This week we headed into Pony Club camp to work with the senior ride.
We were hands on from the word go, developing their "eye" on trot up and teaching them how to "feel".
There was lots of questions around how we score a pony in relation to the muscle status, we were lucky to have some demo horses who showed signs of the different levels so that the riders could feel the tensions.
Some of you may want to know how we score to, we use the Merrifield - Jones et al, 2019 scale:
Score Description:
0 Soft, low tone
1 Normal
2 Increased muscle tone but not painful (feels like an orange)
3 Increased muscle tone and/or painful (slight associated spasm on
palpation, no associated movement) (feels like an apple)
4 Painful (associated spasm on palpation with associated local
movement, i.e., pelvic tilt, extension response)
5 Very painful (spasm plus behavioral response to palpation, i.e., ears
flat back, kicking)
Keeping to our theme of educating others we are looking forward to being involved further with the Pony Club.
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