I thought it was interesting, particularly because I know of a few promising imported young warmbloods that have been side lined rather early in their careers (first-third levels) with tendon/ligament injuries. Although to be honest, I don’t know if the injuries were due to being pushed too hard too soon. I think it’s likely training practices have as much to do with overall soundness as conformation does.
I have the same suspicions as you, mvp, it’s just that 1) there isn’t much money in unbiased equine research, and 2) categorizing spidery/extravagant movers in a quantifiable way could be a difficult proposition.
Not to mention that a lot of times, critique of the extravagant movers is taken to be criticism of modern dressage as a whole, which is not always the case.
[QUOTE=Windermere;8421431]
I have the same suspicions as you, mvp, it’s just that 1) there isn’t much money in unbiased equine research, and 2) categorizing spidery/extravagant movers in a quantifiable way could be a difficult proposition.
Not to mention that a lot of times, critique of the extravagant movers is taken to be criticism of modern dressage as a whole, which is not always the case.[/QUOTE]
I think that a few years from now (10? 25?) some high performance vet that works on a lot of these fancy dressage horses will have a sense of things. I don’t know how the, say, Hillary Claytons of this world choose the projects they do and get those paid for. But it would be interesting if the academicians got in on this.
It will be interesting to see how it goes. I can be patient.
[QUOTE=Pocket Pony;8420533]
I guess I didn’t make myself clear. Another poster mentioned a book she had read that about equine soundness and how the author discussed issues in different breeds / disciplines. That poster came to her own conclusion from the anecdotal evidence presented by the author, which was that the size and our use of horses these days is overstressing the foot.
I was merely presenting another conclusion that could be made from the same information.
Another conclusion could be the guess that the horses discussed are used longer and harder in their lives (meaning, if they are show horses, then the likelihood of them being started at a younger age before they are fully grown is higher).
Another conclusion could be the fact that they are ridden at all.
Without a scientific study, many conclusions can be drawn from anecdotal evidence; and many people can draw different conclusions based on the same anecdotes.[/QUOTE]
In this case, you can’t quite infer all that you do from my look at Dyson’s book.
For example, the cutting horse or reiner has his career peak perhaps a decade earlier than does the GP dressage horse.
None of the vets quoted, nor Dyson, nor I ever implied that their ranked order of equine lameness were take-it-to-the-bank conclusions. And none of these people talked about causality. But I appreciated the ambition of those chapters and Dyson’s investigation: It would be hard (and very expensive) to make some kind of scientific census of horse lameness in all the USEF disciplines. So if you can settle for less certainty, you can still find some interesting patterns in what these experienced vets had to say about what they found in their clinical work.
[QUOTE=mvp;8421394]
When I think about the biomechanics of those stubby little gaits, I’m reminded that the legs are relatively straight and close to the horse’s body when they hit the ground for the first part of the weight-bearing phase of the stride. No “spider movement” up front for these little ones! What that means is that it’s bone all lined up in a pillar, not soft tissue at the back of the leg, doing most of the load-bearing work.
If it researchers discover that those spidery-moving horses end up tearing up their suspensories more often than average, I won’t be surprised.[/QUOTE]
But what about some of the fancy ponies? Welsh cobs? GRPS? I ride a 15.1 1/2 horse - and she is not leggy - she is short and compact. And she can get pretty lofty and fling her legs around. I’ve seen quite a few cobby types of horses who could fling their legs around. Actually, if you really look at Totilas, he wasn’t a long legged horse.
So size really isn’t what makes movement - even length of leg isn’t so much an indicator (look at some of the old style Friesians, they are short in the leg, close to the ground, and they can really get animated).
Some of that “spidery” movement can be seen in wild stallions - watch a wild stallion trying to impress another stallion - he can get pretty “herky jerky” and fling legs around too!
[QUOTE=mvp;8421446]
I think that a few years from now (10? 25?) some high performance vet that works on a lot of these fancy dressage horses will have a sense of things. I don’t know how the, say, Hillary Claytons of this world choose the projects they do and get those paid for. But it would be interesting if the academicians got in on this.
It will be interesting to see how it goes. I can be patient.[/QUOTE]
Gerd Heuschmann attributes it to riding techniques, not natural movement type. He was around high performance horses for decades (for example, he put down Ahlerich I believe, and worked with the Klimke horses), and in his presentations on riding and horse development he discusses how when he was a young vet no one heard of suspensory injuries.
