As you can see in the initial photos Bryan was deeply tied in in front of the
withers with a strongly developed underneck.
Twenty years ago I would have felt
this was just a conformational defect. Now I know that it is a reflection of
soundness and movement anomalies, and that with the correct approaches, can and
will change. There are of course conformational defects in necks…like the
‘Nest’, wherein the neck comes so low out of the body it looks like the horse
has no chest. You can’t do much about where the neck comes out of the body. But
you can do remarkable things with the neck itself, and the way it ties in to
the wither and the shoulder.
There are several excellent treatises in the subject so
rather than go in to a lot of detail I refer you to Hillary Clayton, Jean Luc
Cornille, Jean Claude Racinet, Phillippe Karl, Gerd Heuschmann, and Mary
DeBono, the Feldenkrais practitioner who has applied the work to horses. All of
these riders have studied the biomechanics of movement and the neck; knowing
their work and their conclusions is vital to understanding how the neck
functions. I don’t want to write a textbook, and lucky for me I needn’t, as
these riders/writers/vets/body workers have already done so. I *would* like to
show you how understanding and applying their work has changed the necks and
shoulders of the horses in my care.
