In part 4, we will sum up the features, signs and attendant circumstances of the School seat. And we will define some of the differences found in NHE.

SPATIUM

“Spatium” is an old School name for the time during which a rider can be on horseback.

Our spatium equals 15 minutes.

Why?

Because our primary target is not to cause discomfort and pain in the muscles and skin of a horse’s back. That is why the maximum “School” period of being on horseback is exactly 15 minutes. Notably, I stress, that is the utmost maximum.

After 15 minutes under the weight and pressure of rider and saddle, the microtrauma of tissues begin, the compression effect accumulates, and the back of the horse begins to feel light discomfort. Dermal receptors produce an “itchy”(2) feeling.

Under the impact of direct compression, under the weight of the rider and saddle, the “perimysium”, the sheath of connective tissue surrounding muscle fibers, begins primary deformation, accompanied by feelings of discomfort, then these symptoms become more acute. At the end of 20 minutes, they turn into the feeling of dull pain.

These figures were determined through research and experiments on the soft back tissues, muscle fascicles, fasciculus muscularis, perimysium, endomysium and epimysium.

Direct pressure of the weight (rider + a tightened saddle) – in the first 12-15 minutes didn’t cause any tissue deformation. (Which means that it doesn’t cause negative feelings stemming from physiology.)

After 12-15 minutes the “compression effect” began, myofibrils and perimysium began “yielding to” the pressure, which in terms of physiology translates to “the onset of physiological feelings of discomfort”.

Why does this happen?

The issue at hand is that every muscle contains a microvascular system of blood and lymph venules and capillaries that create within a muscle (roughly speaking) its own microcirculation. Compression breaks it down, nourishment of the “fasciculus” fasciculus muscularis reduces or stops – and the “compromised” muscle sounds the alarm through branches of nerve fibers. There is no tragedy yet, no pain yet, neither perimysium nor fasciclulus are damaged, but the muscle is already disgusted. This indignation does not “shout” yet, it is in “grumbling” mode. But this grumbling is already clear, already conscious.

So we must understand that even with an ideally fitted saddle and an ideal School seat, a strict limit of being astride is 12-15 minutes.

That’s the science of it.

In addition, I wouldn’t be as generous as science allows and for different horses I would require different spatiums.

For horses from 4 to 5 years old – this spatium is 5 minutes.

From 5 to 6 – 10 minutes.

From 6 until death – 12-15 minutes.

Naturally we should look at the muscular anatomy of each individual horse. There is an ideal, athletically developed musculature, developed during work “from the ground”, “in hand”, and “at liberty”. This musculature is developed by consistent work with horse over a period of two years with exercises such as crunch, shapp, sentado, pesada, Spanish walk in hand, sokel (pedestal), games and so on. But what happens, of course, is that there is often a partial or complete dystrophy of the muscles, especially in horses that have been used for equestrian sport, the trapezius muscle is in a state of dystrophy. In this case, bravely shorten the spatium in half until the muscles are recovered.

So: Any effects of a man on horseback can be classified in the following way according to simple physiology:
1-15 minutes: lack of specific sensations.
15-30 minutes: increasing sensations until discomfort is reached.
Everything that is over 30 minutes can be characterized by simple physiological analysis as “strong pain”.
Everything that follows induces trauma.

Here we won’t discuss exactly what makes a horse bear pain in his back resulting from hour-long training or due to trail rides so beloved by bumpkins.

Everything is known. An article “Dressage, let dot the i’s and cross the t’s” has dotted the i’s in this question.

There isn’t a single living creature that goes through painful torture of such strength and length as a horse in so-called “equestrian sport”.

A horse’s problem, however strange it may sound, is in his intellect and fantastic mind.

Imagine that YOUR WHOLE LIFE consisted of only painful feelings of differing degrees of strength and duration. The first, the second and the third kinds of pain are the brightest events of each day. You know only three realities. Waiting for pain. Memories about pain. The Feeling of pain. These three realities are the only content of a horse’s life. There is practically nothing more in the life of a horse who is in man’s grasp. Pain forms the world- view and behavior patterns, pain determines and denotes even the times of day.

A horse begins to feel the necessity of fitting in and somehow easing her pain by degrees. A horse makes choices, understanding that itching, a simple dull pain, is more preferable than acute and paralyzing pain (in its mouth).

Prostrating to the one who causes pain – this is from the same paradigm.

Stories of sportsmen about horses who take bits into their mouth by themselves sound incredibly funny. Does history not have enough examples of people who, when committed to execution dug graves for themselves BY THEMSELVES? Yes, they knew about the execution, about a bullet to the back of the head an hour later, about the fact that THEY will lie and decay in the hole they are digging. But fear of terrible beatings, of being cut with shovels, of crushing blows by iron, made them DIG.
During “pleasure riding” which is so beloved by “mucky girls”, the horse with his perfect mind is moved by a terrible fear of a stronger torture than a one-time torture by the bit or pain in a numb and itching back. Every horse once refused to take a bit. And he remembers clearly the hell he had to go through because of this “refusing”. His brilliant memory holds onto everything with all the nuances, with all emotional accents, with all his personal marks.

