2011 – Rock & Roll – 2-11-11 – INDOOR ARENA TRAINING

2/7/11: Rock and Roll were taken to the indoor arena to play and allowed to roll if they wanted. Rock did not want to roll and just moseyed around for awhile. Roll did roll after which I free-lunged him just for the exercise. He was unable to stay in a good frame: he raised his head too high and hollowed his back, so I concentrated on just getting him to slow down and walk which he eventually did for a few steps. Little victory!

2/11/11: Rock and Roll had their first serious exercise session. Not that what we have done previously was not important. Both mules needed the minimal showmanship leading exercises just to gain the strength that they need for these exercises.

To review, both mules were asked to walk, stop and square up, back 2-3 steps and then repeat on the hard ground surface. After 6 weeks, there were asked to do this same exercise in the indoor arena in the sand in addition to their trims, chiropractic adjustments and massage. These passive exercises and practices have benefitted both mules and they were now ready to begin some more strenuous exercise though it is still passive.

We looked into having Rock checked to see exactly where his pelvis might be fractured, but we were advised that he would need to be sedated, turned upside down spread-eagled and then x-rayed. We determined that this would be far too traumatic for him so we were faced with a challenge of trying to find out just how far to manually take the range of motion in his right leg joints.

I decided that the best one to tell us would be Rock himself. He needs a lot of work to balance his body as evenly as he can over a broken pelvis. This requires that he bend in the joints in his right leg that have been lately extended and frozen in that position. He has made progress in that he is stepping straight forward now with that leg. He wasn’t when we got him. I thought if we started him stepping over one 1” PVC pipe integrated into my hourglass pattern that is designed to improve balance under saddle, and just lead him through, we could get him on the road to even more improvement.

The plan is to improve balance through the balance-changing pattern, beginning with just one very low PVC pipe to encourage him to lift and bend the joints in the right hind as he steps over. It worked really well for his first time! As he improves, we will add up to 4 -1” PVC pipes in a row to help to even his stride before we increase the height of the PVC poles. Then we will increase the height by 1” and add poles up to 4 again before increasing the height again. This will allow him to let us know how high he is able to flex the joints and lift the leg before experiencing any pain so we can adjust the exercises accordingly for the best results.

After Roll’s free-lunging session, it was clear that his posture is terrible and exercises need to be revised so we can strengthen his back muscles to improve his way of going. No more free lunging! After “pulling” as long as he has, his back end is always following him like a trailer. Bringing the hind quarters underneath will be a challenge after being in the incorrect posture for so long, but even after only a couple of limited lunging exercises in the elbow pull, he is already showing some progress.

Notice that Rock is now putting almost full weight on all fours while standing. The right hind is not cocked.