What I question is if these injuries are new, or if they were formerly undetected. I’m not convinced one way or another on that…
That wasn’t my point-- that size correlates with extravagant movement. Instead, think about this as would an evolutionary biologist or selective breeder… almost the same difference.
My point was that the horse design and the usual amount of ligament built into a horse doesn’t scale well. That means that spidery movement in a light horse taxes things like the suspensory apparatus less than does the same movement in a larger, heavier animal.
I’m sure one could check this out quantitatively: See if the stresses that increase with weight vary in a 1:1 way, or whether the stress on those structures increases exponentially with increased body weight.
The other point-- about stubby moving, stubby shaped Mongolian horses was not that they move badly because they are small. Rather, it was that these horses are perhaps most biomechanically-equivalent to what natural selection designed for the wild. The first characteristic of theirs that I (and others) pointed out was their diminutive size and weight in comparison to the WB purpose-bred riding horse.
And it was worth pointing out, too, that natural selection didn’t favor spidery movement. My guess about that was only that even wild are horses are large enough that they are hard on the equid design. After all, you need to carry around a long and heavy gut if you want to be a successful horse out on the Steppe. The successful ones are rigged up to support most of their weight on a column of bone when moving at most gaits, and not using soft tissue.
A long time ago, there was a paper about the different weights of animals, their gait patterns and how they use their legs. If you consider the elephant-- a maximal case-- you see that he’s built to have is legs relatively straight and close to his body when he is moving; he’s supported by pillars of bone, primarily, and not a substantial suspensory apparatus (although he dose have a homologous set of ligaments and/or tendons and muscles).
All this means that you can have a small, fancy-moving horse.
But it doesn’t mean that anyone things size and extravagant movement correlate, or that size causes big movement.
It does mean that if you look to living examples of what natural selection has probably produced as the “optimized” version of the equid architecture, it’s not a great mover. It’s also small. Those facts may or may not mean that the size and weight of the animal are the features that mean spidery movement would be a failing strategy in the wild.
But when I look at where horse bodies fail-- and that was the point about Sue Dyson’s anecdotal findings about sore feet in all of 'em-- my sense is that the sheer size of the horses we have bred, without a re-design of the horse body has, in fact, produced a scaling problem. That’s just my sense of it. So again, it would make sense that a fancy horse could be large or small. But my guess is that the smaller and lighter the extravagant, spidery-moving horse is, the sounder he’ll stay in comparison to his 17 h, thick equivalent.
In addition (and not relevant to the argument above) there’s not a good reason to evolve in that direction for the eating/evading predators/having and raising babies to adulthood animal. That is to say that given the agenda of any individual wild horse-- live survive and reproduce in their context-- I’m not sure moving like Totilas has much of a pay-off such that any animal would out-reproduce her competition because she could do that.
[QUOTE=netg;8421843]
Gerd Heuschmann attributes it to riding techniques, not natural movement type. He was around high performance horses for decades (for example, he put down Ahlerich I believe, and worked with the Klimke horses), and in his presentations on riding and horse development he discusses how when he was a young vet no one heard of suspensory injuries.
What I question is if these injuries are new, or if they were formerly undetected. I’m not convinced one way or another on that…[/QUOTE]
Please, don’t use Heuschmann as a reference… he’s a fool.
[QUOTE=Winding Down;8421214]
I cannot tell if you are joking. If you are, then how about saying that global warming is the source of the problem? Or equal rights? Or… :lol:[/QUOTE]
Yes, it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek but nobody picked up on that! :lol:
[QUOTE=alibi_18;8422094]
Please, don’t use Heuschmann as a reference… he’s a fool.[/QUOTE]
If Heuschmann says no one had heard of suspensory injuries when he was a young vet, I would have to question either his education or his authenticity, or both. Having read one of his books, I’m inclined to think maybe both. Suspensory injuries in horses have been well documented since long before he was born. Davide Roberge covered it extensively in his book The Foot of the Horse, published in 1894 and still in print today.
