We have added the 2013 Equine Cartoon wall calendar...Jean Luc's humor is evident! On YouTube is a new brief excerpt from IHTC..enjoy!

A brief Newsletter ...enjoy and remember we love hearing from you!

Sincerely,
Editor Helyn Cornille
Science Of Motion

 

Jean Luc has created the cartoons for our 2013 calendar. Great gifts for horse lovers! 

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When the International Equestrian Federation banished the practice of poling the horses' front legs over the jumps, the governing body of the equestrian world showed integrity and clairvoyance. Few years later, scientific studies demonstrated that the practice was in fact, addressing the wrong end of the problem. Technologies measuring the forces produced and absorbed by the hind and front legs revealed that in most instances, faults of the front legs knocking over the top rail of a vertical originate from insufficient propulsive force of the rear legs in the early phase of the push off. "Knocking over an obstacle was significantly associated with lower hind limb acceleration peak at take-off." (E. Barrey and P. Galloux - 1997). 

The muscles involved in the successive sequences of the push-off have been clearly distinguished and their discriminated development can easily be achieved Like their human counterparts, equine athletes can be efficiently prepared for the effort. Hens, their talent may be enhanced by education rather than been used to compensate ineffective training approaches. Human athletes have long understood that natural reflexes were adapted to natural moves, rather they were hill adapted to the stylized version of the move demanded in the show ring. The concept of "practice makes perfect" vanished in favor of "perfect practice" where the focus is placed on the mastery of reflex combinations precisely adapted to the effort. Kinematics analysis and more recently the propensity to measure the forces developed and absorbed by the hind and front legs, permit to educate and orchestrate equine athletes' physics as precisely as their human counterparts. Hitting the horses' legs with a bamboo pole, which is a practice that remains in use behind the curtain, retrograde equine athletic training fifty years behind actual knowledge.

The practical application of actual knowledge allowed one to determine if the weaknesses observed during the take-off originate from muscle imbalance, poor coordination or insufficient supply of type II (fast twitch) muscle cells. The two first conditions may be modified with training, the distribution between fast and slow twitch muscle cells is genetic and cannot be modified with physical education. However, the knowledge of such distribution permits to tailor training approaches, riding style, and feeding to the horse's individual needs. Recent studies have recognized two different types of fast twitch muscle cells, Type IIA and IIB, how they influences horses performances and their nutritional needs. Actual knowledge and the practical application of such knowledge situates horses education so far ahead of the gimmicks traditionally emphasized that one may wonder why some dressage trainers have dusted off the bamboo poles from the attic and bring them back, as a novelty, in the dressage ring.

 

George Bernard Shaw wrote, "When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." As you know, He draws quite funny cartoons. Sometime you may search for the hidden truth. At some occasions, when he come in the barn to see me, he does have his computer under his arm. In other instances, he comes with a pen and a piece of paper and draws a cartoon. I like to watch the process. He always commences with the horse's expression and sometime I can figure the whole cartoon just by this beginning. Most of the time, he is just amused by a situation, or an experience that he had in the previous days. Other times, he is inspired by political events. He thinks that politicians are a perpetual source of funny cartoons. I have also seen cartoons that were for him a therapy, a way to put frustration or anger or pain out of his system. He does not publish those cartoons. I remember the one that he drew one day. It was indeed several drawing like a story. He was making fun of the so called "attitude adjusters," these would be trainers who resolve behavior problems through physical or mental abuse. In each drawing, you can only see the horse head and shoulders. The horse has an expression very placid with a small and curious smile on his face. The attitude adjuster is doing horrible things to the horse. He twists the left ear; he kicks the horse's stomach with his feet. He is behind the horse stimulating forward movement with a bow whip. Whatever the attitude adjuster is doing, the horse's facial expression never changes. In fact, the horse never moves. At the end, the attitude adjuster is exhausted and totally depressed by the horse's lack of reaction. As the attitude adjuster leaves the scene totally defeated, there is a voice which said,"OK, you can move the dummy; the attitude adjuster is adjusted." The last drawing is the horse in full. It is a dummy that they are rolling backward.

The thought was funny but the drawings were too realistic. He was drawing on the table outside as I was grazing around him. I looked over his shoulders as he finished the drawing of the guy twisting the horse's left ear. I was very uncomfortable with the drawing. They did that to me. Watching the cartoon, I almost felt the pain again. I look at him and he looked at me thinking, I know that they did that to you. I remember the time that we have to spend together when I tried to pass the bridle above your ears. It took fifty five minutes the first day and I had to dismantle the bridle completely. The second day it took five seconds. You had figured that it was not about misplaced ego and insane submission.

Manchester tried to watch the drawing from behind the fence of his turn out. He could not see the details from where he was and asked to describe the drawing. The attitude adjuster was now kicking the horse's stomach with his feet. Manchester felt uncomfortable too saying,They did that to me. They did not kick my stomach as shown on the cartoon, although, a few times, the trainer was so angry against me that he smacked my stomach quite strongly with his hand. They regularly hit my stomach with their legs or their spurs because I resisted forward movement. I had severe pains in my left stifle and I resisted forward movement trying to ease my pain but they did not contemplate the thought that it could be a physical issue. I was supposed to move forward and they interpreted my resistance as a behavior problem. "He is lazy" as they said, "he is stubborn; he does not want to move forward." You should have heard the theories that they came up with. The only thing they never figured is that my so called behavior issues were my only way to express my physical pain.Watching him cantering, jumping, bucking like a kid in the field it was difficult to believe that all these memories were true. I said to Manchester, but I was there when you arrived. You were dead lame. You could barely move. I saw it firsthand. They even separated us in turn out because I wanted to play with you but you did not have the physical capacity to deal with my enthusiasm.

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