I'm taking up an old subject concerning the horse's growth here as a way of sharing a minor "celebration" over a surprise event!
We went down to take the horses in last night and, as Kia had gone up to the field while I filled the water-buckets, I went out to do a quick visual check on whoever had decided to be the first to come in. (We can, and often do, decide the order in which they come in, but as they have some sort of a 'system' that they work out between themselves (most often "reverse age order", -but not always!) we usually leave them to decide, ...-unless Schatty suddenly tries to change what the rest have previously decided!
In the dark I could see very little, ..and then heard Kia's footsteps crunching on the light covering of snow, then saw Kia's yellow jacket reflecting the light ...-and a few seconds later a dark, silent, shadow at the side of her, but I could still hear no footsteps from the horse -and therefore knew that it must be one of the draughts, ..and a couple of seconds later the shadow resolved itself into Hugin who Kia was leading in a complicated pattern of circles and turns down from the field.
I moved so that I could do a visual check of his movement patterns in the light of the lamp outside the stable door, and suddenly noticed that Kia appeared to have shrunk in size!
A rapid visual check of her revealed that she had her normal winter boots on, ...so, hey, wait a bit, -double-take on Hugin, ...-his proportions are wrong!!!!!!
"KIAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop when you get him in, I want to measure him!!!!!!!"
Get into stable and take a g-o-o-d look!
A) Kia STILL looks incredibly small!
B) Hugin's rump looks f-a-r too high!!!
....-Out with measuring stick! Check for 'snow-stilts' in hooves, none!
Now, to all intents and purposes, Hugin has not grown since he had a big growth-spurt, between December 2003 and February 2004 when he was 3½+ years old!
Every time we have checked him since then he has been 148 to 149 centimeters to his withers ("about" 14.2 hh), and 4 to 5 cm (an inch) lower at the back, ...and now, suddenly, despite the fact that Kia has done his feet, ..-and that it is only about 25F with a good wind-chill factor, which normally seems to make most horses "become smaller" by up to about an inch (No, I can't "prove" that, but we, and everybody else we know, find it to be true! -Do they "draw themselves together" to conserve heat? -I've never seen any studies on it!) Hugin is now measuring 151 cm at the withers (if that area on Hugin can really be dignified by the use of that title!
Total shock and surprise!
We moved him to different parts of the floor as it isn't too level, ..and we re-measured and re-measured -just to be sure, ..and, yes!, our "Hugi-titch" is *suddenly* at least 14h 3 3/4+ inches tall!!!
He is having a 'growth spurt' at 6½ years of age and *may* even actually make a *full* 15 hh!!!!
...Now, WE don't care at all about how tall Hugin is, and he is beautifully proportioned (normally
"Right, it's only 1.30 am and we're both off-work tomorrow, so lets measure the rest of 'em!" I said, cheerfully! (Now you understand why Kia often feels like hitting me with something ...like a brick, ..or a car!
Vitty, oldest and Arab, and 7 in March, is now 159 cm at the front and 155 cm at the back, a very recent increase in size which has also occured since we measured him at Christmas, and an increase of over half an inch over the 157-158 cm he had attained by about 2 years ago!
...Schatal, (our younger Arab) who we still tend to think of as something of "a skinny little runt" compared with the others, is also growing, at 4½ yo, and is now measuring 153½ cm at the withers and ...152 at the rump, ..-and that explains why we said to each other that we thought he looked "odd" when we were looking at him in the field the other day!
He has grown well over half an inch since our Christmas measuring, ...and Oremus, "The Baby" (NSD) at 3½, who is the only one of our four who seems to have grown evenly, rather than in spurts, has now got up to 152 cm at the front and 146 at the back, ..and despite that, looks very high rumped just now, so "things are happening" there as well!
I've come to quite a few conclusions over all this!
-I'm a middle-aged Brit, dash it, and whatever I may be used to using in the lab, I STILL measure a horse in "hands" and the pull of a bow in "pounds"!!!! ...-In terms of a horse's height I still can't grasp the concept of "centimeters" in my soul!
Secondly, and far more importantly, well, we now have good evidence from four out of four of our horses that the suggestion that "all" horses have finished growing by the time they are 3½ years, or 42 months of age, is not correct!
If I'd realised that this was going to happen I think I would have paid the vet to actually come out and measure them once a year so that I had a "documented and attested proof" of their growth rate, rather than just our own figures, measured without witnesses, on a relatively un-even and old concrete stable floor!
As a horse owner, ...and as an equine masseur and electro-therapist, I feel that this is VERY important stuff!
-This is 'in-admissable' (because of the way we've measured it!) evidence against the "horse-industry's" accepted normer!!!