[QUOTE=LarkspurCO;8422368]
If Heuschmann says no one had heard of suspensory injuries when he was a young vet, I would have to question either his education or his authenticity, or both. Having read one of his books, I’m inclined to think maybe both. Suspensory injuries in horses have been well documented since long before he was born. Davide Roberge covered it extensively in his book The Foot of the Horse, published in 1894 and still in print today.[/QUOTE]
It is an exaggeration, stressing that they see them far more now than they used to.
[QUOTE=LarkspurCO;8421416]
The OP video is still a load of hooey as far as I’m concerned. “One-legged trot” … my eye.[/QUOTE]
ADP, the one-legged trot, as a foot-fall pattern, is a real thing. Whether it is considered a fault is debatable, depending what discipline you are in. This particular form of it is not a fault in modern competitive dressage, because horses showing it consistently win.
These photos show the tell-tale moment of “front-loading” ADP, when the horse rests on one front leg. Because these photos show horses with naturally large gaits and lots of suspension, the ADP moment is highly visible. On a less talented horse, the ADP moment would be much smaller.
By contrast, in a “pure” trot, the two diagonal legs land at exactly the same moment.
ADP is something that you can’t see with the naked eye, but you can see in photos or video stills. It’s only really in the last 20 years or so, since the invention of the I-phone and the internet video, that we’ve all had access to thousands of still and moving images of everyone from beginner kids to Olympians to mustangs running free. So we are in a period where we now have a wonderful opportunity to see and analyze bio-mechanics. We may well find that some things we previously believed, aren’t true, like in the 1880s when Edweard Muybridge solved a dispute about the foot-fall sequence at the gallop using early film technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop
Maybe ADP is much more prevalent than we think, and maybe many horses have gaits that are less than “pure.”
I’m interested in ADP because I have been schooling it out of my current horse. We didn’t call it ADP, though, but just a “frantic trot” or “broken trot.” The solution has been to get her to balance and stretch, to stop rushing, to carry herself, and do a “diagonalized trot” where the diagonal pairs move completely in synch. Now ADP in my Paint mare with shorter, flatter, gaits looks nothing like ADP in top Olympic warmbloods pushed to the max in extended trot. ADP in my mare looks much more like what you see in on-line home videos of “racking quarterhorses,” with her front and back legs appearing to move at different speeds. In fact, when I started with my mare, many people commented that she looked gaited (she isn’t).
There are two two-beat gaits, diagonal trot and lateral pace (seen in harness-racing Standardbreds). In between, there are a variety of “gaited gaits” that break up the two-beat foot-fall, ranging from the foxtrot on the diagonal end, through the true four-beat amble, to the rack, on the lateral end. I’m not convinced that the “racking” (more likely foxtrotting) quarterhorses are doing something of which a true gaited connoisseur would approve. I think, rather, that almost any horse can lose the true two-beat trot foot-fall if it is ridden inverted and rushing.
I didn’t make the connection between ADP and my own horse until I enlarged a pasture photo as wall-paper on my work computer, and finally one lazy afternoon noticed that my horse was trotting, very slightly, in “rear-loading” ADP. She was resting on one rear leg, before her corresponding front leg had touched the ground. This was only visible because she was on a patch of bare, hard ground. It would always be hidden trotting, even in video, on the soft arena footing, where you would see “frantic” but not the fraction of a second difference in foot-fall.
There was a nice comparison in this particular photo with her warmblood buddy, who was doing a two-beat suspended trot. The photo captured him with all four legs six inches off the ground, just floating, perfectly diagonal and balanced.
In the case of my mare, ADP absolutely was an “impurity of gait.” And schooling it out of her created a better, more balanced riding horse.
But what are we to make of “front loading” ADP in the high-level competitive dressage horse? From what I have seen in videos and stills, it is common in the extreme “expressive” extended trot that is so important these days. The benefit of pushing the trot past the balance point in this way is that it increases the action of the front legs. You can see, in many such photos, that the triangle of air between the front legs is much larger than the triangle of air between the rear legs.
There are two argument against doing this.
One is that moving this way gives the horse too much forward momentum, and tips the center of gravity forward, which works against collection and manoeuvrability. It also allows the horse to trail its hind legs and hollow its loins, which can cause repetitive strain injuries to the SI, the stifle, or the hocks.
The other is the classical argument that each gait should be a “pure” form: four beat walk, two beat trot, three beat canter.