The better you understand it, the easier it is for you to educate the horse. The less you “stupidize” a horse in your mind, the closer you come to the real situation of things. Let’s leave to “mucky girls” one of the most stupid statements about the necessity of rewarding a horse directly AFTER an achievement (an example of “stupidizing”). Truly, a sportsman’s treatment of a horse is as a mysterious, indistinct, huge piece of meat with a momentary memory.

But all this is just lyrical digression … I suggest we come back to the topic of our Tractate on the School seat.

INTERDICTUM

Now we are passing on to “interdiction” i.e. to what is inadmissible and what categorically contradicts the principles of the School seat.

Asking for apologies from the reader, but for headings of this part of the tractate I took the very old School terms for absolutely selfish reasons. I feel comfortable with them, as I hope they will become for everyone who wants to understand the essence and features of the School seat.

So, the absolutely inadmissible things are the “posting trot” and absolutely everything that is connected with putting weight in the stirrups as well as gripping with the thighs, or “working the loins”, i.e. an awful rubbing against a saddle with ones genitals. It seems that the interdiction of these two ridiculous perversions don’t need any comments, but I will briefly clarify some things.

Both varieties of distortions are impossible (or extremely uncomfortable) with a natural seat on a bare horse’s back, and this by itself moves them to the list of artificial gimmicks interdicted by the School.

The so-called “posting trot” is the hardest and the most dangerous for horse. The assumption that rider’s weight eases in some magical way, by means of rising above horses’ back, resting against stirrups, is of course, a load of rubbish. The rider’s weight stays with him. It doesn’t disappear anywhere. The pressure on the horses’ back only increases through the amplitude of body movements up and down, which I hope is all that needs to be said. Moreover, every push on the stirrups during the rising of a rider’s body, multiplies the rider’s weight by 10-12%. This leads to more forceful pressure on a smaller area of the saddle on the horses’ back. This pressure is always uncomfortable and painful for soft back tissues.

Stand on a scale again but this time on the floor, and try to crouch and stand up with force as if you’re posting the trot. You’ll see how the scale will go crazy, you’ll see unbelievable figures. Live horses’ backs during the “posting trot” feel approximately the same as the scale does. Sudden, strong impacts are passed through the stirrup leathers to the fork of the saddle tree, where the stirrup bars are and right where the saddle panel area is minimal and the stuffing is harder and compresses the most quickly.

The back panels, which are the widest and the softest and have an absorbing force, during the rising portion of posting are completely unweighted. I suppose there is no need for further comment on this question.

Let’s leave “posting trot” to those barbarians and perverts who are doing “pleasure riding” or so-called “equestrian sport” and whom we must not let close to a horse.

The so-called “gripping of the thighs” or “working of the loins” is interdicted in the School too. Antoine de Pluvinel wrote that the thighs should be “straight and unmoving”.

Besides, there is no “work of loins”. There are some funny, absolutely obscene, shagging movements, which in fact is the work of genitals.

A horse moves upwards and forward. A rider moves upwards, forwards, and backwards. A rider, who is astride and who makes funny twists around the saddle, has to return to the starting position.

This return is insensible to both a horse and the laws of physics.

Besides being in guaranteed dissonance with the rhythm of the horse, what is demonstrated by all ladies (of both sexes) doing dressage – five to six shagging movements will surely contribute to an uneven distribution of weight to the front part of the saddle.

The horse’s back feels approximately the same problems as during the “posting trot”. These things are so obvious that I’m even hesitating to clarify them.

A true School seat means maximum immobility of a rider in a saddle. It means maximum stability, which has nothing to do with any fussiness and gimmicks, or any consideration to ease ONESELF from discomfort caused by horses’ movements.

However, during the true School seat there is no such thing as discomfort. If a horse was correctly gymnasticized, if there is a true “relationship” between a rider and a horse, if a rider sits in a natural way, which means in the School way, if SPATIUM is strictly observed, then, very likely no discomfort will exist. Of course, all these things are possible only without painful paralyzers in a horse’s mouth, such as a bit or tools for painful direction of a horse’s head, such as side-pull, bosal, NH halter etc…

SELLA

A saddle may be considered an accessory, as any kind of School work and the most difficult elements are possible without it. However, until a horse has a properly muscled state of the back, the saddle is practically an indispensable thing. Of course you should avoid any sorts of military-derived saddles – Western (Cowboy’s), Mongolian or Russian. It doesn’t matter what they call these types of saddles and how much velvet and quilted leather or how many embellishments there are. “Portuguese” saddles as well as Spanish ones are also of this type. This type of saddle inherently can’t be fitted in complete accordance with the asymmetry, nuances and all other singularities of the back of a living horse.

Talk that a saddle of this style is better for a horse’s back and has a bigger contact area is again FMG. I repeat once again, any of these saddles can’t be made in precise accordance with measurements of living horses’ backs because of their construction and are therefore inadmissible. Saddles of English type are preferable, because of their construction; it is possible to modify them in accordance with the precise measurements of a living horse.

However, regardless of saddle type, there is the SPATIUM with its 15 minutes astride and strict limits of manage schooling, strictly controlled work, when it is possible to minimize all feelings of pain and discomfort and to make the effects of a man on horseback practically harmless for the horse herself.

To be continued…

 

You can comment on this article by clicking –>HorseConscious Forum