A recent study of pouch position with respect to the carotid artery blood supply of the brain offers evidence that they keep the brain from overheating during exercise.
The horse’s brain stays cool during exercise. While on the other hand, the horse’s head movement greatly affects breathing and drooling in horses.
Dressage Damage A
Guttural pouches are air-filled extensions of the auditory tubes that appear to “puff pad” some of parts of the viscera of the head from harsh contact with bony structures of skull and hyoid apparatus.
Hyoid bones are ancient and honorable vertebrate structures derived from a gill arch in jawless primitive fish. Such fish still living without jaws are hagfish and lampreys. When jaws were invented, the hyo-mandibular gill arches were converted into essential support structures for the neck and skull. Hyoid structures are magnificent and various in vertebrates. In frogs, the hyoid is configured into a large springlike apparatus, powerfully invested with muscles that allow it to “fire” their ballistic tongues to capture prey. Some amazing tongues (including those with special neurologic and hydrostatic operational features) are found in amphibians, but are beyond the scope of this Atlas. The concept here is that in the water, or on land, this is a critical part of the skeleton for most vertebrates!”
Dressage Damage B
In humans, the hyoid is a horse-shoe shaped structure between the bones of the lower jaw. You can feel hyoid connections to your sternum by placing a finger at the notch in the base of your neck, opening your jaw and wiggling your tongue. The six thin muscles that “cable” your “front line” (bottom line for horses) can be felt as you shift your tongue from side to side. If you clamp your jaw, this restricts chest and clavicle movement. Your clavicles are connected to your arms and shoulder blades.
A clamped jaw stiffens a rider’s responses to motions of the horse and interferes with an independent seat. From this point of view, it should be clear that moving a horse’s head has important consequences for its comfort and for its capacity to perform.
The hyoid bone does not articulate with any other bone. Instead, it is suspended by ligaments from the styloid processes of the temporal bone at the base of the brain, in the soft tissue of the neck between the mandible and the larynx. It has a bit of range of motion, but not much. Other examples of ligamentous rather than articulated joints are your teeth (and your horse’s teeth) and the sternoclavicular joint at the base of your neck (horses have no clavicle). The function of the hyoid bone is to provide attachment points for the muscles and ligaments of the tongue, pharynx and neck. And that is the problem for horses! Note the hyoid, which is jointed to the skull by ligaments, keeps approximately the same relation to the base of the skull, not the neck and lower jaw.
According to Derksen and Robinson, notice that the hyoid at its lower extremity (the two backward-facing hooks) is where the thyroid sits and that needs to stay in pretty close relation to the cartilage of the airway, so it is generally the airway that shifts shape. You can get some sense of how head motions affect the hyoid by turning your head way up or way down and feeling what this does to your tongue… putting your chin down as far as it can go (human rollkur) pulls your tongue up, just as it does for the horse.
Dressage Damage C
Other important structures entering the back of the skull are the facial, glossopharyngeal, vagus, accessory and hypoglossal nerves; continuation of the sympathetic neural trunk beyond the cranial cervical ganglion.
The tongue is attached by its muscle at its base to the forward prong of the hyoid. In turn, the hyoid is directly linked to the sternum by six muscles of the sternohyoid group.Because of these closely placed soft and hard structures, training methods involving strong repositioning of the horse’s head should be undertaken with care (as in exaggerated flexions), because they affect the carriage of the tongue. In the quest for mobility of forehand anatomy, it is easy to cause interference with vital functions such as breathing and swallowing or to put pressure on nerves. A large salivary gland, the parotid, lies at the back edge of the jaw and is compressed during right to left and downward motions of the head. Some horses have conformation that allows relatively small space for this gland to be seated.
Dressage Damage D
Other important structures entering the back of the skull are the facial, glossopharyngeal, vagus, accessory and hypoglossal nerves; continuation of the sympathetic neural trunk beyond the cranial cervical ganglion.
[Editors Note: Even those horses with relatively good conformation for the placement of the parotid glands may be adveresly effected by extreme positioning of the head, which can then create pressure on the parotid gland.]
Dressage Damage E
On occasion, adverse reactions to movements of the head may be traced to cramped space for this gland or its irritated condition. One symptom of riding with a strong rein that shortens the neck is excessive salivation from pressure on the parotid gland: some foaming around the bit is normal during exercise.
Rollkur: An Overview – The above has been reprinted with permission of Horses For LIFE Publications.
