Newberry Farm

A little fun from today... congratulations riders and teams! (Lendon's Youth Dressage Festival)

THANK YOU TO ALL THE SPONSORS WHO HELPED SUPPORT OUR TEAM! Truly DREAM TEAMYDF 2019

FAILED VETTING ??? Flexion Tests??? 100% worth a read! You’ve decided to sell your horse and the potential buyer has sent a veterinarian to your stables to pe...rform a pre-purchase exam. Or, you’re the buyer, and you’re excited to complete your purchase. As you stand, beaming with satisfaction, the veterinarian picks up the horse’s left front leg. Bending it at the fetlock, he or she holds it in the air for 60 seconds or so, releases the limb, and asks that the horse be immediately jogged down the drive. In astonishment, you watch as the horse that you’ve known or hoped to be sound moves off with an obvious bob of the head. He’s most decidedly lame after the test. What happened? What does it mean? What you have witnessed is a phenomenon not necessarily of the veterinarian’s creation, but something that can sometimes occur following a procedure called a forelimb flexion test. In a forelimb flexion test, various joints and soft tissue structures of the lower limb are stretched and/or compressed for a brief period of time by bending the limb. Afterward, the horse is immediately trotted off and observed for signs of lameness. Simple, really. But it gets messy. Forelimb flexion tests were described in Swedish veterinary literature as early as 1923. And, since then, they’ve become something of an integral part of the evaluation of the lame horse. But not only that, forelimb flexion tests are generally routinely included in prepurchase evaluations of horses intended for sale. The test is not unlike what you might experience if someone asked you to sit in a crouch for sixty seconds and then run right off. Usually and especially if you’ve never had knee problems you can run off just fine, particularly after a couple of steps. If you’ve never had a problem, chances are that you’re fine, no matter what happens in those first couple of steps. But very occasionally, that stiffness and soreness that you might feel could signal a problem (such as a bad knee). This test used to make me nuts, and to some extent, it still does. That’s because I’m often not to sure what to make of the state of things when a horse takes some bad steps after a flexion test. I mean, I know I might not pass such a test. So who’s to say that every horse should? Because of that question, back in 1997, I did I study. It’s still timely. In my study, I looked at fifty horses (100 legs) of various breeds, ages, sex, and occupation. The owners were gracious enough to let me explore my curiosity about forelimb flexion tests. The horses were from my practice, an included a wide variety of pleasure and performance horses including some world class jumping horses but overall, they were a representative sampling of all of the horses that were in my practice. Here’s what I found. I found that forelimb flexion tests couldn’t tell me anything about the future of a sound horse. I could make every single horse lame with a hard enough flexion test, with the exception of one particularly annoying Arabian gelding who was always trying to bite me (no Arabian jokes, please). Horses that had something on their X-rays weren’t any more likely to be lame after a normal flexion test than horses that had clean X-rays. Horses that had positive normal flexion tests weren’t any more likely to be lame 60 days out, either (those horses that were lame mostly had things like hoof abscesses, which nobody could have predicted anyway). If you follow a groups of horses for 60 days, there’s a decent chance that a few of them might experience an episode of lameness. Who knew? So what did I conclude? Well, I said right there in front of an entire meeting of the American Association of Equine Practitioners that I didn’t think that it was a good idea to rely on forelimb flexion tests to make a diagnosis of some current or future problem without some other supporting sign. I said I didn’t think that they were very sensitive, or that they were very specific. And I said that I didn’t think it was a good idea to turn a horse down base solely on a response to a forelimb flexion test, either. Which caused a bit of a kerfuffle. What’s the Bottom Line? If you’re a seller, I don’t think that you need to be overly concerned if your otherwise sound horse takes a few lame steps after a forelimb flexion test. There are just too many variables. For example: Older horses are more likely to be positive to flexion that are younger horses The longer you hold a limb in flexion, the more likely the horse is to take a few lame steps afterwards Men tend to flex more firmly than do women The same horse may have different responses to flexion tests on different days If you’re a buyer, don’t be too eager to walk away from a horse that you otherwise like just because he takes a few lame steps after a flexion test. You have to consider a lot of other factors, such as whether you like the horse, or whether he does what you want him to do, or if he’s a colour that you like... You just can’t consider the forelimb flexion test in a vaccum. It has to interpreted in light of clinical findings such as fluid in the joint, reduced limb or joint flexibility, pain to palpation, or clinical lameness in the limb that demonstrates the positive response. If you see abnormal X-rays findings (such as osteoarthritis) in a limb that has a positive response to a flexion test, that may add some significance, and particularly if there is concurrent clinical lameness. However, to keep things confusing, my study also found that many radiographic abnormalities occur in clinically sound horses. Remember, you have to ride the horse you can’t ride the radiographs. Horses can and do perform well for a variety of riding endeavors even when they do not perform well on a forelimb flexion test. As for a positive response to a forelimb flexion test, it may just be that everything is OK, but the horse doesn’t like his leg bent up! Thanks to Dr. David Ramey for the info! here’s a link to the original article: https://www.doctorramey.com/flex-test/

This is great advice!

#TBT How to Ride the Posting Trot: A Skeletal View Posting trot is a gait many riders struggle to learn and struggle to do well. It may feel difficult to stay ...with the movement of the horse, or to avoid the feeling of easily being thrown off balance. We are often taught rising trot with the chant of up, down, up, down, but the actual movement of posting isn’t really about going up and down. Also, one of the most common pieces of riding advice, heels down, when done in the wrong way, can actually make posting much more difficult. In the video below, Wendy Murdoch shows how to ride an effortless posting trot, using a horse and rider skeleton to show the correct movement. To Learn More from Wendy Visit: https://www.horseclass.com/erc/

To improve accuracy in all your half passes Align your outside hip, inside hand and the bit with your destination letter in one straight line. (This will help ...you remember to use your inside rein as an indirect rein, not an open one.) Imagine this line, and you will always arrive at the proper destination in all your half passes, whether they are shallow or steep, at trot or canter. Leslie Webb (Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz) See more

... remember the horse Rachel C Kaney and I went to see in Spain in March? Somehow... she managed to get him here ( thru importation), make this freestyle, qualify for Nationals and present this test- Oh and BTW got Married to Hogan in May AND moved to their first home all within 6 months!!!

This is for all my horse loving friends