The first argument is one that trainers of such horses should keep in mind. Presumably they don’t school all day in this extreme position, and do lots of other work in a diagonalized, balanced, gait.
What about the second argument? Confusion here arises from the fact that a lot of older language from “classical dressage” (meaning mainstream dressage of 60 years ago) remains in the rule books, judging criteria, and instruction of contemporary competitive dressage. But in fact, the competitive discipline has evolved so much in the past forty years, that its practise has very little resemblance to the old standards and theories. It’s an open question whether we should expect today’s competitive dressage to adhere to any of them.
Modern competitive dressage and what is called “classical dressage” today might as well be two different disciplines. They have different theories of biomechanics, different training methods, and a different goal: a different “picture” of what the finished horse should look like.
Disciplines evolve. All the subjectively-judged disciplines today, including western pleasure, saddle seat, hunters, and dressage, have moved over the past 40 years towards more exaggerated and more mannered versions of movement, and have tended to breed special-purpose horses for disciplines and even subsets of disciplines. By “subjective,” I mean any competition that isn’t judged purely on speed or height, like show-jumping or racing: any competition where the aesthetic aspect, how the horse looks and moves, is scored.
It’s interesting to note that saddle seat and saddlebred horses originated with Baucherist French immigrants in the 19th century American south who wanted to continue manege riding. We can see the traces of classical dressage in the flat saddles, long stirrups, high heads, high hands, and big knees. Over the years, of course, the saddle seat discipline lost all interest in collection, lateral work, and manoeuverability, and bred for a horse that could primarily go forward with great strength, speed and style.
Competitive dressage today puts more emphasis on an “expressive” extended trot, and less emphasis on lateral and collected work than in the past, and this (not coincidently) suits the talents of the German warmblood. A good Andalusian, Lusitano, or Lipizzaner will generally beat most warmbloods at collected work, lateral work, airs above the ground, and general cattiness and manoeuverability, but won’t have the huge movement in front.
This expressive extended trot can require pushing the horse past a balanced diagonalized trot, and into a front-loading ADP that tilts the horse’s center of gravity perceptibly to the forehand. Top riders do this, and it is what gets rewarded in the show ring. Does it matter? Is it a problem? Or is it just how the discipline is evolving?
Maybe “purity of gait” is just not a functional requirement of competitive dressage today. For instance, I see lower-level dressage coaches IRL who put horses into a slow four-beat canter, rather than a three-beat collected canter. Like a Western Pleasure “cantalope” but with a higher, rolled-under head-set. It doesn’t seem to impede them on the local schooling circuit. Likewise, the “old rules” also spoke against riding behind the vertical, but everyone does it now at all levels. IRL, the first steps I see people take with their green dressage horses is to longe in tight side-reins to “set the head.” The result is horses that are noticeably downhill, carrying their weight on the forehand. They get ribbons; everyone’s happy.
The only thing in this video that I hadn’t heard before, was that breeding for conformation and big gaits was causing ADP. I don’t see any reason why any of these horses in this video couldn’t be schooled to do a balanced, diagonal trot — and I’m sure it would be much easier than working with my funny Paint mare! If they are being shown off in a forward-leaning ADP trot, it’s because that is what the discipline values.
[QUOTE=netg;8422426]
It is an exaggeration, stressing that they see them far more now than they used to.[/QUOTE]
He definitively has a propensity for exaggeration.
[QUOTE=Scribbler;8422451]
ADP, the one-legged trot, as a foot-fall pattern, is a real thing. Whether it is considered a fault is debatable, depending what discipline you are in. This particular form of it is not a fault in modern competitive dressage, because horses showing it consistently win.
ADP is something that you can’t see with the naked eye, but you can see in photos or video stills.
These photos show the tell-tale moment of “front-loading” ADP, when the horse rests on one front leg. Because these photos show horses with naturally large gaits and lots of suspension, the ADP moment is highly visible. On a less talented horse, the ADP moment would be much smaller.
By contrast, in a “pure” trot, the two diagonal legs land at exactly the same moment.[/QUOTE]
There are just a few problems with your thesis.
Since DAP can’t be seen with the naked eye, how are the judges supposed to fault it? and then you goes to say it is highly visible…
Do you believe that Pro riders even feel that 1/10 of a second? Think about your own riding, you are now convinced that your trained it out of your mare.
