>>Do you put the horse in a bascule just to exercise his back muscles or is
this the way he should travel all the time? Or do the back muscles have to
have some ventroflex (sp?) in order for the horse to gait? I went to a
massage clinic and the instructor made the comment that gaited horses travel
with their back muscles ventroflexed to gait and then that caused some
soreness issues (and some muscle atrophy) which in turn lead to a rough gait
or a lack of as they get older. <<
Not all horses, in all gaits, travel ventroflexed. Those that rack or perform
the rack family of gaits do travel that way. Those that running walk or fox
trot travel in more of a neutral (neither ventroflexed or very basculed)
position. There is always going to be a little bit more ventroflexed tendency
in a gaited horse than in one that does a collected trot. The trick is to
keep it from being too much.
For a horse that paces to stop doing that, his back needs to be reconditioned
so that he no longer travels in the extreme ventroflexion which is the
hallmark of the pace. So, although he will not reach the state of bascule of
a collected trotting horse, in degrees he must learn to carry himself with
more bascule than he was in the pace. For walkers and fox trotters, this
means getting rid of most but not all of the looseness in the back that lends
itself to ventroflexion. If you want your horse to rack, of course, you
can't get rid of the ventroflexion or you will lose the gait.
This is one of the reasons that I am strongly in favor of racking horses
being worked in other gaits as well, to keep the back healthy.
Bascule and ventroflexion are positions that have some degrees -- horse in
long trot is less basculed than one in correct piaffe, for example. Horse in
hard pace is more ventroflexed than one in a rack. For gaited horses you
have to find the balance between the two extreme positions that works for the
desired gait.
