Planters are the key. Build a garden, instant topline
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Also, not sure if it’s part of it but his hind legs are further apart in the second photo. My guess is that’s at least partially what’s making him look more uphill.
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Interestingly Celeste is co-presenting with Yogi Sharp (The Equine Documentalist) on an upcoming online event about nerve impingement, so she definitely has some bona fides in the industry.
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Both your pictures show evidence of habitual bracing of the underneck and lack of topline development. Changing your horse’s head carriage can’t hide the patterns of muscle usage. Oh, and your saddle doesn’t fit.
This is an excellent example of a horse I would actually refer to Celeste’s program prior to proceeding with purchase of a new saddle.
Thanks for posting, @meupatdoes
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Yes, if you have read my posts you will have heard me describe this horse as being a master at habitual bracing. I have been taking clinics with Vera Kessels and Anne Gribbons (who is the former coach of the US dressage team and charges less than Celeste) and he has made significant improvement.
Saddle was reflocked two weeks ago - a few days after these pictures were taken. Multiple different fitters have looked at this saddle over the years in his regularly scheduled saddle fit checkups and none have had issues other than minor tweaks. One of them used to do CKD’s saddles but I’m sure all of these people who coach and/or provide services to actual Olympians have no idea what they’re doing.
Thanks for your suggestion, @no.stirrups. You and Celeste are probably the only people qualified to work with this horse.
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I had to drive 2 hours to have a saddle I had on trial checked for fit because neither the fitter I bought it from or the fitter I was using could determine fit via the very detailed pictures I sent them, just that it was good enough to make the drive.
You would have saved me a lot of money diagnosing my saddle fit and my pictures were set up for that, not a random walking weird angle in a mirror
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All these “transformation” photos remind me of the Instagram fitness girls who share photos with their back hunched, leggings rolled down, and gut stuck out right next to their perfectly posed ones, just to show what a difference angles and posing make.
The only difference I can see between the before and after in any of her photos, aside from being taken from more flattering angles, is that in some cases the horse has put on a bit of weight and been brushed.
Keep this in mind when looking at sale photos!
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The gray draft X looking horse (in addition to being actually brushed in the second photo) is just holding his head lower and standing wider behind making him look less downhill. There’s no great transformation.
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I was thinking he might have grown some between picture one and two, but agree, no great transformation to be seen. It’s amazing how you set up a horse for pictures can make such a huge difference in how they look. I remember taking about 30 pictures of a horse we had for sale before I was happy enough (just barely) with about 5 of them to send them off. Fortunately the prospective buyer was likely used to crappy pictures (Standardbred people for the most part just don’t understand good conformation pictures) and we had him sold the next day.
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Ok, I’m just going to throw this one out there because… but oddly enough, TTHW popped up on my FB feed somehow last night so I had a scroll through. The photos of the dead horse covered flowers and crying children really put me off. I’m OK with dead critters, watch lots of nature docos, all the meat factory docos… but dead pets? Sorry, no. I give my pets dignity in death by letting people remember them alive (and yes, I am with my pets as they take their final breaths. I just don’t document it).
I find posting pet corpse photos the same as posting photos of family members at their own funerals. Just… unsettling. Grief should be private, not shared publicly for insta/FB followers to gawk at.
I mean, hell, you do you boo. Your life, your horse, your FB feed. But it confirmed to me that TTHW is bordering on GaWiNi ponyboy-type displays of “how to be your authentic self” which I find BS.
That’s a naw from me. Sorry for your loss, Celeste.
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Why do they always have one mane and one non mane pic in the before and after? I just saw a before and after chestnut roll across my fb feed and it was literally mane vs no mane and hind foot under vs out.
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Good question! It does change how things look. I roach my horse’s mane. When it’s grown into a little mohawk, he looks awesome! When it’s freshly shaved, all of a sudden his neck looks more wimpy. Optical illusion for sure.
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how does one “turn off the brachiocephalic muscles”? Like what exercises to start with?
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It depends on the horse - for one that has a serious bracing problem start at a walk and whenever the horse starts bracing you halt, ask the horse to soften, and walk on until he starts to brace again. Once the walk is solid move up to the trot.
