condition the horse). Then spiral out by feeding a little line as you lean toward his middle to encourage the horse’s whole body to step outward, creating the next concentric circle, and so on…

For the longe work, you can place cones to mark the circles (small, medium, large circles) that you direct the horse through by placing him between cones that establish the desired size circle.

These exercises (on the longe and when ridden) should be schooled well at the walk before trot and schooled well at the trot before canter.

To spiral under saddle, establish your base circle at the walk. Ask the horse to move in gradually with your weight on your inside sitting bone, active outside leg pressure just behind the girth (to maintain bend and keep the haunches from swinging) and an active, spongy inside rein; stretched, supporting outside rein. Your horse should “half-pass” in – maintaining the inside bend that increases as the circle becomes smaller. Driving aids are needed (encouragement!) because the tighter bends require more energy. Think of half his energy going forward, half his energy going sideways. Imagine that a man is standing at the center of your circle with a rope tied around your waist and is slowly pulling you and your horse inward from your center.

Spiral out by shifting your weight to the outside sitting bone, inside leg becomes active, inside rein actively maintains bend and the outside rein is stretched to regulate the horse’s forward motion. You do a “leg yield” out. Imagine the man in the center of your circle now has a pole and he is pushing you and the horse outward from your hip.

Do these exercises equally in each direction (to the left and to the right on the circle), even if your horse is stiff to one side. Doing them equally each way really will even him up over time because the exercise stretches the outside of his body, contracts the inside of his body and weights the “power leg” (the inside hind leg) and doing this evenly will help his stiff side. Working a stiff side “extra” to develop it can actually make the horse even more stiff in that direction.

A great spiral exercise to use after the horse is going well and he seems supple and content is to spiral in at the trot to a medium size circle (15 meters or about 45 feet diameter), ask for a canter depart and then spiral out at canter; return to trot on the large, base circle.

When you feel that your horse understands the spiraling and he is enjoying the process, you can move on to other lateral exercises and his balance will be really great!

We recommend longeing with a Boundary Halter – its ability to squeeze the horse’s head if he pulls or bolts; but release the moment he yields can help you stay at the center of the circle without being jerked or pulled around.

Horsewomanship Handbook by Katharine Lark Chrisley |

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Ice Storm

For several years I lived on the side of the mountain in the town of Organ. I rented a tiny cottage covered in vines, surrounded by trees and herb gardens. I also rented a cottage next door for Zen meditations, Reiki treatments and making soap and medicines. My retired eventer, Snookie (Breath of Snow) lived just below the house in a three sided shelter and pen that I had built. Snookie was in his 20's, had the beginnings of Uveitis (moonblindness) and was Cushinoid. I was managing his health and happiness, but he was fragile.
An ice storm hit one day in January. It came without warning (to the severity of it) and we lost power. My little wall unit gas heater worked without electricity... the dogs and I were safe, but Snookie was in a life or death situation. My landlady (the coolest person on the planet) said "take Snookie in the house!" Yet, that wasn't really possible - I did have a storage room in my little back yard. It was of block, but the ceiling was insulated and the door was thick and of metal. I pulled all my stuff out (I thought) and piled it on the downwind side then filled the building with hay and straw. The wind made the pores on my face bleed. The sleet stuck to my body in freaky ice sheets that made me unable to bend my arms and legs easily. I could barely breathe. By the grace of God and Goddess I led Snookie up the hill to the backyard. He was covered in layers (a mesh sheet, blanket and turn out rug on top) and still was shaking from the cold. I "stuffed" him into the room, crunchy ice sheets all stuck to his sides, neck and face. My gas stove worked (it was really old - they work best - simple) so I kept making him buckets of hot herb tea and sloppy hot (warm!) bran mashes and wet pellets. The dogs and I hunkered down in the cottage with warm rice and oatmeal for them, soups and lots of hot tea for me. We were like that for three days!! The roads and highway were closed. As the storm stopped and the sun peaked out onto our glistening ice world, I started pulling manure out of the storage/Snookie room and decided to let him walk around the back yard carefully (the ground was solid ice).
The sun thawed us out quickly. Life returned to normal. Snookie survived quite well and was glad to get back to his pen! After all was cleaned out from the shed he lived in over 5 days, I found a little television under the poop that I had completely forgotten I had. It was unharmed (just poopey), but more important, Snookie hadn't been hurt by it... amazing. I'll never know how he kept from stepping on it.

