[drivingpairs] Re: " willing" pairs

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that there could be  physical 
reasons that one horse hangs back, one gets to do more of the work. In Welsh 
pony pair, who are full siblings, the older mare tends to let her younger 
brother do more of the work. Last spring she had a recurrence of a muscular 
problem in her hind end, which made it uncomfortable for her to get round, 
stay round and carry herself beyond a certain point and share in the work 
With some myofascial  release therapy (deep massage to stretch the muscles) 
she stayed comfortable through a season of competing at Preliminary. She is 
a tiger in marathon, and that sufficiently engages her that she is motivated 
to move on equally with her brother. When we got to Fair Hill this fall, and 
their first Intermediate, after two days of working in deep going, she 
arrived at dressage warmup feeling very sorry for herself, and leaned on her 
brother all the way through the test. Marathon and cones were ok. I have 
changed my conditioning to include more work on soft going, even though I 
hate cutting up my grass ring. She is fine working on the roads, as the 
carriage is easier to pull . Since I know I have an ongoing concern, I keep 
tabs on it and treat her. These ponies have been together as a pair for 3 
seasons now, and are driven single too.
   Since your animals  are much greener, it will take some time for the 
physical conditioning of their bodies to develop all those new driving 
muscles. I second the advice to work as singles too, but you could look in 
the list archives for Hardy Zantke's description of the "magical figure 8 
exercise"  where the animals take turns being on the inside of a circle,then 
outside of the circle, and learn to keep up together ! Hardy, what a time 
you picked to go oversees !

Dana Bright, in SE PA, where we had snow flurries at midnight. Nothing left 
on the ground now ! 


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