by: Joyce Harman, DVM

Muzzles are often accused of damaging the horse’s front teeth. This can be true, but it's important to put it in the correct context. A grazing muzzle prevents a horse from overeating grass, which can save her life, or at least save the horse a bad case of laminitis and the owner thousands of dollars in veterinarian bills. However, as with everything in life, a bit of knowledge and common sense will make wearing a muzzle much less damaging. Horses that crib or run their teeth on bars in the stall often wear their teeth much more than what occurs with a muzzle, yet muzzles get the blame for tooth damage.

Read more: Muzzle Adjustments May Prevent Teeth Damage

by Dressage Rider Training

In this article, I will run through rider back stretches and hip mobility work to help release lower back and hip pain in riders.

The human body has this amazing ability to heal itself. At any age and in nearly any state especially when given the right environment to do so. Our body will put up with a huge amount of silly movement and poor lifestyle choices for a long time because we have a large amount of functional tolerance built into us.

However we shouldn’t abuse this high tolerance and instead, we should ensure we listen and take care of our body on a daily basis. Because those little signs and symptoms that do appear can turn into bigger uglier problems later on if not taken care of. Just as a tree moulds to its environment over the years from the different weather patterns, so too does our body.

So if that environment is creating niggles and imbalances, which you ignore and only fix the symptoms, it could continue to be an issue for much longer. So given that we have this amazing body that can repair and heal itself with the right tools and environment it makes sense that we would want to pay attention to both areas when aiming to improve our rider wellbeing.

These rider back stretches and exercises are designed to help relieve lower back or hip pain, which is an incredibly common problem and often created because of the environment our bodies are placed in each and every day. So as much you want to do these stretches, pay attention to other possible changes you can make to your daily life. Such as when we sit this can be for long durations at a time and this can cause tightness in our hamstrings, shoulders, hip flexors, and compression in our lower back. To combat this, consider adding in more standing and walking into your day. Try this, for every 30 minutes of sitting you do per day, aim to do 2 minutes of walking or aim to spend 50% of your day on your feet, be it with a stand-up desk or walking meetings.

Read more: 12 Stretches to Release Lower Back and Hip Pain In Riders