For other horses, just a lateral step or two might be enough.
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It’s a combination of getting into a physical and mental space where the horse can relax (i.e., not in a busy arena, not right as dinner is being fed, etc., for some horses this is their stall, for others maybe a quiet roundpen), then asking them to lower their head. For each horse, there’s a “sweet spot” in terms of head carriage as it were where, if they feel sufficiently safe, it will disengage. Then you let them hang out there, and, over time, they learn that that’s a thing they can do - they can relax that muscle. Then you build from there with slow movements from that relaxed/disengaged state, as they learn that they can both disengage that muscle, then also move with it disengaged.
To me, this is a very basic, very straightforward physiological process. As a dressage rider, to me, this is one of the first steps of dressage, but often not done well (ie., part of those pesky “basics” dressage trainers keep rambling on about), and Celeste breaks it down into its essence. Not magic 
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@Training_Cupid and @Feathered_Feet Thank you both for the replies. I admit I’m having a hard time conceptualizing this… is there a video out there that shows what exactly the bracing looks like, or the “sweet spot” for head carriage? Or is that something that requires buy in?
I’m not above thinking outside of the box especially with regards to some very fundamental exercises to address posture and relaxation. I wonder how this has served horses that are more progressed than the first step of the dressage training scale (rhythm?).
From the outside looking in, it still sounds cultish to me, but I’d be really curious to see what exercises are out there to help horses who are “physically” blocked - be it from years of protective postural changes or, just plain bad training.
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I’ve probably mentioned once or twice that my current horse is difficult - high strung, naturally under-muscled, naturally vertical neck posture, etc. The biggest problem is that she’s mine, not a client horse, so I spent a lot of time doing fun things and (oops) skipping some of the basics that I would never, ever, ever, ever have skipped with a client horse. So, I ended up with great abs and a super strong topline that starts at the withers. I completely missed the neck. Oops. Dumbass.
In talking with my friend who is fully bought in to the woowoo, and discussing my horse (who was standing right there so we were looking at her posture and muscling as we spoke), I did the palm to the forehead thing. Um, yeah, I can fix this. And my saintly horse has been putting up with “rehab” ever since. I honestly cannot see the benefit for a horse like her of doing endless hours of standing or in-hand walking to relax her lower neck muscles. We can do that. For her it does not translate to the ridden work.
So, I took her back to baby work and glued my eyes to the area in front of the withers that is the “tell” of whether the lower neck muscles are “turned off” or not. Lots of low, round, flexing slowly left and right at all three gaits. Because I had omitted this work for the most part as I dealt with getting her rideable at all in the early years, it was HARD. The difference is huge though.
If you look down at your horse’s neck from the saddle, you want to see a connecting bulge just below the crest area, right in front of the withers. Play around with flexing and raising and lowering the neck to find your horse’s sweet spot. Then work there for a bit and then loose rein walk, then play again for a while. If you also play at the same time with moving the shoulders around left and right, you will find a huge improvement after a few weeks of using this as a long warm up before your regular work (which should be shorter than normal because you’re putting more time into the warm up/rehab/physio part of your ride). You’ll find your horse is more balanced, the gaits are more comfortable, and your horse is more tuned in to you.
My $.02
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I think what galls me is the fact that people end up doing “in hand” work for months and months, not riding at all, waiting for magic? I find it akin to some of the Natural Horsemanship cults where people are stick waving and waiting for connection because they need an excuse to not ride because they are fearful or overfaced. I saw a blog post where a rider went from reasonable scores at 3rd level to just walking for months.
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YES!!!
IMHO, horses have to learn how to move better under a rider. In-hand work is great for the very beginnings of various exercises and to help build/further develop higher level movements without the burden of a rider, but learning to carry a rider while using specific muscles to balance has to be learnt with a rider up.
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I really like how Jillian Kreinbring describes what to look for. She talks about the horse “pushing the browband away”. A trained horse can be going on the vertical and pushing the browband away. It really can’t be done if the topline is not lengthening and the hind leg not stepping under.
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