Happy Year of the Water Dragon!

I remember New Year's Day as a child - on New Year's Eve my parents would go to the Coronado Country Club for a big party. My brother and I would fall asleep with my Grandmother caring for us. I would wake up, so excited before dawn and there would always be at least a half dozen helium balloons of various colors hovering at the ceiling in my bedroom. My brother had the same and we would run around the house with our balloons squealing and playing until one would get away and drift up to the 16 foot peak of the living room ceiling. No one would retrieve the ones that got away; we had to wait for the gas to weaken and they would drop slowly down to within our reach.
I know my parents worked hard to get our Christmas presents (always Breyer type horses for me!), and we loved them, but there was just something about the floating balloon tradition that kept us enthralled each year!

Some Days

I find myself hoping for some days to end... for the numbness of sleep and the relative quiet. Days when the dogs are worried and clingy; when Jer is concerned for their unusual behavior and asking me why; when my Mom is crying, missing her tiny dog who passed over and my brother is exhausted from work... days when Jer has a cough that won't quit; when Jimmie (the horse) is anxious in the wind, Hank is bored, Susie is stiff and Sunshine has diarrhea... days when lessons cancelled because of weather and no money came in; when the realtor calls with an offer of half the asking price (which is barely over the amount paid 30 years ago to start with); when gasoline, postage and hay are all going way up in cost; when there is only one roll of toilet paper left and two days to go before grocery day... days when the wind howls; when the propane is low, I'm running on the bottom end of the gas tank and my jeans are wearing out - days like today.

Today is all those things rolled up in one... yet, I comforted the dogs with lavender oil, soft music and treated their ears, gave the elderly ones a low dose aspirin; I made a large photo of my Mom's sweet dog and she was cheered and fell asleep holding it; I hugged my brother and helped him with dinner; I found homeopathics in the herb cabinet that seem to be helping Jer; I gave Jimmie lavender and valerian; I turned Hank out; I rubbed Susie's back; I gave Sunshine probiotics; I rescheduled the lessons; I emailed the realtor and we will stand by our price; I started an envelope for any extra money to go for hay; I resign myself to gasoline and postage rates; I took a bath and I am going to patch some jeans... and I think that, just maybe, there is some emergency toilet paper in the trunk of my car.

Here's hoping :)

Confusion

Confusion

I received an Email from a young girl and cannot get my reply to send, which frustrated me, but then I realized that I'm probably supposed to put the information out to a broader audience. She has a young horse that she is re-training and her concern for his wellbeing and awareness of his confusion really touched me. Confusion is a big factor with horses. When it happens, no progress is made, we even go backwards, undoing the good stuff we thought was confirmed! And it happens more often with the youngster and when we are exploring an assortment of schooling philosophies. The only answer really is to "start over" by finding one thing that makes sense to the horse and returning to it each time he becomes confused. It will be the foundation that you use to start, restart and establish communication. It can be to groom him, or to lead him over poles on the ground, or massage his neck, etc. Just find one thing and stick to it. I had a student whose horse freaked out every time she went out her gait and she really wanted to trail ride. We started walking serpentines around cones in her pasture. Then I put the cones just outside her gait, she walked serpentines through them, slowly I moved one cone at a time further out until we had her riding down the road. BE CREATIVE.