This hyperflexion will be the ruin of dressage as we know it. And anyone that says it doesn’t cause distress should have it done to them and see how long it takes before they’re begging for mercy.
Leigh: thank you for such a thoughtful, considerate, and truthful response to Jennifer’s post. I appreciate your tactful and gentle approach. It is difficult to know how to respond to those who can’t see the obvious pain and torture these horses are subjected to. Your patience and insight are inspiring.
The really sad part is I don’t believe that most riders would knowing hurt their horses and most coaches wouldn’t knowing tell their riders to hurt their horses. But, that is what is happening. Why are the horses requiring more and more leather as the horse becomes more advanced. A horse’s mouth should not be tied shut with a crank or a flash nose band never mind both of them. A horse as it advances in training is supposed to be more responsive to the rider not less.
Check out http://horsesforlife.com at the website (where the article came from) and their facebook links page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Horses-For-LIFE-Publications/51217564556?ref=ts#/pages/Horses-For-LIFE-Publications/51217564556?v=app_2309869772&ref=ts there are a bunch of links there to more articles about rollkur
Cathy
Leigh
I appreciate the effort and kindness you put into your answer to Jennifer. I know it was not easy. It had a great effect on me, however, already one of the choir. You gave me an idea to pursue further and post about in my own blog in support of this issue. Well done, and thank you.
Jennifer, I want to say this in a gentle and respectful way, especially because I’m guessing that you’re quite young, given how you worded your message. I hope that you understand that I am writing to you in a spirit of learning and teaching, and I applaud your passion about horses and your belief in others’ passions as well.
That said, you need to do some research into horse physiology and biomechanics.
Horses do not drool to cool themselves down. Dogs do, because they can’t sweat. Horses have an extensive and capable system of sweat glands in their bodies, and you will never, ever see a horse in the wild drooling. It is not natural for horses to drool.
I suggest that that you do some digging — even ask your veterinarian when he or she next comes to visit you — about where you can learn more about how horses’ bodies work.
And sadly, there are many people who knowingly or unknowingly harm their horses. You obviously would never do anything on purpose to hurt your horse, but there are, unfortunately, many people who would. Where there is money there is the potential for cruelty — look to the histories of many commercial horse disciplines and you’ll see horrendous abuses.
And while you obviously don’t want to do anything to hurt your horse, I suggest that you read and learn and think carefully about what you are doing with your horse — we can hurt them, frequently, without even realizing it. And yes, some horses will respond to pain by throwing their riders, but most horses have been trained away from their instincts to respond in that way, learning that to survive means that they tolerate things they don’t like. Their ability to do this is not that surprising, given the fact that they are prey animals and their survival in the wild could be affected by showing any vulnerability — horses have thousands and thousands of years of learning to never show weakness so the predator won’t go after them.
Instead of saying this article is “stupid” I urge you to actually look at the science involved.
Dear God,I can’t believe how people close their eyes to the truth of what they are looking at. Regardless of many people’s lack of scientific knowledge, one only has to look at the horse’s face, especially the eyes, the curled lips, the dilated nostrils, to know that a horse is in distress being ridden this way.
Sign up for the free Klaus Hempfling seminar online on Sunday, November 15th and learn something. Don’t be complacent, become an educated horseperson, and above all, don’t perpetuate this abomination of training!
http://www.dressagedisgrace.com/live-teleseminar-klaus-ferdinand-hempfling
no offence this is stupid!!!! horses drool to keep themselves cool not because they can’t breath!! in fact most dressage horses enjoy what they do, if they didn’t like what they do, they wouldn’t do it! no matter how much training, you cannot train a horse to do something it doesn’t like to do. and the whole drooling thing is like sweating. at my jumping lessons we jump only 18 inches and r horses drool and we only ride an hour (horses can ride much longer and harder than that). this whole article is stupid and u should get to know your facts better. Horseback riders usualy LOVE what they do, which means they would never do anything to HURT the horse!!!! if horses didn’t want to do something or something was hurting them… their riders would have been thrown off!
Excellent description. Drooling is scientific evidence that damage has been done, and is being done, to horse delicate structures, inhibiting both his ability to breath and swallow.
Any drooling, in any sports event, by any horse should be met by immediate disqualification from the event officials and this should be publically understood and further investigated as evidence of animal cruelty and damage.
How can anyone say that this hyperflexion does not cause injury, let alone distress with this sort of evidence??