DAP is not something you can train out of a horse. DAP is the result of a moment of imbalance, or many in your mare’s case.
You can strenghten your horse all you want, it will absolutely improved the quality of the gaits but in reality is there is no such thing as a pure or perfect gait as proven with our new technologies. Horses and riders will have moments of imbalance during a ride. No one is actively aiming for that, on the contrary.
As for the bolded part, I disagree. DAP is way worse in less talented horses and ‘‘grounded’’ feet (lack of jump/suspension), it is a comment you will see a lot on dressage sheets because THAT can be seen by the judges as it is so obvious and usually happen for more than a stride (be it + DAPor -DAP in alternance.) Lack of balance and impulsion is the first cause (from lack of strenght).
ETA : If you mare had problems on hard ground, I suspect she had a mild soft tissue injury.
Is it DAP or ADP? What does that stand for?
It is DAP. Diagonal advanced placement.
[QUOTE=Scribbler;8422451]
ADP, the one-legged trot, as a foot-fall pattern, is a real thing. Whether it is considered a fault is debatable, depending what discipline you are in. This particular form of it is not a fault in modern competitive dressage, because horses showing it consistently win.[/QUOTE]
Well thank you, but I guess you missed my posts on page one, where I showed numerous pictures, including those I captured from a video of Valegro in the “one-legged trot”. It is the VIDEO in the OP that is hooey, not the notion of diagonal advanced placement.
By the way, it sounds like your horse has a tendency to a four-beat trot, or “fox trot” and not DAP.
[QUOTE=alibi_18;8422459]
He definitively has a propensity for exaggeration.
That a good little video that sums it all! lol[/QUOTE]
:lol:
Yes, it sounds like a Fox Trot.
I’ve gotten the Fox Trot out of three horses when I was finding out if they were gaited. On the last horse I gaited (Arab mare), the only one that I tried gaiting in hunt seat lessons, my teacher kept on telling me that it LOOKED like the mare was in a true trot. I knew the mare was gaiting because her back was moving differently and my seat bones could tell that she was not in a true trot.
In fact I occasionally had fun going from a fox trot to a true trot and back to the fox trot without altering the speed and, my riding teacher could not see what I was doing at first. I had to tell her what I was doing, when I was doing it, and finally my teacher could sort of tell if it was a trot or fox trot.
A fox trot is MUCH easier to sit. Instead of two major bumps each stride there are four smaller bumps–bump,bump…bump,bump.
In a fox trot my seat bones alternately go rapidly forward and to the side at an angle, without much up and down motion, and my pelvis has to move rapidly to keep my seat bones glued to the saddle.
When I sit a true trot my seat bones alternately go UP, forward, and to the side and I have to move my pelvis a lot more distance to keep my seat bones glued to the saddle, but I don’t have to move my pelvis as rapidly.
When I got the horses confirmed in the fox trot their back was stiffer than at a true sitting trot, and there was not as much of a smooth “swinging” motion in the horse’s back. The fox trot feels different to the rider’s seat bones than the true trot, the paso (fino, corto, or largo) or the running walk. The fox trot is its own true gait, and feels different from all the other easy gaits.
Riding the horses behind the vertical could well be forcing them into a piss poor fox trot that is too much on the forehand. I imagine a fox trot that is too much on the forehand might be more jolting than a regular fox trot, I don’t know for sure since I do not ride my horses behind the vertical.
Back when Gladys Brown Edwards was contributing articles to the Arabian Horse World she wrote extensively about the trot, and she had lots of photos of Arabian show horses NOT trotting properly (as in not in a two beat diagonal gait). If you can find these articles they are the best ones I’ve found about the trot. My copies of these articles are in storage so I can’t tell you the exact issues with these articles. If you are intersted you could find an old Arabian horse breeder that kept their old Arabian Horse World magazines from the mid to late 1960’s, and they may be able to tell you which issues have these articles.
Handstand. I LOVE this description!
[QUOTE=alibi_18;8422582]
It is DAP. Diagonal advance placement.[/QUOTE]
Thank you. I saw only the (other) acronym first and was cut out of the conversation. But I appreciate the thought that went in to Scribble’s post. I’ll reread with this clearer definition in mind and consider it again.