"De Gamla", "the old ones", ...past generations here in Sweden, ALWAYS taught that a horse should never be asked to pull a "full load" (several tons!) until it was at least 7 years of age! ...-It was okay to start a young horse with a light hay wagon when it was about "2-ish", but it was to be a very LIGHT load!
"Light" riding training does not seem to have been begun until the horse was about 4, (6-ish for more serious riding in the military)...so, ..what are we doing, to whom are we looking for leadership in these matters? Can they be trusted to give us the correct answers, ...-and why are the "official figures" for growth not fitting the reality of our situation with our boys?
Is it that we have fed them mainly on grass and grass-hay and let them grow "naturally", instead of trying to 'feed them up' as though we were producing something for the food industry?
I can't answer any of these questions but ,I'm very, very glad that we have not gone "the normal way" with our lads!
I'm glad that we did get "distracted" from what we originally *thought* we wanted to do, and that we got into so many other things, and have had the fun of all our trick-training and experiments, without putting any up any goals other than that we and the boys should learn together and have fun!
I'm glad we've totally ignored the pressures to 'ride them in' and 'drive them in' by "conventional means" and have played and experimented as we have!
Light riding would certainly have been quite alright for a while now, but we've been too busy to get things started, -and with Schatz (who had lime disease as a 1 yo), it's only now that he's beginning to look as though his body is filling out properly!
He's really only just beginning to lose that "unfinished young horse look", so we're glad we've not put any weights on his back yet. -We don't know "why", but it is a feeling we share and have followed, even though he has been saddled quite a few times!
I am not the same person, ..-we are not the same people, ...that we were 6 years ago, Thank God! ...-We've studied, and we've observed, and we've grown, ..-and the more we see and learn, then the more certain we become that what we both learnt, at different riding schools in different countries, is so small a part of the the whole picture of "what horses and horsemanship are about" as to be totally worthless!
Certainly, the more I look, the more I am finding that the actual real evidence for just about everything contradicts "the accepted view" of nearly everything that is taught!
How did it get this way? Why did it get this way? When did it get this way?
In Europe, I can see that "riding" was for the rich and the military, while draught horses and cobs were for farmers and "teamsters / draymen / wagoners / carters / etc", and that these latter groups' knowledge (along with that of the Gypsies!) would easily be lost, or would only be passed-on inside families, as both farmers and 'transport workers' (and most definitely, Gypsies!) were, to say the least, 'rather looked down on' by "their social superiors", so their knowledge, deep and valuable to them for their very survival, would be highly unlikely to interest the "higher classes" who 'rode' and who were not, in general, too interested in learning from their social inferiors!
The military, generally officered by people from the higher social classes, have had different needs at different time periods and, generalizing to a very large degree in this statement, I would suspect that the typical 'military-aristocratic' riding of the past thousand years or so has been more centered on the concepts of 'forced training' for the winning a war than it has been concerned with the concepts of working with another en-souled and intelligent being, not only for practical, but also for, first "religious", and then later, for "scientific" reasons! (the human being is the 'pinnacle of creation' in both systems of thought, though during the earlier period we must not forget that humans, as well as horses, were often de facto slaves, or very nearly so!)
The highest social classes made riding into an "art form", taking many of the once practical military excercises to new heights for the sake of appearance, and, if I have understood correctly, some of the training methods applied to horses while teaching them these excercises, even during the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds, were none to gentle and kind.
What happened in the USA?
From the little I have been able to glean, the "civilized" East, with it's roots firmly in Britain, France, Germany and other northerly European states, adopted a so-called "English" riding style, -partly, at least, to show their "social superiority" over the Spanish inspired and influenced "Western" or "cowboy" type of practical riding, ..-and, as 'practial people' are often too busy, both doing their things and generally surviving, to have the time to write about them, it seems to me that this situation has also led to a great loss of knowledge, -especially as the Spanish-Moorish influences, which lie behind the true "western" concepts and ideas are identical with the ideals of Classical Dressage and, like them, go back to Constantinople (which fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 - 1458) and, in fact, have their origins in Roman Classical times!
Hmm, it really IS an interesting situation is it not?
Can we trust our "experts"?
Why is the "research" that is being done not giving results that appear to fit with reality?
And lastly, who are the best teachers for us?
We can learn from all, I think, but it seems to me to be becoming even clearer that both for information on the horse's physical development, and on its mental condition and needs, and perhaps even more importantly, (if we really want to learn to do it well!), for *how* we ride, we have, in the end, only one single teacher on whom we can totally rely, ..-and that teacher is the horse himself, who doesn't need research grants, can't read very well, but actually has the advantage of being born as a horse, -and I feel that we should accept that all other teachers besides the horse himself must be regarded as being at least slightly suspect!
Gordon.