Raised by Horses

My Mother wrapped her big, bare arms around me and dragged me down the hall to the kitchen as blood poured, warm and sticky from my left arm. I was thirteen years old and my life had changed in an instant. I had fallen through a window and severed everything important at my wrist.

Mamma handed me a small towel. “Wrap it up”, she commanded as she fought her demons of fear and unconsciousness she knew would mean my death. I looked at my arm as I wrapped it, so deeply in shock I wasn’t even aware that I was seeing bones and mangled arteries. Instinctively, I held pressure by squeezing the wrist now wrapped in a dish towel.

That was 43 years ago. I sit tonight by the window, a hot cup of tea in my right hand. The steam from it makes fog on the glass that gathers and runs down the pane just like the rain outside. We haven’t had any rain for so many months that the high desert was scorched and just ready to ignite. This water is welcomed. This cold night quenches the red earth, the now bare trees and the fuzzy backs of my horses. They stand outside their shelters to celebrate. The Chaparral breathes the scent of the rain onto the wind. I squiggle my fingers on the glass, remembering, for some unknown reason, the day I fell through that window.

I got my first horse because of it. The accident, that is. After it was pretty certain that I was going to live. After transfusions, vomiting and aspirating during surgery and seeing my tiny, pale, numb fingers sticking out from a cast – my Mother convinced my Father to buy me a horse. They had provided riding lessons all my short life. They had leased horses for me during summers. They had never promised me a horse of my own. So, it seemed that they were hoping this new promise of my own great beastie when I had healed would be the motivation to live and to heal. It was.

We had been living at my Grandfather Hodel’s estate in West Virginia. It was his home’s entry that had a large glass door with a huge glass panel on each side. “Don’t run toward the glass!” my Mother had always said… I ran around the lawns; galloping as if I were a horse, jumping bushes and the concrete edging of the driveway and the swimming pool. And I would jump (like a horse) onto the slate front landing, over the steps and “trot” to the front door; except for that one day.

My thoughts and my dreams were filled with horses. While most young girls found ponies adorable, I was drawn to wild Mustangs, dancing Lippizaners and giant Draft horses. I had a herd of at least 200 plastic horses. I ordered free samples of hoof dressing and fly repellent that I used on my tiny herd members, much to my Mother’s dismay as the oily substances rubbed off on the sofa (a desert mesa) or carpets (pastures). My personal “scent” was “ode de Equus”, it still is.

So, tonight I watch the last glow of sunset die and the dark wetness hug the land. I have fed the horses their fluffed up hay and bran mashes. I treat myself to the tea and some store bought Christmas cookies – no time now to bake for the holidays. My brother and I are taking care of my Mother. This must be the catalyst for so many memories these days. My Mother recently had congestive heart failure. She is doing very well. It became my turn to help save her life. It became time for me to really understand how she must have felt when I fell through that glass.

I was healing pretty well back then. I remember sitting in the hospital and becoming terrified when my injured fingers started moving on their own. The nurses assured me this was a good thing. It meant that the tendons that had been reattached were trying to work. They also told me that the surgeons had had to retrieve those tendons from past by my elbow. This, I did not need to know. At night the hand would “burn”, a strange pain and cramping overtook it. I had no feeling actually in the hand or fingers, but pain was real and deep within them. It is hard to explain. But, the idea of riding again; of riding my own horse was all the motivation I needed to decide to heal and just make that hand work again!

My first horse was a Morgan gelding – a castrated male of a breed known for its unusual strength and small size. His name was “Mink” and he had come from the Gypsies in Princeton who could heal horses with plants and magic. I had spent the summer after the cast was removed from my arm in the pool doing “therapy” that I hoped would strengthen the shriveled, pale thing that used to be my left hand. As the use of the hand improved, I started riding again. Mink realized I had little strength and almost no feeling in that hand, so he would run away with me, always on a big circle to the right. I would stay on. He didn’t buck or try to throw me. He just ran when he wanted to and I couldn’t shut him down. But, he was my very own horse! I adored him. I persevered.